Otis Elevator

Otis Elevator

1. Two of the major IT changes which happened in the 1980s was – introduction of OTISLINE and the other one being implementation of REM elevator monitoring.

OTISLINE is a 24 x 7 centralized online customer service centre, which consisted of 160 people who could respond to people in less than 1 minute, as soon as they reach out to contact on any issue. The considerations which made to bring in this facility are –

• have a central view of service delivery, response time, or cumulative product issues in the field, as opposed to dispatching the service personnel from the local offices
• respond quickly to customers, when there is any issues
• aggregate data from various Otis data sources
• enhance the elevator service business visibility to the senior level management. So that superior customer service is assured. OTISLINE helped in accounting callback and generate report to be sent to various persons in the management hierarchy , based on the severity and frequency of the issue ie.., higher the number of callbacks from any elevator, will make the higher level management to get notified
• ease of communication between the top level management and the filed mechanics, customers and company management. OTISLINE eventually helped the management to reduce the layers of hierarchy to enhance communication.

Other than that, OTISLINE also enabled the managers to look into service business operations, with required information.

The other major IT change is REM elevator monitoring, a system in which a microprocessor was put to use, to monitor the control systems and log performance statistics and send the data to be stored in a computer installed at a distant location. The consideration which brought this implementation in OTIS elevators is nothing but to guarantee maximum performance levels , where the problems could be handled even before the customers are aware of them.

How easy, or difficult, was the implementation of Otisline in the 90s?

Otisline was a centralized customer service system which was used to coordinate and generate centralized information about the problems efficiencies of service mechanics. It tracked the response and delivery time of the service and issues related to service delivery. Although the case only talks about how the system brought about major changes in the organisation’s effectiveness, there would have been a few challenges which were faced by Otis during the course of implementation of Otisline because it was in a way a mini revolutionary step in the organisation.