One of the biggest challenges facing data storage companies is demands from enterprises for better performance and protection of their data. Recently, I had the chance to chat with Stacey Cornelius, vice president of operations at Nimble. Nimble Storage is a provider of flash-optimized data storage solutions with a powerful support model, unique in their industry. The company has a commitment to deliver the highest level of support and customer satisfaction with around-the-clock resources and four hour onsite parts replacement service. Stacey spoke about how as their install base grew, the company faced challenges getting visibility into its more than 70 global inventory hubs and spare parts depots for its service parts planning business. Nimble was using a spreadsheet-based process to manage its service parts planning business. Data was imported and copied from a variety of sources and some of the key data was maintained only in Excel spreadsheets. 80% of the processing time included data collection and data clean up with approximately 50 steps to complete the planning process. This resulted in the process being error prone and not as responsive as was required for the growing business. Here’s a quote from Stacey Cornelius, vice president of operations at Nimble on how they doing today:
“Nimble’s world-class customer service agreements are incredibly important to our business. As a past RapidResponse user, I know the breadth of capabilities and the flexibility of the solution. With RapidResponse deployed, we have the confidence we can keep up with our growing install base to achieve visibility of inventory at hubs, depots and parts in transit. We have the ability to quickly perform many “what-if” questions we face on a daily basis and have already reduced the time to make decisions to help our relationships with our customers.”
We also learned that because of their focus on inventory management the team realized:
- On time delivery to customers across 70 inventory depots > 98%
- Inventory availability > 98%
- Service inventory as a % of installed base COGS < 5%
- Weekly spare parts planning process went from 5 hours to < 30 minutes
Amazing! A big thank you to Nimble Storage for letting us tell their story. We love to hear what you are doing with RapidResponse! If you are interested in learning more about this customer, read the complete case study.
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