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LEEDS, UK 27th August 2004 - Luminary Solutions, the leading
supplier of OpenROAD and Ingres services in the UK, has been awarded a major new
green-field development project for Indesit Company (formerly Merloni
Elettrodomestici). Luminary is already supplementing Indesit UK's in-house skills
with a managed team of experienced OpenROAD and Ingres developers. The Luminary team
is assisting Indesit UK in developing its core service engineer support system in
preparation for deployment in Indesit's home country of Italy, and has further
been engaged to develop a new invoice tracking system for the UK operation.
Indesit Company (UK) is the biggest manufacturer and supplier of kitchen
appliances in the UK through its Hotpoint, Indesit, and Cannon brands. The parent
company, Indesit, is an international organisation that is based in
Italy and has country-based operations throughout Europe. Indesit (UK) has a vast
post-sales support organisation that ensures prompt and efficient customer service for
appliances that are both under warranty and out of warranty. The fleet of service
engineers is supported by state-of-the-art wireless communication applications that
ensure efficient allocation and processing of customer service calls.
Ian Rudderham, Indesit UK's IT Manager, said: "Our post-sales support systems are the
core of our customer service business here in the UK and are set to be adopted by other
Indesit European operations. We undertake the majority of our support and development
activities in-house as they are critical to our operation; however, establishing
partnerships with trusted suppliers to help us through peaks in demand is absolutely
crucial. We chose Luminary as an Ingres development partner because of their excellent
track record in customer service and delivery."
Luminary has provided a fully managed team of developers to assist Indesit UK in
developing its core service engineer support system in preparation for its deployment
in Italy. They have completed development of the system on-time and to budget. In
addition to the 'internationalisation' of the system, this has required significant
changes to the existing functionality and additional modules to be developed to meet
the different legal and cultural requirements of the Italian organisation. A number
of business areas have been enhanced including inventory management, stock movement,
direct sales and supplier re-imbursement. The development has included complex user
interfaces, developed through an iterative prototyping approach that ensured no
compromise on quality, and the integration of heterogeneous technology systems,
including an interface of financial data through to SAP.
Indesit have further engaged Luminary to take on the development of a new invoice
tracking system. This development will be undertaken over the next six months by a
managed team of developers. Again this development will address complex system
integration issues both within Indesit and with external suppler and customer
organisations. The team will be based at their development centre in Leeds. The Luminary
approach --- with clearly defined channels of communication --- has already proved an
efficient and effective way of supplementing Indesit UK's IT function.
Mike Weightman of Luminary said "We are extremely happy to have renewed a working
relationship with Indesit that proved very successful for both parties in the past. We
are excited about the challenge we've been given and will build on the successful
project work that we've delivered so far. Luminary has the skills and experience that
complement those within Indesit and is committed to working in this partnership for the
long-term. We have the capability and work ethic that will help Indesit go from strength
to strength, building on their position as a market leader".
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