Aberdeen Group Finds That ABB Gains Inventory Visibility, Grows Business with SmartSpares(TM) Program - Powered by SeeControl; Leading Research Firm Recognizes ABB's Spares Inventory Successes.

SAN MATEO, Calif. -- SeeControl Inc., the leader in providing visibility and data from the edge of the supply chain, and ABB Ltd., a $21 billion provider of power and automation systems for the automotive and diversified manufacturing industries, today announced - that leading research/analyst firm Aberdeen Group recently featured the two companies in an in-depth Service Success Case Study that highlighted the significant rewards ABB and its clients continue to reap through its partnership with SeeControl.

"By redirecting its spare parts business to focus on customers' unique requirements, ABB has been able to bolster profit margins, drive top-line revenue, and improve customer satisfaction and retention," said Mark Vigoroso, Vice President, Service Chain Management Research.

For ABB, selling and servicing its critical equipment for customers' production lines was historically a reactionary and transaction-based process. Typically, customers would wait for parts on robots and other automation equipment to fail and then call ABB for replacements. Nowadays, it is an automated process that enables users to not only immediately access the necessary part, but also predict the future and foresee when they may need the part.

ABB needed to improve part availability for its customers to help them decrease mean-time-to-repair (MTTR) and increase productivity.

"Prior to its relationship with SeeControl, ABB did not have a codified process for stocking spare parts and lacked visibility into its spares inventories totaling $25 million in the United States alone," said Tony Wisniewski, vice president and general manager of aftermarket services for ABB. "When a part failed, someone at the customer's site had to manually sign out a spare part and the process was long and arduous, and the resulting downtime could cost $20,000 per minute or more. Today, the SeeControl solution or SmartSpares(TM) service as known inside ABB has dramatically increased worker productivity, decreased inventory and associated carrying costs, streamlined warranty management and enables the company to track product reliability, ultimately saving the company millions of dollars to the bottom line, which we have been pleased to pass directly on to our satisfied customer base."

In addition, ABB had to change the way it approached customer interactions. Since customers only called after equipment broke or when they needed replacement parts, ABB traditionally treated customer orders as one-off transactions rather than as relationship-building opportunities. This hindered ABB's ability to offer differentiated service and to grow its customer base.

"ABB is demonstrating why they are a leader in service and clearly differentiating themselves from their competition," said Garrett Gafke, President and CEO for SeeControl. "ABB foresaw that to significantly increase revenue within its service business and increase its competitive advantage, it would need to reengineer its inventory management process and adopt a more proactive approach to customer service. Since implementing SeeControl's technology, ABB has realized more than $1.5 million in incremental service revenue while notably reducing inventory. We look forward to working with ABB well into the future and effecting ABB's global impact of SmartSpares(TM) service with SeeControl's product suite."

One critical takeaway from ABB's technology implementation is that the company approached it with a clearly stated business objective: Provide customer-service solutions rather than one-off transactions. Now, ABB is in the business of building customer relationships. As a result, the company has gained competitive advantage in its core product sales.

To get a copy of the Aberdeen Service Success Case Study featuring ABB and SeeControl, please visit www.seecontrol.com or contact SeeControl at 770.886.4295.

About SeeControl

SeeControl is the leader in providing real-time visibility and data from the edge of supply chain. Through a web-based data collection and item management platform, companies can oversee distant inventories held at customer sites, partner locations, enterprise data centers and plant floors. SeeControl customers improve the quality of reporting and analysis from these locations and act automatically -- increasing customer responsiveness with less inventory and operational cost.. For more information, please visit www.seecontrol.com or call 650-312-1100.