Yarraa.com revolutionizes after-sales services by benefitting all parties

Everyone who buys consumer goods knows the problems that can beset them after a purchase. For example, when the product balks, “Where’s the user manual?” If the product fails, “Where’s the warranty card?” If the card is found, “Where’s the service center that can help me?” All manner of aggravations flow from these common situations.

Yarraa Inc., a young company with a brilliant business model, is eliminating consumer headaches such as these while also providing significant benefits to businesses in product supply chains, from retailers to recyclers. The consumer services on Yarraa’s website are free for use by its customers, while revenues that support the site come from its business clients in exchange for the after-sales services to customers they would otherwise have to manage themselves, and for the other advantages Yarraa offers them.

An ambitious vision drives technical requirements

As the world’s first comprehensive online after-sales service, Yarraa’s vision is that anyone who has a problem with an item after it’s installed, regardless of their position in the product cycle, will be able to find the solution on the Yarraa site. To meet this goal, Yarraa wanted a portal solution that could serve as a universal communication nexus for all parties, providing an exceptional web experience to consumers, manufacturers, distributors, retailers, etc., regardless of user type or location.

The portal would need views personalized for individual consumers and tailored for a range of business types. It had to have good indexing and search capabilities and be able to support simple transactions. There had to be easy ways to keep content on the site current, and for business users to track customer interactions and see significant trends. The latter required routing capabilities for pooling and uploading information to spreadsheets and forwarding to the business clients.

WebSphere Portal capabilities and offerings make it the clear platform choice

For recommendations and help getting started, the Yarraa CEO turned to IBM Business Partner RigelSoft, which specializes in enterprise portal solutions. Vincent Wong, the RigelSoft COO, recounts the exchange: “The Yarraa CEO gave us his vision of a global portal that could support millions of users and be accessed in any part of the world. There were really only two software platforms that could be considered: WebLogic from Oracle, and IBM WebSphere Portal.”

“But WebLogic has more limited capabilities and offerings,” says Wong. “So we strongly advised Yarraa to go with WebSphere Portal. This would support multiple types of business users and also let us integrate existing collaboration capabilities from IBM Lotus to provide better collaboration solutions to all. We knew IBM could provide everything needed, from the portal services to web content management and dashboards in addition to great services from the IBM technical team.”

Following Yarraa’s assent, RigelSoft developed the yarraa.com site on an IBM® WebSphere® Portal platform, with applications running on IBM WebSphere Application Server software. IBM Web Content Manager enables Yarraa’s content owners to create and manage rich web content on the site without IT staff involvement. Through advanced personalization features, the site can support individual and role-based views that accommodate both consumers and the various types of business users, delivering the right information to the right audiences.

There is a place for everything, with everything in one place

The Yarraa site offers its customers remedies for virtually all post-sale issues, starting with having all their purchase-related documents held for them in one convenient place online. Customers register their purchases and warranties on the site, for any mix of brands. This eliminates the problem of managing lost receipts and warranty cards, enabling more efficient, hassle-free service whenever needed. A free warranty calendar shows customers when their warranties are about to expire, guiding appropriate actions. They can also access their user manuals and other product information from their personal libraries on the site at any time. And regardless of where an item was purchased or where the consumer currently resides, the site provides instant confirmation and warranty protection for all registered products.

Customers enjoy faster servicing and repairs

When something breaks down, there is no more contacting an automated call center, or filling out forms, or queuing up at a service center for repairs. Instead, customers can submit their service requests online, which are automatically combined with related proof of purchase and warranty information. They can easily find locations of local authorized service centers on an integrated Google map, and as soon as they choose the one they want, they’re done. An SMS gateway supports quick communications between customers and service centers, including notifications when repaired items are ready to be picked up.

New information helps business clients to manage better and lower their costs

Meanwhile, through different role-based views on the same site, vendors and service providers can access services tailored for them that help support better management and lower costs. Like its customers, Yarraa’s business clients can find all the information they need quickly and easily. For example, retailers can upload automatically populated spreadsheets to see pooled information about inventories, which can be forwarded to their business partners. Or they can tap into a worldwide network of service providers to find solutions and get price quotes online.

Custom portlets developed with WebSphere Portlet Factory deliver reports and show charts and graphs in dashboards. For instance, a service center manager can log in to review performance of his technicians, see which have closed the most cases, how many open cases there are, and who is responsible for them. He can then review work assignments and farm out new cases to the available technicians best equipped to solve them in a particular timeframe. Another portlet tracks spare parts inventories in real time, enabling precise and timely reorder decisions.

Warranty management based on online registrations saves businesses a great deal of time and money. Real-time data and data mining services improve inventory and shipping efficiency, boost product failure-rate monitoring and help increase customer satisfaction with timely consumer contact. An organized approach to reverse logistics cuts shipping costs by 5 percent or more and inventory costs by up to 20 percent. Strong gatekeeping capabilities prevent fraudulent returns (which cost businesses worldwide over US$12 billion annually), without blocking honest customer transactions. Centralized communications and shared product tracking facilitate better communication among all parties, while feedback from analytics helps improve products and services.

In addition to these cost-saving and operational improvements, Yarraa-affiliated businesses can earn additional revenue by selling insurance and warranty extensions.

Giving customers a voice fuels fast-growing business

Yarraa’s compelling business model and services have generated phenomenal growth within a short period of time. The company now has over 2 million product registrations, 200 business clients, 15,000 affiliated service centers and presence in 42 countries. Thanks to its increasing popularity with consumers and businesses, Yarraa can now capture substantial banner advertising revenue from companies eager to reach the site’s million-plus regular users.

“We’re different from our competitors,” says David Bede, director of marketing and strategy at Yarraa, Inc. “We offer a unique communication nexus where no matter who you are and where in the product cycle, you’re never more than one degree removed from the person you need to talk to. Being free to consumers is a big differentiator. But we also give consumers a voice—through the options of getting directly in touch with companies, filing service requests online, and purchasing secondary services like extended warranties.”

Yarraa's portal solution, by enabling the company to attract and retain customers, achieve high customer satisfaction and brand loyalty, and lower both its own and customers' operational costs, well illustrates the benefits of providing what IBM calls an “exceptional web experience.”

For more information

To learn more about IBM WebSphere and IBM Web Content Management products, please contact your IBM marketing representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit ibm.com/websphere

For more information about Yarraa, visit www.yarraa.com