Company: KODAK Service & Support
Company Division/Group: Fleishman Hillard
Company Description: KODAK Service & Support, Eastman Kodak Company's worldwide service organization, is a leading multi-vendor IT services provider, supporting more than 100 manufacturers of document scanners, storage devices/systems, and micrographic imaging equipment. Nearly 3,300 professionals in more than 120 countries offer maintenance agreements, warranty upgrades, installation, training, and data conversion.
Nomination Category: Organization Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Best Support Organization

Nomination Title: Mission Possible: KODAK Service & Support Goes the Distance to Provide Global Coverage for a Progressive Product Portfolio

   1. Tell the story about what this nominated organization/department achieved in the past year (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

Your mission: Fix any one of a thousand different business products ' made by more than 100 manufacturers ' anywhere in the world, anytime. Whether it's a commercial printer in Calgary, a tape drive in Taipei, a prepress part in Paris, or a document scanner in Denver, KODAK Service & Support is on the job.

For the past two years, creating cohesion between units that provide service and support for no less than six dissimilar sectors ' including document scanners, storage devices and solutions, commercial printing equipment, and prepress technologies ' has been the underlying goal of KODAK Service & Support. This has required uniting global service operations from the combined Creo, KPG, NexPress, Versamark, Encad and Kodak document imaging businesses. Together, these individual pieces formed Kodak's Graphic Communications Group (GCG).

Following Eastman Kodak Company's acquisition of these diverse but
interconnected businesses, KODAK Service & Support has very quickly grown from
1,200 to nearly 3,300 service professionals across all of the GCG businesses in more than 120 countries. 

The challenges:
Customers can be anywhere ' meaning a finite number of technicians exist who can answer the call in cities from Boston to Beijing and still meet or exceed optimal customer response times and overall customer satisfaction.

Every day, technology evolves, creating new formats or new ways to manage existing ones. Technicians then have to be up to speed on these latest and greatest technologies that provide the brains for the equipment that they service.

Customer needs will change with technology, too. To help customers navigate between disparate technologies, KODAK Service & Support offers conversion services, taking data from any format and converting it to an easy-to-access format. Equipment upgrades or a company's acquisition of a business unit with technology unlike its own ' require a service professional's toolbox and skill level be greater than ever before.

Establishing a consistent skill level among all technicians then becomes another challenge.  How do you create a workforce in which each team member has the expertise to service any piece of equipment within your portfolio?

The answer: KODAK Service & Support has implemented a program to cross-train
personnel, making each professional a proficient service technician on as many pieces of equipment within the portfolio as possible. And, it designed a plan to continue providing services for an expanding line of hardware and software products across the industries served by GCG.

The result: While carefully blending together six distinct cultures into one high performing customer-focused culture and implementing an integrated service support infrastructure that includes call centers, supply chain, telecommunications, service contract management and invoicing/collections, numbers have continued to climb. This has included:

'Maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction ' at a rate of 95 percent or higher.
'Continuing to serve as a single point of contact for an expanding portfolio of service offerings.
'Increasing global reach through an expanded service force.  In the U.S. and Canada region alone, the number of cities where services are offered has grown by 25 percent.
'More than tripling the global customer base from 30,000 to more than 100,000.

   2. List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, http://www.youraddress.com:

' KODAK Service & Support Announces New Organization Within Graphic
Communications Group
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/dpq/site/COMMSERVICE/name/pr20050912_GCGOrg

' First-half 2004 survey shows 4% boost to the highest ever levels of
satisfaction
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/dpq/site/COMMSERVICE/name/pr20041110_survey

' How To Profitably Deliver Service And Support To Your Customers
http://www.ecmconnection.com/content/news/article.asp?docid={cb75e76b-dc7e-4ce5-bae8-769a4954f0ee}

' Kodak at Graph Expo: An Integrated View
http://members.whattheythink.com/home/ge041012.cfm

   3. Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of this nominated organization/department:

Dolores Traxler, General Manager, Global Services, and Vice President, Kodak's Graphics Communications Group, joined Kodak in1981. She has held many key positions at Kodak in site engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, R&D of storage products, divestitures and acquisitions and IT Systems, leading to her service leadership position today.

Named general manager, Worldwide Service and Support and vice president, Commercial Imaging Group in March 2002 after expanding the unit's business by more than 40 percent, she was promoted to her current role in 2005.

She holds degrees from the State University of New York at Alfred and the Rochester Institute of Technology.