FORM-2
THE PATENTS ACT, 1970
(39 of 1970)
&
THE PATENTS RULES, 2006


PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION
(See section 10 and rule 13) WARRANTY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES LTD.
The following specification particularly describes the nature of the invention.


FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to the field of warranty management.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION AND PRIOR ART
With the advent of industrial revolution, there has been an increase in technology and innovation, thus encouraging more product development. The advance technologies supplement the mass manufacture of more complex products to meet the requirements of consumers.
The consumer electronics manufacturers are constantly developing more consumer centric products to meet the modern lifestyles. Though, these complex products go through rigorous quality tests there are possibilities that the products fails or get damaged during shipment. The products also degrade with age and/or usage and fail when they are unable to carry out their normal functions. Therefore, the consumers need the assurance that the product will perform satisfactorily over the life of the product. In addition, the governments are getting more stringent to protect consumer interests. The manufacturer's respond to these challenges by offering warranties and extended warranties.
A warranty is a written and/or oral manufacturer's assurance to a buyer to either rectify or compensate for all failures occurring within the warranty period. Typically, a warranty is a legal contract between the manufacturer and the buyer that is entered into on purchase of a product.
Typically, consumers can claim warranty for a product if the failure or damage to the product occurs within the warranty period specified by the manufacturer. Manufacturers provide a claim form which needs to be filled
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stating the nature of the manufacturing defect, date of purchase of the product, dealer information, consumer information and the like. This form gets submitted to the manufacturers for processing.
The processing includes checking the reason of failure, checking if it is a fraud claim, checking if the product damage was due to mishandling at the suppliers end and the like. These checks delay the processing of claims and lead to client dissatisfaction.
Therefore there is a need for a system which will:
• enable organizations to process claims quickly and efficiently;
• enable organizations to decide whether to replace or repair the product based on the details specified on the claim form;
• enable organizations to detect fraud claims;
• enable organizations to chargeback suppliers incase the product failure occurs at their end;
• enable organizations to reduce warranty costs; and
• provide a faster warranty lifecycle processing to increase customer satisfaction including repair, claims processing, parts returns, supplier recovery, service contracts, and the analysis of these areas for providing feedback for process improvement and cost saving.
OBJECTS OF THE INVENTION
It is an object of the present invention to provide a customer-centric warranty management system.
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It is another object of the present invention to provide a warranty management system which will enable the organizations to detect fraud claims.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide a warranty management system which will shorten the claims processing time.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a warranty management system which will enable organizations to save costs.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention envisages a warranty management system which will enable organizations to save costs and increase customer satisfaction.
Accordance to one aspect of the present invention, consumers can submit their claims online as well as track the progress of the claim online.
According to another aspect of the present invention, the warranty management system interfaces with other units of the organizations including finance, service, quality, marketing, engineering and manufacturing. This interface provides organizations with transparent information flow. The interface also provides the top management of organizations with a central view of all processes including claim settlement, warranty contract maintenance and product repair.
According to the invention, the received claims and warranty data is stored and analyzed by the present invention in light of related sales and engineering data to perform predictive analysis and provide feedback to the organizations to improve quality and serviceability of products. The
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predictive analysis also provides organizations with early warnings on nascent defects and product glitches. These early warnings are sent to the engineering unit for improving the product design and lowering the warranty costs.
According to yet another aspect of the present invention, estimates of optimum warranty level reserves and optimum utilization of capital are provided to optimize the organizations cash flow and drive shareholder value.
The present invention improves the performance by providing organizations with mechanisms to perform reserve forecasting, supplier chargeback, fraud prevention, product quality feedback, returned materials authorization, product recall management and claims processing cycle. These mechanisms are explained below:
1. Reserve Forecasting: Typically, various government laws stipulate the mandatory disclosure of warranty reserves thus increasing the need for a more accurate estimation of warranty reserves. The present invention provides forecasting tools that are applied to the data extracted by the analytics engine to provide the necessary feedback for the finance and accounts team. This feedback is combined with organization policies and optimization objectives to provide a sufficient degree of accuracy while arriving at warranty reserve estimates,
2. Supplier Chargeback: It is difficult for organizations that do not have real¬time visibility to the supplier data to track the suppliers responsible for recalled and/or faulty product components. As a result, organizations are
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forced to settle even those warranty claims that should have been the impetus of the suppliers. The analytical rules facilitated by the present invention enable a quick and accurate identification of the supplier responsible for the fault. Detailed supplier records, including history of defaulters provided by the present invention helps in effective contract evaluation and negotiation.
3. Fraud Prevention: Fraudulent claims contribute a substantial number to the total claims submitted to an organization. Typically, about 4% to 10% of all claims settled by an organization turn out to be fraudulent. The present invention provides processing based on a set of analytical rules for claim verification and validation and helps the organizations to perform quick background checks and prevent invalid claims from being approved and eventually settled. In addition, the present invention provides alerts in the event that the source of a claim is a blacklisted retailer.
4. Product Quality Feedback Mechanism Design: Claims data provides a rich source of strategic information that can be employed in product design processes. The present invention integrates marketing, customer service and design units to help extract data related to product usage and consumer purchase behavior from production product sale and warranty claims. This information provides insights into the processes and provides causes into product defects and the conditions that are leading to the breakdown or failure of the product. This information benefits organizations tremendously by feeding this back to the R&D and engineering teams to help them make appropriate changes to design processes and enhance the quality of the products.
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5. Returned Materials Authorization: Organizations are currently facing challenges ensuring the availability of the right product components at the right time at the right price and along with the right technician. The warranty system envisaged by the present invention helps track, report and use reusable components from returned products. According to another embodiment of the present invention, automated trigger and analytical feedback from service repair units is provided by the present invention for a quick identification of components that can be refurbished or recycled. This in turn helps combat product and technology obsolescence.
6. Product Recall Management: The present invention provides early-warning mechanism for identifying product defects at an early stage and preventing faulty products from being shipped. According to another embodiment, in the event that defective products have already been shipped and need to be recalled, the present invention can help gather geographic and customer details regarding the installed base and identify products under warranty.
7. Claim Processing Cycle: Automated claim submission and contract management provided by the present invention increases the efficiency of claim settlement, while accelerating the claim processing cycle. This results in tremendous cost savings to the organization, in terms of both operational time and workforce efficiency.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF ACCOMPANYING DRAWING
The invention will now be described in relation to the accompanying drawing in which,
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Figure 1 illustrates a schematic of the warranty management system.
DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
The invention will now be described with reference to the accompanying drawing which does not limit the scope and ambit of the invention. The description provided is purely by way of example and illustration.
Referring to the Figure 1, the warranty management system, in accordance with the present invention provides the warranty solutions by implementing a four step process. The four steps include integrating the warranty management system with the other units of the organization, automating the manual claim processing and service functions, analyzing the claims data and optimizing the claim and service processes to improve operational efficiency, reducing errors and increasing transparency across units of an organization.
The warranty management system envisaged by the present invention can be incorporated in exiting systems as well as can be implemented as a complete solution for service and claims processing.
According to the present invention, the organizations need to asses the present state of their workflow to identify the processes which need to be improved. Table 1, helps in maturity state assessment and identifying the step out of the four steps which needs to be implemented to increase the performance and efficiency of the system envisaged by the present invention. For instance, if the organization has integrated but largely manual or semi-automated processes, its natural step is automation of processes before it should aim at analysis.
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Table 1
According the invention, the different units of the organization 10 through 20 of Figure 1 namely service unit, finance unit, marketing unit, engineering unit, manufacturing unit and quality unit are integrated by the present invention to design a proactive and customer-centric warranty system.
In addition, the present invention integrates the warranty-related processes within the service unit 10 including claim settlements, warranty contract
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maintenance and product repair to achieve efficient and effective automation for faster and transparent information flow. The integrated and agile processes help organizations anticipate the potential failure of products and preempt the customers' requirement of service for the products. Moreover, the present invention facilitates central access to the information related to these processes.
The automation of warranty management helps aligning the business goals for profit generation or cost reduction and helps service and after-sales units achieve higher customer satisfaction and positively affect repeat purchases.
According to an embodiment of the present invention, customers can submit claims online. These claims are validated and settled by applying the relevant business rules. This data forms the warranty data to be used by the present invention. The warranty data is stored in the service unit block 10.
The warranty data is extracted and analyzed by the data extraction and analysis engine represented by block 24, in the light of related sales and engineering data, and insights are provided into how the product functions in the consumer's environment. The data extraction and analysis engine 24 uses predictive analytics to obtain strategic, relevant intelligence and early warnings. The steps followed by the data extraction (DE&A) and analysis engine are as below:
• extraction of data from various business units (10 through 20) as shown in Table 2;
• analysis of the extracted data from various units of the organization;
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based on the analysis, providing feedback to various units for continuously improving quality and serviceability of products. For instance the feedback is sent to the engineering unit 16 to improve product design; to manufacturing unit 18 to improve process design; to quality unit 20 to improve quality procedures; to marketing unit 14 to design warranty policies; to finance unit 12, to calculate warranty reserves; and
designing alerts that will allow early capture of nascent issues like product glitches in the manufacturing cycle. These early warning on nascent defects are sent to the engineering and R&D teams. This prevents shipping defective products to markets and avoiding costly product recalls. Analytical feedback from warranty claims data helps arrest causes of defects that could otherwise lead to product failure.

Manufacturing

Pre-launch and Post-launch analysis; Product and Installed Base data; and Supplier performance analysis.

Marketing

In-Warranty products information; and Extended warranty sales information.

Service

Claim processing performance; and Customer feedback.

Finance and Accounting

Service pricing; and Service parts pricing.

Table 2
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The extracted data is also given to the optimization engine 24. The optimization engine (OE) 24 improves operational efficiency, reduces errors and increases transparency. OE 24 uses analytics and forecasting techniques to estimate the optimum warranty reserve levels, optimum utilization of capital and prevents unnecessary reserve accumulation. The right-sizing of the reserves helps prevent capital from getting locked in escrow accounts.
The technical advancement of the present invention includes:
• providing a consumer-centric system for warranty management;
• providing a warranty management system which will enable the organizations to detect fraud claims;
• providing a warranty management system which will shorten the claims processing time;
• providing a warranty management system which will enable organizations to save costs;
• providing a warranty management system which will give accurate warranty reserve estimates;
• providing a warranty management system which will enable quick and accurate identification of suppliers responsibility for the fault and accordingly chargeback the supplier;
• providing a warranty management system which will give feedback to the R&D and engineering teams of the organizations to make appropriate changes to design processes and enhance quality of the products;
• providing a warranty management system which will enable organizations to either refurbish or recycle the faulty products
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returned from the consumers, this helps in combating product and technology obsolescence;
• providing a warranty management system to give early warning alerts for product defects thus preventing faulty products from being shipped; and
• providing an warranty management system which will enable consumers to submit their claims online.
While considerable emphasis has been placed herein on the particular features of this invention, it will be appreciated that various modifications can be made, and that many changes can be made in the preferred embodiments without departing from the principles of the invention. These and other modifications in the nature of the invention or the preferred embodiments will be apparent to those skilled in the art from the disclosure herein, whereby it is to be distinctly understood that the foregoing descriptive matter is to be interpreted merely as illustrative of the invention and not as a limitation.