Interview with Elaine Treacy, Global Product Director AMCS

AMCS Platform 8.2 release continues to build on digitisation and automation as key drivers for growth and operational efficiency

In February 2020, AMCS Group launched AMCS Platform 8.2, the first of three major releases this year. “This release amongst other things revolves around smart user experience, enhanced recycling capabilities and improved customer management”, as Elaine Treacy, Global Product Director of AMCS, points out.

“With the AMCS Platform, we provide a comprehensive end-to-end solution that manages everything from customer onboarding, contract management, integrated transport and weighbridge operations right through to billing and reporting plus materials recycling including inventory, sales and exports. There is no other Platform that offers such a fully integrated portfolio of solutions to manage the waste and recycling lifecycle, a key enabler of the circular economy”, she says.

“Our product strategy is focused on driving revenue growth, margin expansion, operational efficiency and sustainability on behalf of our customers. AMCS lives up to those words with a product and development team of around 200 people, currently investing 20% of overall turnover in product development.”

What are the focus areas in development in 2020?

“Providing our customers with a smart web UI is one of our key drivers in 2020”, Treacy states. “We're 100% focused on continually improving users' experiences as we enhance our features and develop new modules on the AMCS Platform. Our goal is to enable automation and create a predictive, highly intuitive experience designed around best in class industry processes."

Advanced analytics and business intelligence are other important developments AMCS has planned for 2020. Treacy: “Because of the highly integrated nature of the Platform, the amount of data collected on a daily basis will be leveraged to provide contextual and actionable intelligence visualized via KPIs, dashboards and self-service reporting. Additionally, to enable ongoing innovation, AMCS will further develop its Web Services with the upcoming release of REST API.”

Why is an enterprise-grade SaaS solution important in AMCS’ development strategy?

“People are more mobile, they want to have access to critical information regardless of where they are. Providing a web-based UI on the AMCS Platform, our customers have the ability to access information at any time, anywhere on any device. In the past, enterprise management software was not designed with the user in mind”, Treacy says.

“As people are more familiar with consumer-based applications, they are demanding more modern interfaces that have simpler users flows, directed navigation, that makes day to day work efficient and quick. The intuitive, smart web interface of AMCS Platform provides for exactly that.”

To further assist customers in 8.2, AMCS have embedded a digital training capability that guides users step by step to complete key processes providing visual tips and ques. “The embedded training also provides online resources and walkthroughs to explain key processes. With this, our waste and recycling customers are able to speed up their user adoption, simplify onboarding and ensure optimum use of the application.”

What are the key feature highlights of the 8.2 release?

“In addition to the transformation of the UI, the other main features in the 8.2 release focus on driving recycling margins and operational efficiency.  We have enhanced functionality around grading and quality assessment of the inbound materials. Within the recycling industry yield is critical. Being able to record moisture content, material grades, contamination and ensure companies are not overpaying due to lower quality or contamination is key”, she continues.

“We have built-in a comprehensive quality evaluation system to grade inbound materials. With this release, we also improved demand planning into production sites like paper mills, energy from waste facilities or materials recovery facilities (MRFs). Loads can be planned and procured much more effectively through an automated process.”

How do users benefit from this newly designed Demand Planning module?

“The demand planning functionality serves to drive operational efficiency. Companies can benefit from a streamlined and automated approach in terms of planning the volume of the material required for a week, a month or even a year to meet operational requirements”, she explains.

“With demand planning, companies plan, buy and have visibility of the inbound material, the cost and margin of material bought, and arrival at locations in time to serve the demands of that site. Since operations like paper mills, energy from waste facilities (EFWs) or steel mills can’t afford any downtime, this advanced material planning assures the overall operational efficiency ensuring that plant uptime is guaranteed.”

Why is customer management one of the key areas in the 8.2 release?

“Customer management is one of the key modules, of which the Web UI has been redesigned and enhanced much more intuitive automated process flows. It is facilitating ‘time to value’ for customers to allow them to onboard their end-customers much more quickly."

Customers also have a single view of every customer. "From services contracted, through to the status of the activities, the location of a vehicle, and the invoicing of the service", Treacy lists. "If there is a problem like a locked gate or contamination, customer service representatives have access to pictures and notes in real-time via a driver connected in-cab mobile solution.”

How do users benefit from this newly designed customer management?

“One of our objectives is to enable the first call resolution on customer queries. It is all about being informed and having access to real-time information. With a consolidated, single customer view the customer service employees are armed with required information without having to make five or six calls to find out what the problem is. This is very important to our customers who are constantly striving to deliver superior service.”

Elaine Treacy rounds up the interview by concluding she is convinced with the 8.2 release of Platform, AMCS again has launched an impressive set of new and improved features. “With that, we enable our customers to drive revenue growth, margin expansion, operational efficiency and sustainability.”