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Don’t Wait Until ‘After the Sale’ to Plan Your
Aftersales Strategy
Fri, 05/22/2015 - Thomas Jull (Resources)
There’s no question. You need to have a product support strategy in place before your device
hits the market
The kinds of aftersales services that your customers may expect include:
 Installation- for products that require set up, calibration or connection to other apparatus.
 Maintenance- sometimes scheduled, undertaken to ensure ongoing functionality and performance.
 Repairs-fixing device faults or damage.
 Upgrading- replacing older parts of a system or a whole system with newer versions.
 Other Technical and Customer Support services provided to help users solve problems and assist with
customer decision making in the areas of cost and usage.
In this article we provide you with several action points for planning your aftersales strategy, in summary these
are:
 Define the maintenance and installation requirements when setting design specifications during the
product development stage of your development lifecycle.
 Design with maintainability and upgrading in mind.
 Plan and forecast resource requirements throughout the product development lifecycle to ensure the
availability of resources later on.
 Launch with a comprehensive aftersales strategy in place.
Before reading the rest of the article, take a minute to familiarize yourself with our medical device product
development process. This will help you to understand the stages involved in getting a product to market that
we discuss later on.

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Some basics on forming a product aftersales strategy
Subject to the type of device and application, aftersales servicing planning should start as
early as possible in the development lifecycle.
In actual fact, this process begins at the specification phase of the product development stage, whereby the
design of product features and the system architecture must permit device support in the field.
Product considerations at this early stage include:
 Designing-in components with the appropriate product lifespan.
 Including features such as error codes or error reporting and other diagnostic capability
 Easy access for a trained technician/engineer for replaceable parts.
 Modular design for straightforward swap-out/swap-in of parts/sub-assemblies.
When planning the marketing and sales strategy, careful attention before product launch must focus on:
 Ensuring spare parts availability
 Gaining an understanding of the location and distribution of customers and consumers
 Confirming logistics, import and export strategies
 Setting up communications such as a telephone support line, dedicated email and/or social media
channels.
 Implementing device tracking systems/processes used for record keeping, reporting, and action.
Moving from product development activities into the utilization and support stages requires careful, strategic
planning. It is not unheard of for a product to be launched without a comprehensive support and aftersales

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service in place, leading to huge amount of risk, both from a user/patient safety and market acceptance
perspective.
So I need to have an aftersales strategy in place as early in the product
life cycle as possible, right?
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, it is pretty difficult to have all the fine details mapped out for aftersales
support right at the beginning of the product development stage.
It may only be possible to consider the bare bones of the overall strategy early on e.g. field servicing versus
return-to-base but it is imperative that you make a start and develop the strategy as you move forward.
Some considerations for aftersales preparation mapped out on the product life cycle management stages from ISO
15288
The following steps can be taken at appropriate times throughout the design and development of the product to
ensure that customers are fully supported post-launch:

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1. Ensuring spare parts availability for later stages
When ordering parts for the first batch of units to be manufactured (or
during pilot production), order extra spares to allow for units that may
get damaged or malfunction when in the hands of the user.
Remember that some spare parts may have long lead times. It’s not uncommon for off-
the shelf components, such as motors, pumps and power supplies, to have 12 to 16 week
lead times. Custom fabricated parts may take even longer.
A customer needing to wait months for a spare part can be disastrous, especially in cases where medical
devices are used for high-throughput In Vitro or In Vivo Diagnostic testing, and patients or samples are
scheduled and queuing up.
Including long lead time spares in the initial manufacturing order will reduce the risks and may lead to cost
savings in the long run.
2. Understanding the location and distribution of customers
It’s not uncommon for the biggest market or favored product launch
site to be a long way from company headquarters.
US-based companies frequently launch products in Europe initially to avoid the red
tape back home. Likewise, European companies often launch domestically but
quickly aim to access the US market. For companies with product aimed at the
developing world, customers will be even further away and often in remote places.
Supporting users remotely for non-hands-on tasks may be ok for small volumes but this will come down to the
type of product and customer. Jumping on a plane to talk to customers face-to-face or to physically inspect a
device for faults can sometimes be the only way to sort out problems. If, however this is on the other side of the
world from HQ, then expenses and time spent can soon build up.
It’s important that you do your homework to understand what your customers’ expectations will be. Culture and
perspective towards the use of a device will be different depending on region, and it’s worth knowing this
before launch to form an aftersales strategy which compliments this.
Ask the question, ‘will we be able to provide effective onsite and remote customer support ourselves?’

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3. Confirming logistics, import and export strategies
Now that you have your spare parts and an understanding on
customer locations how are you going to get product to them?
Earlier stages during device development should have included transportation
considerations, including design of the device (and additional shipping
components removed during installation) to cope with transportation, type of
shipping (air, road, sea, etc.), and good packaging design.
Potential customers are going to want to know how much they are going to pay and how long they are going to
have to wait for delivery and so obtaining quotes from couriers/brokers before launch is a good exercise. This
will allow you to understand some of the additional charges that you may decide to pass onto the customer or
absorb yourself.
In addition to transportation costs, crossing international boarders may incur import taxes, and having the right
documentation in place for customs is paramount to avoid further delays. Having product stuck in customs for
weeks makes for unhappy customers, and bailing goods out will come at your expense.
As well as moving stock around you need somewhere to store it, such as warehousing. This is not just for
complete devices before distribution to customer sites but also for spare parts and repaired stock. Ideally, if this
can be close to customer sites (at least within the same country or continent), then the complexities of the above
can be reduced; eventually you may even consider manufacturing domestically.
4. Setting up good communications
Naturally, good communication is a part of everything we have discussed
above, and thus a good aftersales strategy cannot function without it.
Communication considerations for support of devices in the field should include language,
time zones and channels.
If your customers are in a time zone which means they are just walking into the lab after
having their morning coffee while you’re just leaving the office at the end of the work day, then who are they
going to phone? Even if they did catch you before you walked out the office door, would you be able to talk to
them if they were speaking a foreign language?
Having local support in the same time zone and language is essential to keeping the customer happy and for
dealing with aftersales requests such as technical support and product servicing. Some clients may require 24
hour access to such features, and demand fast turnaround times.
Emailing of reports, including data downloaded from devices and customer observations is a good way of
sharing information amongst all relevant stakeholders. This leads nicely into the last point for consideration.

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5. Implementing device tracking systems/processes
You should implement a tracking system used for collecting data on
products, tracing units, recording customer feedback/complaints
and decision making for actions.
As with all of the above, this is not something that should be planned on an ad hoc
basis during launch (or worse, when the first units come back to you for repair).
Such systems are a part of Quality Management Systems (QMS), something all
competent OEM’s should have in place.
Depending on the type of product and organization, there will be different requirements for the system.
OEM support for Aftersales Servicing
If you have outsourced your project to an OEM for product development and/or
manufacture, it can make sense to use the same company for aftersales services if this is
something they offer.
After all, the OEM should hold product knowledge, may be in possession of the Technical File and any Device
History Records (DHR), and will have systems in place for Corrective Action Preventative Action (CAPA).
Some of ITL’s customers who have used the ITL Group for such services have also benefited from its aftersales
services too. Read a case study here.
If an OEM does not offer aftersales services and you are getting ready to launch your product then find a
company that does.
Even if ITL didn’t design or manufacture your device, we can still support it, and with our background in
design and manufacturing, it’s easier for us to appreciate the stages you’ve taken to get to product launch.