Chemicals Company Improves Customer Service With Retriever

ByDeborah Austin Air Products and Chemicals Inc., a $5 billion integrated gases and chemicals company based in Lehigh Valley, Pa., has started using a new high-capacity business information warehouse solution called Retriever -- from Macro 4 -- to improve customer service and save money. Air Products uses Retriever to speed turnaround of 2,000 monthly customer requests for copy invoices and signed shipping documents -- and to hold its 10-year statutory document archive online. About 6,500 documents daily are transferred to a server running Retriever; it gives access within seconds, and requested documents may be printed or faxed immediately. Prior to the new solution, shipping documents were stored as paper copies at Air Products' 170 regional offices. Customers' copy requests took several days to fill. Headquartered in the UK, Macro 4 is a developer of systems software solutions.