Motorola Home & Networks Mobility

Motorola database team creates custom queries in warranty database without waiting for IT to do it.

Motorola's Home & Networks Mobility business uses DbVisualizer to create custom queries in the warranty database. The warranty group can do it by themselves without involvement from IT, which means flexibility and quicker turnaround. It also means that they don't need to trade off the data they really need for their work with resource constraints outside of the warranty group.

Motorola sells millions of set top boxes, cable modems and similar products and all of them are entered into a database for keeping track of warranties. At the end of 2009, no less than 3 million serial numbers with corresponding warranty expiration dates were entered in one single week.

"Keeping track of all equipment that is on warranty and when it expires is not only necessary to control cost. It is also key to customer satisfaction. We are very good at providing our support organization with quick and accurate information on what devices are still on warranty, thanks in part to our ability to do custom queries with DbVisualizer," said Samuel Wilcox, Warranty Tracking Supervisor at Motorola's Home & Networks Mobility division.

Samuel Wilcox' group is located in Fort Worth, Texas. Three persons, all DbVisualizer users, maintain the warranties database that serves Home & Networks Division and covers the whole world. The database is built with MySQL. The central installation is in Fort Worth, and MySQL is also used in the field to collect serial numbers. There is also a Data Warehouse created in Oracle.

DbVisualizer is used in the daily administrative work with the databases. Samuel Wilcox enjoys several features of the tool, like how it displays schema and tables and how he can build custom queries. The main attraction is that his group is actually able to do this work themselves rather than relying on IT, which does not always operate at the same time scale.

Samuel's group is doing some serious database management, but the real task of the group is to manage the process where every product that ships from Home & Networks Mobility is entered into the database with serial number matched against every order and with the expiration date for the warranty recorded. Every two weeks a new list is sent to the people doing repairs on the products.

Motorola Home & Networks Mobility
Motorola (NYSE: MOT) has been at the forefront of communication inventions and innovations for more than 80 years. With the rapid convergence of fixed and mobile broadband Internet and the growing demand for next-generation mobile communication solutions, the mission is to lead the next wave of innovative products that meet the expanding needs of customers around the world. The trends toward media mobility, ubiquitous connectivity and wireless flexibility, coupled with mobile lifestyles and business, continue to expand. Today, Motorola's portfolio of technologies, solutions and services includes wireless handsets, wireless accessories, digital entertainment devices, wireless access systems, voice and data communications systems, and enterprise mobility products.

Home & Networks Mobility Consumers demand rich mobile communication and in-home entertainment capabilities, and system operators meet those needs by delivering new services, increasing network throughput and system integrity. The Home & Networks Mobility business designs, manufactures, sells, installs, and services digital and Internet Protocol (IP) video and broadcast network interactive set-tops, end-to-end video delivery systems, broadband access infrastructure platforms, and associated data and voice customer premise equipment to cable television and telecom service providers, and wireless access systems, including cellular infrastructure and wireless broadband systems, to wireless service providers.