Telepartner Systems says it has completed the roll out of a new mobile service management system for Falck Securitas, part of Group 4 Securicor in Denmark.
Some 250 field service engineers, installing and servicing alarm systems for 80,000 customers countrywide, will now receive daily work orders on their PDAs in real time. The new system replaces fax and phone communications delivering substantial efficiency gains and cost savings.
Any routine maintenance orders or real time alarm system failures are handled by a system called ‘Safecon’. Formerly despatchers in the Falck Securitas service centre would fax work orders for routine work and call outs generated by the system direct to an engineer’s home. Now a single click moves the order directly over to the Telepartner system for allocation and immediate despatch to field engineers via the TDC GSM mobile network.
Despatchers use Telepartner’s Workflow Manager, a browser based application viewable on the same screen, to handle all work orders from allocation through to despatch and closure. The system enables real time communications with engineers in the field and automatically notifies the Safecon system when a work order is complete to enable an invoice to be raised, the makers say.
In the field, work orders are viewed in Telepartner’s client application on the PDAs. This application has over 120 fields to provide detailed work order information. Closure is completed at the press of a button. Engineers neither have to wait at home to receive the day’s work by fax nor do they have to write down details for emergency work communicated by phone, it is claimed.
What they say
“With the new system we no longer require paper forms, and therefore save the annual cost of over 500,000 pieces of paper, the time spent standing by fax machines, fax toner, plus the cost of the calls. We have also been able to move some of our staff over to call centre duties,” said Thomas Steinmetz the Project Manager in charge of the project for Falck Securitas. “The new system has also been very well received by our engineers who find the Telepartner field application on their PDAs easy to use and very efficient. The next phase of development will introduce ‘parts used’ which will further enhance the system, and we are also looking towards other implementations within Scandinavia,” continued Steinmetz.
