April/May 2003

Readers worried that they might be lagging behind in mobilising field service workers should be comforted to learn that mobile phone network service provider T-Mobile is itself just six months into a programme to utilise GRPS services to improve the efficiency of its own field technicians.

T-Mobile has a field service staff of 189, responsible for on-site maintenance of the company cell network, masts and cabling. Each field technician is responsible for the cells within his zone, although if a fault develops, the nearest engineer will deal with it to maintain the network. Non-priority work is done at night, when the network is quieter.

Previously, about the only centralised activity was job allocation, and even here, the centralised activity was fairly basic. The network was receiving about 11,000 fault-report calls each month, and in each case allocating them to engineers in the relevant zone. Once that was done, there was very little control over the rest of the process. "One problem was that we simply didn't know how efficient our field service management was, and what effect that was having in maintaining customer service levels," says project manager Steven Boyne.

The field service operation was paper-based, and technicians were spending a lot of time on administration and on fault-repairing and not enough on preventative maintenance, he admits.

Another factor driving change was that T-Mobile was promoting GPRS and data services to customers, but not using it themselves. "We needed first-hand experience of network performance in a business environment to understand fully how the network operated and what improvements might be necessary to deliver higher service levels to customers."

In less than a year, the situation has been transformed.

Having decided to centralise the job planning function, T-Mobile needed a mobile workforce management solution, and teamed up with Aspective, which sells ViryaNet's ServiceHub system.

Managing the cultural change has been the biggest challenge, says Boyne. T-Mobile field technicians are used to working independently. Under the old system they would be given, say, twenty jobs, and from then on they were responsible for pretty much everything including non-engineering tasks such as arranging access to premises, parts, and the attendance of a second person to accompany them on jobs where climbing masts was involved.

Relieving technicians of these administrative jobs was identified as a key factor in improving efficiency. "Productivity was hampered because of the amount of administration they had to do, including scheduling their own work and planning their own travel routes. But they had always done it that way, and we had to persuade them that giving up these tasks would not diminish the job."

ServiceHub takes job requests and ensures they are allocated to the most appropriate engineer on the basis of priority, location and skills. The job information is delivered via GPRS-enabled Panasonic handheld terminals to the engineers. Work order is updated in real time and data is synchronised with central service as each job is completed. T-Mobile reckons it will increase the time engineers spend in the field by a third.

"We did underestimate the cultural change that would be required," Steve Boyne admits, "even though we asked for input from field technicians and supervisors. We are still looking at work processes and we have deliberately not equipped vehicles or laptops with GPS because we don't want engineers to feel we are checking up on them. We don't want to control everything." However, he says the company is now arranging for climbers to be on site when needed and for access to be available.

Aspective has incorporated various reporting functions, including the capability to identify problem areas within the maintenance process. It also highlights where cost and time management procedures need to be implemented. The technicians are making use of integrated keyboards with the Panasonic handhelds for inputting extra text. "We need as much data as we can get at the moment."

Boyne is very pleased with the early results, and says field technicians are becoming more focused on diagnostics and maintenance. The number of Preventive Maintenance Orders issued by Service Hub is increasing, he reports. "Preventive maintenance used to be negligible, so the more PMOs are issued, the more I like it because it means fewer faults on the network."

Engineers are now transmitting data back to the hub in real time, and Aspective has incorporated trend analysis that will help T-Mobile identify problem areas, either with the maintenance process or with particular equipment. "I believe we need six months of high-quality data before we can start making decisions based on it," says Boyne, "but we're already identifying trends on which we will be able to take action to increase our productivity even further."

Boyne is also naturally happy to report that the GRPS network has performed much as expected. "The signal can be patchy in some areas but the level is generally OK. Most of our teething problems have been to do with transmission protocols and authenticating handhelds when they log on."