Sept/Oct 2004

Mobile computing solutions are these days an integral feature of service management, and there was plenty of evidence of it at this year's Service Management Europe show

Physical parts delivery to unattended locations came very much to the fore at the Service Management show this autumn, which had a strong presence from several leading contenders. Bearbox, ByBox, ParcelXchange and Homeport, mostly companies that have migrated from the home delivery market - were all on hand with system using mobile technologies for their management functions.

BearBox showed off its latest concept, the BearLock - an electronic keypad giving coded access to any unattended premises. Behind the keypad itself is some smart GPRS phone technology, allowing authorisation codes to be transmitted to the lock remotely, and activated or cancelled at will. Users can also email or text delivery staff with one-off access codes. Meanwhile, Bearbox is continuing to roll out its BearBank box banks, for which Philips Medical (with 180) and Lynx are so far the biggest users.

 

Following its takeover of the former Hays delivery box network, ByBox now claims to have 14,000 individual boxes available at 600 locations. A third of these are "intelligent" boxes using ByBox technology. ByBox is working with various partners including Unipart Technology Logistics, and the two companies have just announced a contract to handle parts deliveries to over 1,000 BskyB engineers (see News, page 8). ByBox is also installing boxes for other major clients including UPS in Germany.

Another exhibitor, Idesta Solutions, is also working with BskyB, for which it has supplied a fully-managed mobile work force solution. The system is said to have been rolled out to 1,300 installation engineers over just ten weeks, and Idesta is now handling a reported 30,000 installation and service requests every week.

Another box-bank operator on hand was ParcelXchange, which has just been through a successful stock market flotation, and runs a rival network with a claimed 700 locations. This system was designed from the outset for field service applications, and already has customers such as Agfa, Exel and Siemens. It claims to be the only box-bank operator to run a real-time (as opposed to batched) software and communication system.

Chief executive Tim Houston also claims it offers more reliable comms than rivals through using two separate mobile phone suppliers (O2 and Vodafone) to handle data transmissions from each unit. The system switches automatically from one to the other in the event of transmission delay.

There were numerous products on display for managing mobile work forces, including a new lower-cost version of the ServiceNet solution from Telepartner Systems. Director Graham Erskine pointed out that while the company had lately signed up a series of new users to its existing system (the latest being filtration specialist Domnick Hunter), he felt there would be even wider interest in a slimmed-down version that would appeal even in operations where there were a limited number of users.

Another supplier with a revamped suite of software was convergence software house CommSoft, which emerged from the field of telecomms. Among its recent products is Sightmaster, a form of contact centre system which allows interaction with users via multiple channels, and can also be run remotely on laptop PCs. The company's range also includes Cellmaster, a recently revamped product allowing businesses to differentiate between work-related and private mobile phone calls, and recharge staff accordingly.

Several relative newcomers to the UK's field service business were on hand, including IEA and FieldCentrix. IEA originated in the water management market, but has more recently expanded into the mobile field service market, winning contracts with users such as Serco and Tidon, the leading facilities management company. FieldCentrix, a US-based pioneer in field service automation, has now brought its portfolio over to Britain (see Software & Services, page 40). Its solutions range over a variety of markets including manufacturing, industrial equipment, automation controls, medical and the high-tech world.

Other exhibitors were also looking for new fields to conquer. Typical was 360 Technologies, which made its name in dynamic scheduling for the health service, and says its application for South Yorkshire Ambulance Service allows attendance within 8 minutes at Category A (very serious) accidents. The company says similar technology is ideally suited to service and plant management applications, and is hoping to find users in these markets.

Indus International, a service delivery specialist, has added some new capabilities to its front-line solutions suite, including customer management, billing and service management. Indus offers a range of field service and asset management solutions.

MDSI, an established specialist in enterprise mobile work force management, showed a prototype mobile application developed in Java by its team in Canada, and running on a handheld terminal. The company accepted that some mobile users might find the screen too small for their requirements (notably those in utility markets), but felt there was enough demand from users who did not need large displays.

Another new development was shown by Integral Mobile Data, which launched a new version of its mForms application for handheld terminals. This now allows users to create new databases direct from their handheld terminals, as well as offering fuller integration with host systems via Web Services technology (more in Software & Services, page 40).

Interactive displays usually make successful crowd-pullers at events such as this, and field service software supplied Tesseract claimed to be the only exhibitor running a live demonstration of the wireless connectivity it offers through Wi-Fi wireless networking. Visitors were invited to try connecting to its network via their own PDAs or laptop computers.