March/April 2005

Romec needed an up-to-date and flexible system for managing 1,000 field staff. With Geac software and Panasonic hardware, it has found a solution

Although there are many mobile applications where a handheld terminal is the ideal hardware solution, others simply demand the greater flexibility of a fully-fledged laptop or notebook computer. There's no denying that these make many tasks easier - not least entering significant amounts of free-form data.

Which is one factor that gives special interest to a mobile workforce solution that has been put in place by Romec, a supporting business unit of the Royal Mail Group. The organisation has lately gone live with a new system built round Geac's System21 Service Management application, using Panasonic Toughbook ruggedised laptops.

According to Stuart Keating, IT manager for Romec: "The Toughbooks are expensive compared with standard laptops, but they are extremely rugged, and have saved us a lot on money in repairs."

Romec was established in 1989 as Royal Mail Engineering and Construction, and its primary role was originally to install and maintain the mechanical and electrical engineering and electronic security requirements for the entire Post Office estate.

Then in 2000 Romec was launched as a facilities management company, offering external customers a tailored one-stop-shop solution. Royal Mail still owns 51 per cent of the business. It is now recognised as one of the UK's leading facilities management companies, with a turnover in excess of £180 million. It offers customers single- or multi-service solutions ranging from network services, document management and maintenance to reception, mailroom management and cleaning.

Romec had been using Geac's System21 since 1996 in its manufacturing division, which produces post boxes, trolleys and cages. It first implemented a mobile data solution for its service engineers in 1999. However, although each IT system worked well on its own, there was little integration, which made it difficult to manage and generate consolidated customer reports.

In particular, the mobile data solution was not delivering the stable or reliable platform anticipated. Romec engineers were using portable devices to receive and transmit corrective service call details, communicating with the main service management system via a mobile phone using a GSM network.

However, the devices were not designed to receive or hold large amounts of data. The engineers complained they were difficult to read, and the application had too many screens to navigate. There was no guaranteed delivery mechanism for any data sent, and units tended to run out of memory. Integration into the back-end systems became difficult to support and maintain.

None of this could be blamed on the equipment itself, but the fact was that the difficulties in this application began to have an impact on the mobile workforce - to the extent that over 50 per cent were forced to revert to cumbersome manual paperwork processes.

"The biggest problem was that we couldn't guarantee data delivery," explains Stuart Keating, IT manager for Romec. "We used to log customer calls, then spend time chasing engineers for updates on their progress. Further time and expense were incurred when the engineer contacted the service centre to inform us that the call had been completed."

As more problems occurred with the units and more engineers reverted to paperwork, there were increasing delays in the processing of completed calls. Romec's administration centres were struggling to cope with the additional workload. "All of this had an adverse impact on Romec's cash flow and ability to produce performance reports for customers and Romec managers."

The solution has been to deploy Geac's System21 Service Management system. Geac has used IBM's MQSeries software to guarantee delivery of messages to and from engineers. Whenever an engineer logs a call on to the network remotely, the resident intelligence in the Geac software enables it to confirm the identity of the engineer, ensuring the correct information is given to the right person.

If for any reason the connection is broken during a transmission and the data transmission is not completed, MQSeries recognises that there has been a partial transmission, and on the next transmission, resends the message.

All Romec's 1,000 service engineers have been issued with a Pansonic Toughbook laptop and a mobile phone. Engineers need notebooks, says Keating, because of the amount of data they have to display, including health and safety procedures. They can also use them to test and reset control panels remotely, bypassing the alarm-receiving centre.

Geac's Service Connect mobile solution sends engineers full customer and service calls details for corrective calls and a completion task list for preventive calls. Details transmitted include data received, ETA on site, return visits required, assistance required, parts used, miscellaneous costs incurred, messaging system, closed call details, labour hours and timesheet details.

Engineers mostly enter data via the touch-screen display from drop-down pick lists. The units accepts digital signature capture from customers to verify acceptance of work carried out. With building security equipment it also offers the facility to enter a sketch of the scene and police details.

Customers can view the progress of their call over the Internet, and upon completion can view the bill they will receive, as well as being able to log their own service. They can access the same live data used by the Romec call-centre operators, reducing the number of calls to the service centre.

Romec is also using Geac applications to inform engineers of "priority one" or "immediate-response" service. SMS messages are sent to the engineer's mobile phone indicating the priority and the site name. Using the portable unit, the engineer logs on to download the full service call details. "Category 1 calls require a service response in four hours," explains Keating. "We can use the system to clarify either why an engineer has not picked up a call, or why he's not yet arrived on site."

The use of always-on GPRS means engineers are now permanently online, and the software now automatically retrieves new service call details every 15 minutes, while still allowing ad-hoc retrieval of priority calls. Romec support staff are also using GPRS to access units remotely in order to diagnose and fix problems.

To manage software updates to over 1,000 mobile units, Romec is using the Tivoli distribution application. It uses "byte change" technology to issue only the bytes changed within the application. This reduces transmission size, time to transmit and time to apply.

Although the remote solution and Internet system have not been in place long, there are signs of significant cost savings, says Keating. "Although we have made huge progress internally, our customers are only now starting to see and acknowledge the real benefits to their businesses. The wide range of Geac modules installed will enable us to fine-tune our efforts to provide the best possible service to our customers and help Romec become the leading force in the FM industry."

Romec is now deploying a mobile data solution for other mobile workers, including building maintenance managers. "Contract cleaning does not need the same level of data, so managers can record everything on PDA-style devices."