Jan/Feb 2006

JLA, a leading distributor of commercial laundry equipment, says it has achieved "valuable improvements" in the productivity of its field engineers since starting to replace a manual scheduling system with the ServicePLATFORM system from Sidewinder.

The company also singles out the value-for-money aspect of the software. According to IT director Steve Burrows: "Sidewinder's solution is priced realistically for a mid-market company like us with 80 field engineers. We found that many other solutions could only be cost-effective for companies with over 200 engineers."

The Sidewinder system will integrate into CS Group's Service Director field service management and mobile data solution, which is already in use at JLA. Sidewinder is working alongside CS Group to deliver the full end-to-end solution.

The selection of the Sidewinder system followed a pilot scheme in the north of England and in Scotland, where early results showed a productivity improvement of more than 5 per cent, and also revealed that more service jobs were being completed.

 

The company has also been able to switch a member of its head office staff away from scheduling and on to other tasks.

A particular benefit of the system, JLA says, is that it can eliminate area boundaries between engineers. This is likely to produce significant improvements in the company's ability to cope with regional demand peaks and engineer non-availability, it says.

"We aim to fix all problems within the working day," says Burrows, "and our eight-hour 'Service on Time' standard means efficient scheduling is important. I've been delighted with the pilot scheme results."

A full nationwide roll-out of the system is planned for this year.