Oct/Nov 2006

A company servicing the dispensing equipment in pubs and bars has streamlined its activities with a mobile workforce solution from Aspective

In the complex world of the licensed trade, it can be tricky these days to work out which companies own the pubs, which of them supply the beer and which actually brew it.

But one quirk of the market that you may not have even have guessed at is that the beer, lager and cider dispensing equipment may be owned by different organisation from any of these others, and leased to the users.

The reason is partly historical. When the Government compelled the brewers to sell off a substantial percentage of their tied public houses during the 1990s, many retained ownership of the dispensing equipment.

 

It's an intensive task; but one of the major players, Innserve, has now lightened the load by implementing a hosted mobile workforce management system from Aspective.

Innserve is a relatively recent creation, having been set up in 2004, when Scottish Courage and Carlsberg, two of the country's biggest brewers, decided a separate technical services company was needed to handle this function. Together set up Innserve, which manages the servicing and installation of dispensing assets at 100,000 pubs, bars, hotels, restaurants and stadiums.

The combined service business handles up to 400,000 maintenance calls and 70,000 installations per year. It has a mobile field force of over 300 technicians of its own, and can call on another 470 technicians from external service providers. Among them they may be required to handle up to 30,000 maintenance calls in hot weather.

The operation also had to be able to cope with 200 parts suppliers and 3,500 part types. Six hundred parts requests are put in by technicians every week.

Adding to the complexity is the fact that the two brewers still operate their own call centres. These handle between 300 and 650 requests per day from landlords and tenants; and understandably, the brewers wanted to retain that close relationship.

The task of keeping up to date the database storing details about premises was challenging enough on its own, since the information had to reflect pub closures, new bar openings and changes of landlord or manager. Any service management solution, therefore, had to be integrated with those call centres.

There was some compatibility between the brewers' existing IT systems; both used SAP ERP systems, for example. However, both companies recognised that while SAP systems could be mobilised, for Innserve to deliver results, it required a focus on mobility and asset tracking that wasn't built into SAP.

Aspective's Service Hub does deliver the required levels of control. That's the conclusion of Stuart McHenery, systems development manager for Innserve. He says the system handles everything from calls and charge allocation to mobile workforce management and supply chain management.

Calls are allocated to the most appropriate technician on the basis of availability, location, expertise and the equipment needed to complete the job. The system incorporates despatch, job scheduling, mobile device management and management. The data it produces can be used by finance and payroll departments.

All technicians are now equipped with a PDA device, with which they are able to perform a wide range of tasks such as viewing schedules, reporting job status, ordering parts, updating customer records and accessing detailed site information such as location and activity history.

McHenery admits the first four months of operation were tough. "We had not defined all the process, and that led to some issues. We were working with inaccurate volume predictions, and there were communications issues. Having said that, we were integrating systems from two separate companies and on a large scale, so teething problems were to be expected."

One year on, McHenery believes that while starting from scratch with Aspective's ServiceHub was the hardest route to take, it will have lasting benefits. "We have a stable system platform with more flexibility than our previous platforms, and the quality of reporting available is far in excess of anything we had previously."

McHenery admits that managing the interests of all the parties was difficult at times, but believes the cultural change away from its historical routes will help Innserve grow in the future. "We will add more services for our existing customers, and our independence will also allow us to add new clients."