Feb/March 2007

Homeserve Group, one the of the UK's biggest emergency services companies, says a mobile job management system from Pervasic 'has revolutionised' the way it runs its business.

The company lists a whole range of benefits. 'It has saved us 80 hours a week in administrative time alone,' according to Steve Herbert, operations director for Homeserve's warranties division. He says it also saves postage, as technicians no longer need to post their 'memory sticks' back and forth. And it saves on mobile phone bills, cameras and faxing.

The Group's retail and manufacturer warranty business provides repairs for many of the country's leading furniture companies - both on-site in retail stores and in customers' homes. It also provides warranty repair and maintenance on white goods and household equipment such as boilers. It has more than 1,000 vehicles on the road, and more than 300 people working in its warranties division.

Under its former work allocation system, job sheets were faxed to technicians' homes (about eight at a time), and they had to shuffle them into order manually. They had to take 'before and after' digital photographs of each repair, and send these back to base by post on memory modules. Someone then had to match them to the complete job sheets, which were faxed back.

The Pervasic MobileOne platform rolls together all these activities and automates them. Technicians carry a mobile device whose features include integrated GPS satellite navigation and a high-resolution camera to enforce Homeserve's workflow processes. If technicians need to source a particular spare part, built-in satellite navigation even directs them to the nearest supplier in their area.

Steve Herbert's summing-up of the Pervasic initiative: 'They made our operational field problems go away.'