Today’s mobile technology landscape is laying the groundwork for utility companies to empower field workers in ways never thought possible.
The proliferation of smartphones and tablets has seen rapid innovation from original equipment manufacturers seeking to secure market share, leading to the availability of high-specification devices at very low cost. Now that a large proportion of us are well accustomed to using mobile technology – 70 per cent of UK adults own a smartphone, according to Deloitte – conditions are ideal for a rise in adoption in the utilities sector.
Water-resistant and increasingly ruggedised consumer mobile devices practically come as standard, almost removing the need to deploy expensive industry-specific devices.
Set at a low price point, enterprise-ready smartphones and tablets have led to a paradigm shift in the business case for deployment, to any employee that spends more than 20 per cent of their working week out of the office – not just white collar staff with a need for email and intranet access.
Not only have devices transformed the business case, but the cost of supporting systems has also reduced and integration has become simpler as back-end software has matured. The latest back-office systems, be they ERP, CRM or service management, offer web services and standard customer interfaces that have made integration and data transfer between disparate systems easy and scalable.
More and more utility businesses are taking advantage of these new mobilisation opportunities and achieving a competitive edge. Holistic field worker visibility, increased productivity, huge efficiency savings and better customer experience are some of the benefits being enjoyed by tech-savvy companies.
Amey’s Severn Trent Water division migrated to Microsoft Dynamics CRM and at the same time replaced its rugged mobile devices with Windows Lumia smartphones, creating a unified and consistent system between both back-office staff and field workers. UKDN íWaterflow rolled out an effective scheme that incentivises staff to look after their smartphone with the offer to own it after the 18-month write-down period. Severn Trent Services has transformed communications through its adoption of smartphones for field technicians, fully integrated in real time with its new universal back-office system, empowering control centre staff to focus on customer service.
Steve Reynolds, managing director, TBS Enterprise Mobility