The Business Requirement: To reduce costs of field operations while increasing field productivity and customer satisfaction. Last year the Service Organization generated revenues of $50mm, with costs of $45mm, however positive cash flow profitability is difficult to operationally manage on a month-by-month basis due to an inability to effectively control consistent field productivity, and stringent customer service level agreements with performance penalty arrangements.

The Situation: The Company has 700 field service engineers (FSE) responsible for onsite maintenance and repair of their commercial customers. Supporting the field service engineers are 80 dispatch personnel in 20 locations. Each FSA has a text-pager to notify them of calls, and a mobile phone to call dispatch for the details of their call and arrange parts orders, and other supporting requirements. Each Dispatcher has a Desktop Computer, and licenses for the ERP, CRM and Sales Order Processing Systems.

Before implementing the Dexterra Mobile Enterprise Platform, FSE’s used a 90% paper-based system and 10% alphanumeric pager-system to retrieve and complete work orders. This system was time consuming, vulnerable to human errors, provided no audit or accountability and required supplementary resources such as extra personnel in the dispatch center. Additionally, FSE’s had no access to vital enterprise data while in the field, resulting in inaccurate diagnosis of problems, inaccurate orders, low volume of accounts serviced per day, too much time spent on paper work, large and inconsistent telecoms bills and a declining rate of customer satisfaction.

With the implementation of the Dexterra Mobile Enterprise Platform, the Company was able to reduce the costs of field operations by 81%, eliminated the dispatch department, reduced the number of supporting office locations, and increased the productivity of their FSE’s by 58% through Dexterra’s governance of business processes and community communications. Additionally, Dexterra’s replacement of the incumbent system allowed the Company to reduce their billing cycle from 17-days to 5.5-days (completed work order to invoice mailed), and increased customers served per day by 18%.

The following detail of accounts shows how a field service engineer (Joe) uses the Dexterra Mobile Enterprise Platform to complete a typical service call.

Monday 7:15am: Access to Real-Time Data Instantly
While Joe is taking his last sip of coffee at home preparing for his day in the field, he turns on his Pocket PC device. The device instantly connects, via the Dexterra Mobile Enterprise Platform’s Get Latest feature, with the multiple CRM/ERP back-end systems at the main office and downloads, real-time, his work orders and related information. Joe opens his Queue to see his scheduled appointments for the day, which can be prioritized by severity of problem or terms of the customer’s service level agreements.

8:05am: Increases Productivity and Efficiency
Joe is out the door and off to see his first customer. Since Joe has all work-order related information, he is able to review the customer contact information, current service case, case history, customer/product warranty status and the customer’s service level agreement related to the appointment. Although Joe is not connected wirelessly, he still has access to all of the CRM (Siebel) & ERP (SAP) application data while he is disconnected. This enables Joe to be much more efficient and increases his productivity. He thinks how great it is that he no longer needs to call the dispatch center to get this information. He calls his first customer to confirm he is on his way to their location.

8:45am: Access to “Up-to-Date” Parts Inventory
Joe arrives at the customer’s office to fix the printer. He diagnoses the problem and determines that he needs to replace a part. He turns to his Pocket PC device and conducts a Part Search using the Dexterra Mobile Enterprise Platform. Although Joe is not connected, the application searches the part inventory system (SAP). He no longer needs to call the Part Center to check on inventory, now this information is at his fingertips. Instantly, Joe finds that the part is not in his truck but is available at the warehouse, and in-stock.

9:20am: Real-Time Updates to Back-end Enterprise Systems
He allocates the part and syncs the part allocation and order with the Dexterra Mobile Enterprise Platform. He then orders the part and requests that the part be shipped to the customer’s location, where by Joe is notified that the part will arrive at the customer’s location in 3-days. When Joe ends this service call the Dexterra application will connect to the back-office ERP system, order the part, remove it from inventory and instantly process the shipment to the customer.

9:25am: Increases Accountability & Workflow Efficiency
Joe informs the customer that he has ordered the part, it will be shipped to their attention in 3-days and he will return at that time. He tells the customer that he will be back in 3-days to install the new part. Because Joe has followed pre-determined business processes his workflow to complete this service call is very efficient.

Joe enters his diagnosis, next steps for resolution and a Commitment in the Dexterra Mobile Enterprise Platform to return to the customer location in 3-days to replace the part.

9:40am: Decrease Field Operations & Resource Costs
On the way back to Joe’s truck, he syncs his Pocket PC device to ensure he has the most up-to-date information and that all of the documented steps he completed in his workflow of the service call have been uploaded to the enterprise systems. In doing so, Joe has alleviated himself of much time-consuming paper work, as well as no need for someone to translate his “chicken-scratch” into the main system. Using the Dexterra Mobile Enterprise Platform alleviates the need for additional administrative resources to manually enter Joe’s service call documentation. In no time, Joe is in his truck and off to his next appointment.

Thursday 8:45am: Shorten Service Calls and Billing Cycles
Joe syncs his device in the morning, his Queue reminds him of his Commitment to return to his previous customer today and replace the part that was ordered on Monday. Joe calls the customer to confirm that the part arrived as expected and notify them that he is on his way to their location. Joe opens the service call and knows exactly where he last left off in the business process. He replaces the part, documents his steps, reviews the completed work with the customer, obtains the customer’s signature directly on the device indicating that the customer is pleased with the work completed and ends the service call. Once he clicks End, the service call is closed and the information is instantly sent to the CRM/ERP systems back at the main office. The customer is immediately emailed their copy of the work order with their signature and the customer and/or manufacturer are all invoiced instantly ensuring prompt service reimbursement.

Dexterra's Mobile Enterprise Platform produce BIG results for any Mobile Enterprise Organization
In the above scenario, Dexterra’s Field Service Application (FSA) enabled the Company to integrate their existing ERP (SAP) and CRM (Siebel) systems with the field service engineer’s Pocket PC device, providing the field service engineer critical information about his customer and work order, instantly and accurately. Using Microsoft’s .NET Compact Framework and Web Services, Dexterra ensures enterprise data is available to the field operative while connected or disconnected, maintaining valuable information at their fingertips.

Results are impressive! The Dexterra Mobile Enterprise Application was installed and users were trained in less than 90-days. Within the first few weeks of usage, reported productivity increased by more than 50% due to appropriate job routing of work orders, accuracy and timeliness of critical information between the office and the field, and the ability to complete jobs in less time by having the resources to instantly check inventory and place/fulfill orders. Productivity gains include reduced workload at the service center. The Company estimates reduced field operating costs by more than 35% due to fewer telephone calls by as much as 60%. Other significant cost savings came from infrastructure reductions due to the use of lower cost devices that require less IT administration.