The browser-enabled system will play a key role in supporting new initiatives within the organisation that experienced massive growth during 2006. This rapid expansion is expected to continue through 2007, with new offices being opened at several locations.

The primary benefits anticipated from moving to Tesseract’s Service Centre 4.2 include; a more efficient invoicing system, better communications for customers and service engineers and improved meter reading to correctly audit customer usage.

‘We will now be able to integrate all of our invoicing operations with Tesseract, something which hasn’t been done previously,’ says IT director John Hitchins.

‘That means applying all of our customer contract details, including the latest meter readings for equipment usage, to the process. Previous readings are held within Tesseract, so it takes the current readings and calculates the new levels of usage. Tesseract also factors in any special billing requirements, so the system is extremely flexible.’

Service Centre 4.2 embraces a suite of easy-to-use integrated modules (Customer Assets, Call Control, Parts Centre, Repair Centre, Quote Centre and Prospect Centre) and can accommodate every type of mobile communications technology for remote engineer access – including laptops, Nokia devices, WAP ‘phones, XDAs, BlackBerry communicators and tablet PCs.

M2 Digital is now evaluating the potential for remote engineer access, so that its 70-plus service engineers can support their customers faster by logging in and viewing customers’ call histories, schedule visits to customer sites and  order parts, for example,  without having to ‘phone in every time.

‘There are advantages in speaking to engineers and being aware of what’s happening in the field,” adds John Hitchins, ‘but it’s also costly and time consuming. All our engineers already have laptops, so remote access might be the right way to go, especially as Tesseract provides clients for PDAs and laptops that are very well formatted. The Tesseract package fits perfectly with our Docu-Care service program.‘