Giving an engineer a mobile computer with a wireless connection can be like taking a horse to water.  And many a project has failed simply because they don't drink.

Why they do what they often do is a mystery - perhaps they don't like change, perhaps they fear a Big Brother approach from management, perhaps they just don't want to do what someone else wants them to.  But this is not always the case and as Neil Forshaw, customer services, business control manager at the computer services giant Fujitsu Services discovered during a recent field service management system project, these problems can be fairly easily avoided by involving the engineer.

'A lot of what we do is driven by our engineers because of their knowledge of the customers,' he says.  'So when it came to this project it was very important to get the engineers on board right from the start.'

The project was to develop and deploy a mobile field service solution based on the Orsus Mobile Framework. The personal digital assistant (PDA) based solution, which has now been rolled out to 490 Fujitsu engineers, was aimed at improving communication and collaboration between the field engineers and the back office, as well as improving customer service levels. A project was to create a wireless solution that ran over the digital network, GPRS.
 
Forshaw says that the company set up a task force of 20 engineers to give feedback on what they wanted and needed and what they thought would work.  'For example when we looked at the different models we gave them all of them to the engineers to try out in the field,' he says.  This ruled out laptops quite early in the process. 'They were too heavy and when engineers are holding them for a period of time they felt lay their arms were dropping off,’ says Forshaw. They also advised that, in most circumstances, waiting for a machine to boot up was not very practical: the always-on PDA was much more practical.

Forshaw says the project had some key goals.  ‘We did not want to appear to make a step change from the existing system – we wanted to keep a familiar feel.’  The key difference was that now the company was not limited to sending messages of just 130 characters – messages could be as long as required.  This opened up all sorts of possibilities.  So, as well as real time information goals such as job allocation, on line ordering of spare parts and customer approval for chargeable work, the engineers could receive a more detailed data when the call is allocated such as call history, outstanding service issues, special site information and contract background.  Engineers can also access diagnostic information through the company intranet.

'Most of our customer service engineers are home-based and therefore reliant on wireless communication for task allocation and information relating to jobs for the day ahead,’ says Forshaw. ‘Previously, our field engineers were frequently having to call the office for basic information such as additional customer details or previous call history - this was exceptionally frustrating and unproductive for both the engineers and our office-based administration team,' says Forshaw.

There are essentially two elements to the service engineering team.  It has around 150 national exchange engineers, whose role is essentially to provide equipment swap out. They handle up to eight calls a day. The rest are more technical break/fix engineers running between four and five calls a day.  Through automatic despatch and notification for these jobs Forshaw reckons the company reduced significantly the number of call backs to the support centre from its own engineers.  But he adds that this has not been taken as a cost-cutting benefit.

'The company knew sooner or later it would have to invest for the long term if we were to continue delivering improvements in customer service.  Without this initiative we were facing a massive expansion of our call centre to run the engineers,' he says.  'Now we are encouraging the engineers and agents to spend more time talking with customers and to build a relationship and understanding.  We want our visits to be short but effective.'

He says the improved communication with engineers is also to do with the quality of information as well as the quantity. 'It is essential that they have all the information they require at their finger tips as they are in many cases the primary contact point for the company,' he says.  'They are more that just field engineers - they are relationship managers. By increasing the breadth and depth of information that engineers have access to, such as technical specs and a diagnostic website, they can complete jobs and solve problems more quickly which is great news for customers.'

But the cost savings on calls has been impressive he says. 'Before we tried sending engineers multiple messages and they could have extended delays waiting for information from the back office.  This led to them calling in for more detail and clogging up the call centre.

'Now we can send as much as we need and it costs us less. With GRPS we don’t pay per message as before, now we pay on bandwidth used giving significant savings. That alone would have gone a long way to justify the project,' says Forshaw.  

Although, strangely, the engineers are still given mobile phones.  Forshaw says that this was planned as a backup if the network should fail so they could revert to voice and text messaging and also as the engineers can use the device for personal use they preferred to have a ‘standard issue’ phone rather than use a PDA in public.

So when engineers go on site they are armed with critical customer data - who the customer is, what their problem is, and how quickly they need to resolve the problem according to the service level agreement in place.    'Engineers can obtain authorisation for chargeable work while in the field,' says Forshaw.  'This gives faster financial information and removes a manual process.'

This, for example, could be the engineer building in a preventative maintenance call if one is scheduled shortly.  Or the engineer may advise the customer that a printer is not up the job or near the end of its life and offering to get the sales department to call with information or a more suitable printer.  However, says Forshaw the engineers are not expected to be sales people.   ‘The engineer merely passes on the lead to the service delivery manager and does not get involved in the sales process directly,’ he says.

The expected effects of the system will be far reaching. Engineers will be able to complete additional service calls, therefore not only increasing productivity but also revenues.  As more can now be done electronically, directly from engineers' mobile devices, a number of business processes have been automated and data quality has been enhanced, therefore resulting in less administration and paperwork.  The improvements have resulted in positive feedback from customers.  This has been revealed through a short customer satisfaction survey form in the application that pops up before the job is closed.

With an always on system the engineers have access to a dedicated website with diagnostic information, newsletters, technical information and software updates.  And because the engineering team that helped put the project together is still in pace, field engineers are able to get help if they are having problems with the application.  Engineers can also contact each other for specialist technical help.
 

The system was designed to be straightforward for engineers to use and barring the issuing of a user manual, there was no formal training needed.   In the longer term PDAs will be issued to more of the 700 Fujitsu's engineers. Forshaw said it was a key part of the design that it could scale up and accommodate changes to technology and business needs.

And some of those changes are already planned says Forshaw.  ‘We are looking at engineers placing calls on behalf of customers.  If they notice something else that needs doing they can place a fault call on behalf of the customer and if appropriately do the job there and then – this cuts out extra trips and provides a faster service for the customer.’

He is also looking to take out some remaining paperwork.  ‘At the moment when it comes to returning unused spares it is still done on paper and creates a bottleneck in the system.  We are looking at an online form for the engineers’ to complete returns information, says Forshaw.

The new system puts a lot of emphasis on the role the engineer plays in dealing directly with the customer which was deliberate as the company looked to leverage the face to face relationship.  The key to that working is having amenable engineers.  

‘They really appreciated that they are involved in the process and generally in the business they feel they have a say,’ says Forshaw. ‘ We make our managers very accessible to them.  And this helps to keep attrition rates low.  Our engineers are highly skilled and in demand - it is important we keep them.’