The company, which was formed in 2002 when the former north, east and west regions of Scottish water companies were amalgamated, has chosen the ClickSoftware ServiceOptimization Suite to improve scheduling capabilities of its service offering.

Allan MacMaster, field data development manager for Scottish Water, told Service Management that the company had begun looking at various scheduling options available just over 18 months ago. ‘We had some tools already in operation, mostly from our CRM system, but there was nothing specific [to scheduling]. We asked a number of companies to tender and we also got Abeam involved quite early in the process,’ said MacMaster.

The company had implemented a mobile working solution in 2003, which MacMaster described as ‘not necessarily working as well as it could do’. At the end of 2006, the company began looking for a more efficient system, including updated hardware for its engineers.

Gaining the acceptance of the workforce was identified as a key area and an in-house training and education programme was established, managed by MacMaster.

‘Some of our engineers were more used to spades,’ he explained, ‘so some were good on computers while others were not.’

The company had previously equipped its engineers with PDAs, but these proved to be unreliable and replacements could take six weeks to arrive. These have now been replaced with Panasonic CF19 rugged laptops and additional mobile phones and the MacMaster described engineers’ response as ‘very positive now’, stating that use had improved from below 50% to 94% this year.

Scottish Water is now in the process of preparing the ClickSoftware solution to integrate with its CRM and work management systems. It will run on engineers’ laptops and join existing fuctions, such as webmail and GIS and will be rolled out in early 2009.

MacMaster also described how the company has used the consultancy services of Abeam to understand all the elements of change management which had been necessary to alter the culture of its working practices. Part of the process involved identifying areas of the business not ready for the considerable alteration in working practices and engaging with them to get the best from the company’s investment.

‘We have to sell it to the end users and this key to our future success,’ MacMaster continued. ‘Change management has been our biggest challenge and we had to make sure that everyone realised what the benefits were.

‘We’re focusing on key areas of success now and encouraging engineers to use the mobile solution as we have to work in real time. Profit is not of primary importance, however, as the main aim is to improve customer service.’

Scottish Water is the fourth largest water and waste water services provider in the UK, serving around 5 million customers in 2.3 million households. By implementing optimized scheduling, street level routing and real time analytics, it is seeiking to improve visibility and control of its field workforce, drive down operational costs and raise service levels.

It will be implementing ClickSoftware’s Water Utilities packaged solution for water companies, a pre-configured application designed to handle the different aspects that water and/or waste water companies are facing, from generation (water reservoirs), through infrastructure and distribution of the water, up to meter operations and meter reading.

The company will also be deploying ClickAnalyze Reports which is a tool that will allow Scottish Water stakeholders to create real time operational performance reports, monitor field force performance in real time and control service operations, including service level, customer appointments, associated costs and service revenues.