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Does your company employ field engineers? Whether your colleagues work in the field or remotely, the reliance on technology is becoming greater than ever, so it’s crucial you’re optimising the opportunities available to you.
Workforces are becoming increasingly remote, with mobile reliance much more prevalent in day-to-day operations. In 2019, pre-pandemic, 3.91 million UK employees worked remotely, but did they feel sufficiently supported by technology to do their job efficiently?
If you require your field staff to take notes or photos and have them sent back to a supervisor for processing, the need for this data to be received in an hourly or daily cycle would enable responsiveness, efficiency and prompt customer service.
Ultimately, your business needs to be able to respond to your clients' needs in a timely, cost-efficient way. The ability to deliver real time or regularly synced data via an app would be a significant advantage.
A little while back, Cariboo Digital assisted Thames Water in achieving just this.
As a 24/7 business employing approximately 6,000 people, including a large percentage of Field Engineers, they needed to increase efficiency in their reporting process.
Thames Water’s Field Engineers visit very remote locations, often with limited light and connectivity, so creating an app that not only enhanced productivity but also presented an added layer of safety for the employees was paramount. When they’re on these remote callouts, they might not have a flat surface to write on, they may be caught in all weathers and it might be dark, all three factors making manual written reports challenging.
Historically, Thames Water were writing their reports with pen and paper, which whilst not easy, was also time consuming – as eventually they had to be returned to the office. Manually returning paperwork meant that it was out of date, cumbersome, not easy to keep filed when mobile, time consuming for travel time and costly for petrol/diesel.
The introduction of an app allowed engineers to record the data easily and deliver it to the relevant head office teams in a timely manner. Time is money, the speed in which data is reported can enhance KPIs, a customer’s experience and allow for improved productivity across the board. From key notes, photos, form filling and transparency, the app solved it all and allowed management to use a dashboard for supervision and easy reporting.
The work Thames Water and its engineers do is crucial, time is of the essence. When it came to the creation, concept, and completion, our discovery period was 3-4 weeks, with a 3-month design and delivery timeframe, so all in all, four months to the first version then further iterations down the line once engineers started to use the app for reporting.
A worthwhile investment for a company that relies on timekeeping and efficiency.
If you have a remote working team, or perhaps Field Engineers like Thames Water, and would like an informal discussion on how to improve workflow, processes and reporting, we’d be happy to help! Contact Us.
