The Success of Wannon Water Rollout of FOCUS: An Update

Three years ago, Wannon Water announced their plan to integrate FieldTec's mobile workforce and field asset management into their existing CRM system, asset management system, GIS, and SCADA telemetry systems. According to a company spokesperson, the goals of this plan included improving the service Wannon Water provides to their customers, increasing the accuracy of their data collection and reports, providing their job site personnel with access to information held at the corporate offices, and allowing management to have access to real time information to schedule staff and monitoring job progress. So what led Wannon Water to choose FOCUS?

The Components of FOCUS and Their Benefits

The components of FOCUS make it the perfect mobile workforce management tool for utilities like Wannon Water. These components include:

• Call Centre Functionality
• Work Order and Workflow Management
• Scheduling and Dispatching Functionality
• Mobile Device Functions
• Real Time Data Collection and Monitoring
• Business Tools

These components provide utilities with the following benefits:

• It allows the organisation to collect essential information about planned as well as unexpected work on a particular job site.
• Businesses can easily configure the components of FOCUS to meet the needs of both organisation and their customers.
• FOCUS allows field staff to easily collect and enter data in real time, which reduces their paperwork burden and eliminates the need for some clerical staff.
• This mobile workforce solution provides analytics based on real time data so managers and supervisors can allocate field staff with the correct skill sets for scheduled jobs.

Wannon's Implementation of the FOCUS Workforce Management System

Wannon opted to start the implementation of FOCUS with their field personnel and their call centre staff to improve their response to customer calls related to issues related to their water and services, as well as increase the efficiency of completing planned maintenance of these service grids. Additionally, they opted to integrate FOCUS with their existing AquaTact CRM so the information collected about the customer and their service needs can be classified by the call centre staff before it is transferred to the FOCUS system so the call can be dispatched. FOCUS transmits real time progress reports back to the call centre so the staff can estimate when the field worker is ready for the next task. Once the task is completed, the call centre staff can see how the customer's issue was resolved by viewing the information displayed on the AquaTact screen.

Since the rollout of FOCUS by Wannon Water in February 2012, the system has provided a free flow of information amongst the call centre staff, the field staff, the supervisors, and the management staff. Wannon Water representatives reported they believe they will achieve all the benchmarks of success for this project, based on their initial impressions.

So How Are Things Progressing Since the Rollout?

During a press briefing, Andrew Dilley, IT Manager of Wannon water was overheard telling Mark Hosking, General Manager of FieldTec,"The MIMS project is going really well - thanks to you and your team for this."

More information: www.fieldtec.com

Article Source: WhaTech