Fujitsu Australia and New Zealand

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Fujitsu improves mobile information management for Field Engineers through Fujitsu mProcess and Nokia 9300

Fujitsu Australia and New Zealand has 2,700 employees and is a full service provider of information technology and communications solutions. The company works with clients to consult, design, build, operate and support business solutions. From strategic consulting to application and infrastructure solutions and services, Fujitsu’s long-term clients include over half of the Fortune Global 500.

As part of the company’s customer service support, the Fujitsu call centre provides the essential interface between the customer and the resources needed to provide service. The call centre is the single point of contact and ownership necessary for effective call resolution.

With approximately 200 field engineers across Australia and New Zealand, the call centre assigns job requests coming in from clients to field staff, who then service and repair equipment. Once the job is completed, the client is billed for the engineer’s time and any parts used.

Challenge

With a large number of mobile field engineers constantly on the road, servicing and repairing equipment, Fujitsu wanted to streamline its servicing logistics, reducing time spent on administration and paperwork and ultimately cutting costs and system errors. Clients requiring a visit from a Fujitsu engineer log their request into the call centre, which is then dealt with by a call centre manager. The manager assigns the job to an engineer with the time and appropriate skills to visit the client and service their equipment.

Each Fujitsu engineer was equipped with a Nokia 9210 Communicator, with the relaying of information between the field engineer, the call centre and the client heavily dependent on voice calls and text messages. With a wide geographic spread of engineers across Australia, Fujitsu engineers experienced issues with poor signal reception in areas, disrupting the flow of information to and from the call centre and client.

A large part of the engineer’s time was also being taken up with paperwork; from the ordering of spare parts required, to client billing for time and parts used and recharging of the engineer’s expenses. This administration affected the time engineers could spend on jobs, reducing the number of clients they could visit per day. There was also potential for errors in the system, with various items of paperwork having to be filled out correctly and then processed back at the office. The engineer’s paperwork would then have to be matched up with each client’s online details, logged initially at the call centre, before billing could occur.

“We knew that we could look to our own industry-leading R&D teams and Solutions Centres to develop a software solution to take the paper-based processes online,” commented Gene Echols, Enterprise Mobile Business Manager, Fujitsu Australia and New Zealand. “However, we also knew that the device the solution would run on was equally important, to enable us to deliver a more efficient mobile servicing process.”

Important factors that Fujitsu looked at when investigating the mobile device on which to run its solution:

• Reliability – With its engineers so dependent on the device for all their daily activities and reporting, Fujitsu had to be sure that the device was robust and reliable
• Ease of use – The device needed to be simple to use and enable information to be easily and quickly input, with minimal room for errors
• Multifunctional – Not only was the device for data, but also voice functionality was important, plus the ability to synchronise with a PC and have the diary and contacts kept constantly up to date
• Ease of implementation – The network of devices had to be set-up and implemented rapidly and efficiently. It was important that there was no downtime in access for staff and that implementation was cost-effective

Solution

Fujitsu mProcess Solution

Designed for task-oriented mobile working, the Fujitsu mProcess Solution allowed the company’s field engineers to link into the operative processes of the company anytime, anywhere. The solution offered a mobile integration infrastructure where multiple back end systems could be accessed by the user out in the field.

The Fujitsu mProcess solution is based on the client platform application running in the mobile device (Fujitsu mProcess Client) and the server application (Fujitsu mProcess Server). The mobile worker uses Fujitsu mProcess Client in performing their tasks. The client platform provides the functionality to receive and send data from the operational system (centralised services) via GPRS, browse visits, tasks and documents and use the reporting functionality. Both on-line and offline capabilities are present with either automated or user prompted synchronisation features.

Instead of utilising electronic forms that need to be navigated through to find the right field to feed in the data, the client application actually predicts and guides the user in their tasks. This way, user friendliness, ease of use, and timesaving are optimised. The resulting system reduces errors and increases productivity.

Nokia 9300 smartphone

The device chosen on which to run the Fujitsu mProcess platform was the GPRS-enabled Nokia 9300 smartphone. The voice functionality of the Nokia 9300 smartphone is superior when compared to most mobile devices that combine PDA features and a mobile phone. The compact design of the Nokia 9300 smartphone makes it simple to use, with a fiveway joystick allowing users to easily navigate menus to find the features and functions they need to quickly accomplish tasks and find information when on the move.

The phone is tri-mode, supporting GSM/GPRS/EDGE networks and integrates infrared and Bluetooth capabilities, giving users additional options to wirelessly synchronise their devices to a desktop PC or a laptop, as well as exchange data with other mobile devices. The in-built memory of 80 MB, which is expandable to up to 2 GB with an optional MMC card, is ideal for storing emails, documents, text and multimedia messages, data files, calendar notes and applications.

The mProcess software running on the Nokia 9300 smartphone portrays the exact application used in the Fujitsu call centre. The user is able to view a job’s status, accept jobs and then enter all of the information from their visit, including the billable time spent on site, travel time and cost, ordering or billing of parts and any additional expenses occurred.

“The Nokia 9300 smartphone offered us the perfect form factor for our field engineers, with its streamline design, integrated QWERTY keyboard for data input, large colour screen, simple menu navigation and its ease of use as a mobile phone. It over delivered on all of the key objectives we set,” said Mr. Echols.

“All of this is done in realtime, enabling not only the call centre, but also the end-user to simply go online to view the latest status of their job. In our business, this constant status updating is critical and is a genuine benefit of the new system we have introduced. Plus the fact that we can use the mProcess on and offline on the Nokia 9300 smartphone has solved the problems we were experiencing in the parts of the country where there was poor network coverage,” added Mr. Echols.

Benefits

An initial trial in May 2005 with 3 engineers using the Nokia 9300 smartphone with the Fujitsu mProcess Solution was deemed an overwhelming success. This solution was then rolled out to 44 field service engineers and the success continued, with a dramatic reduction in errors, costs and an increase in productivity seen across the workforce. More than 100 engineers are currently using the mProcess Solution and by the end of the 1st week in August 2005, Fujitsu expects to have 170 engineers in Australia and 20 in New Zealand using the new system.

Reduced cost

Changing from voice and SMS based communication to GPRS data-centric reporting has seen Fujitsu save approximately 75% on their phone bills. Plus, now that all of the contact, enquiries and reporting is done online, the staff numbers required to man the call centre has reduced dramatically, again cutting costs.

Increased efficiency

“Most importantly, the feedback from the field workforce on the new system has been excellent,” said Mr. Echols. “In a recent survey of our engineers, all of them said they were ‘happy’ with the new system, while over 70% said they were ‘delighted’ with it, making their job easier, with less paperwork required, allowing them to spend more of their time visiting clients. Fujitsu’s approach to centralised strategic control is unique, presenting a major shift in how incidents are resolved. By using a centralised call management system, it is able to provide a single point of contact for customers - a hub that can manage any incident in a consistent way.”

“This is just one example of how effective combining a service-based application with a mobile device can be. The Fujitsu mProcess Solution is a general solution for linking mobile workers into operative processes of enterprises. The design of the mProcess is based on task oriented mobile working and could therefore be deployed with Nokia’s devices into numerous business verticals such as healthcare, security, logistics, field service and sales.”

- Gene Echols, Enterprise Mobile Business Manager, Fujitsu Australia and New Zealand.