A commercial service organisation had blue chip clients who demanded a one hour response from its service technicians to fulfill calls anywhere in the UK. To meet this, the organisation had implemented a field system that connected to its existing call centre software, and linked that via a database and a series of disparate packages of software middleware to deliver jobs and job details to hundreds of hand held field computers in the service vehicles. They used a packet radio network as the final link in the chain. Despite the system being a collection of ‘best of breed’ items, the system as implemented often failed to deliver jobs promptly, or at all, which damaged our client’s ability to deliver the demanded service level. We worked with their providers and the packet radio company as a trusted broker, to identify where the system was failing, and then prepared a detailed independent technical report to the client highlighting the area where the data delay was occurring, and suggesting how the existing contractors might co-operate to resolve the issue.
