Field Service Solution for US based Utility Enterprise

Project Description

Challenge

Blood Hound is a US based Blood Hound is an underground utility locating company, having operations across various states in USA. Blood Hound team has a sizeable field services team which executes various client jobs on ground. This field service team is guided by backend planning team which schedules jobs based on various criteria and identify required technicians and specialized equipment to complete a given job. Team used a customized scheduling tool which helped them schedule jobs but had following issues/ limitations

• Was often too slow to display updates to jobs and resource availability
• Inefficient and ineffective usage of screen space leading to unnecessary scrolls and tabs to be accessed to view additional details
• With manual processes overlapping with automated ones caused sync issues within the team which in turn was difficult in tracking
• Overall issues leading to delay in planning and loss of resource time due to manual processes
• Further, with increasing business, there was a need for automation in complete business processes and business communication

Solution Delivered

Cynoteck team worked with Blood Hound IT team to redesign scheduling tool by laying out key essentials of existing functionality and performed gap analysis to identify additional business needs. Cynoteck team performed various design exercised and brainstorming sessions to identify appropriate solutions/ features including screen design, color combinations, display information, user interaction. Key deliverables of this engagement were:

• Redesigned resource scheduling tool to display information efficiently and effectively using pull-up and collapsible sections
• Provided enhanced user interaction features such as:
  • right click menu for additional on screen details
  • double click access to update client job on screen
  • drag-drop jobs to given customers
  • on-screen display of best suited technicians by using fitment algorithm
  • implement scheduling validations
  • intuitive visual indicators using icons and highlight colors for intuitive interface
  • automated push notifications providing always up to date information
  • intelligent user level persistent filters to ensure user filter preferences are saved across multiple sessions
• Iterative development model to provide weekly demo of work in progress functionality and receive early feedback

Business Value

• Faster Delivery by delivering end to end solution within within 16 weeks with 100% adoption and success rate from first day itself.
• User Performance improvement by 33% (approx.)
• With Salesforce on-demand model, solution ensured that Blood Hound’s initial investment into technology is kept minimal. Cynoteck provided a cost-effective offshore delivery model which helped maintain lower cost of a project.
• Reduced job schedule conflicts and errors by around 90%

Project Details

• TechnologiesSales Cloud, Apex, Visualforce, Streaming API, jQuery, FullCalendar
• Team Size2
• Duration4 months
• IndustryUtilities