w w w . s c e m a g a z i n e . c o m - Supply Chain Europe

Overcoming Mobility Hurdles
One of the traditional drawbacks to mobility
projects was the upheaval and disruption
to workers that was experienced during
deployment. Fortunately, the latest breed
of mobile applications has been designed
specifically with this in mind, reducing initial
rollout time from months or years to weeks
or days. The significant upfront investment
required has also caused problems. However,
there’s now a growing trend towards delivering
mobile applications as managed services,
allowing organizations to pay on a per-user
per-month basis, meaning that if something
isn’t working, it can very quickly be changed or
modified — a much more palatable model for
most companies, particularly given the current
economic climate.
Ensuring the end-user acceptance of
new technologies is vital. Employees will be
used to working to certain procedures, and
so newly introduced mobility solutions that
challenge the status quo can be viewed
negatively. This is particularly true of field
workers; their jobs are reliant on the use
of devices whereby factors such as screen
and keyboard size can create additional
challenges. As a result, mobile devices
and the applications running on them
need to be as intuitive and easy to use as
possible. Furthermore, many office-based
employees already struggle to handle
the quantity of information that they’re
Virgin Media Case Study
Virgin Media is the UK’s largest residential broadband provider, the largest virtual mobile network operator and
the second-largest provider of pay TV and home phone. Formed by the merger of NTL and Telewest, and the
acquisition of Virgin Mobile, the company has more than 14,000 employees and almost 10 million customers.
The NTL and Telewest merger created a vast supply chain involving 2500 mobile technicians and engineers using
different technologies and field processes, some of which were manual and paper-based. This presented the new
company with the challenge of standardizing operations, to improve efficiency and remove the unnecessary costs
of maintaining duplicate systems.
As Virgin Media offers a host of different service packages to its customers, it is vital for its mobile workforce
to be able to install, configure and activate the correct equipment at each customer’s home, as well as identifying
and rectifying any problems on-site first time round. Virgin Media reviewed its existing application and platform
solutions, and selected the Dexterra Concert platform as it offered the necessary security and flexibility to deliver
mobile applications to its entire UK field staff. Based on the Dexterra platform, Virgin Media has developed its own
application and deployed it on the field force’s semi-ruggedized Motorola Symbol MC70 handsets. The platform
provides field technicians with the tools needed to perform all customer installations and on-premise maintenance
automatically, achieving greater supply chain efficiency and increased customer satisfaction.
All field staff are trained to provide telephone, broadband and digital television support from a single device,
making real-time back-end integration a necessity to resolve customer problems on the spot. The application
specifically enables employees to perform diagnostic tests and activate services. This information is fed into Virgin
Media’s in-house customer management system, ICOMS, through the Dexterra platform, with the relevant data or
diagnostics results then relayed back to the mobile devices. From a management perspective, the new solution
provides Virgin Media with far greater insight into the status of current and outstanding tasks, as well as enabling
the company to send out scheduling updates and job notifications … as and when they occur. “Using Dexterra’s
platform, our technicians are now equipped with the necessary applications to complete each job on the first
visit,” says Paul Buttery, Managing Director of the access division at Virgin Media. “This not only greatly increases
internal efficiency and cost savings but, most importantly, it ensures ongoing customer satisfaction, which is key
to our company’s continued success.”
presented with each
day; this is magnified
on mobile devices. Instead of attempting
to force-fit entire desktop applications
onto these devices, bespoke applications
can be developed that cherry pick data
from multiple back-end systems, providing
mobile staff with only the data required
to complete their day-to-day tasks,
leaving their devices as user-friendly and
uncluttered as possible.
Satisfied Workers,
Optimized Supply Chains
By prioritizing employee buy-in and
acceptance as a key issue at the outset,
companies can take huge steps to ensure
the smooth uptake of mobility solutions. After
all, an important benchmark for success in
mobilizing business processes is that the
field worker believes that the solution is
genuinely helping them do their job better.
As technological improvements and reduced
costs have helped to overcome traditional
hurdles, the last few years have seen a
significant increase in supply chain mobility
rollouts, with more businesses than ever
before looking to harness the benefits of
mobile applications. Now, however, perhaps
the biggest case for mobility is that with
customer choice continuing to expand —
against a backdrop of European economic
turmoil — improving supply chain processes,
customer service and overall agility is not
just competitively advantageous, it is now a
competitive necessity. •
For more information
Rikke Helms is Managing Director of global sales,
Dexterra (www.dexterra.com).
2009 may/June www.scemagazine.com 31