Healthcare Computing Ltd is a leading IT support company specialising in General Practices' IT needs. Their busy Service Desk offers support and engineering services to meet all IT requirements from their extensive list of clients.

Due to the high workload of General Practice, Healthcare Computing must respond quickly and efficiently to IT problems that are logged with the Service Desk to keep surgeries running with minimal disruption.

The Service Management had identified that their remote engineers were spending unnecessarily long periods of time on the telephone gathering all the required information to complete a job. Traditionally, an engineer would need to contact the Service Desk to retrieve their next job, location, and related information. They would regularly need to speak to other engineers to discover background information on the customer, equipment and previous history of the job. Phone calls were the only way to collect this information.

However, Healthcare Computing use SAP Business One to record all their office based data, and these records include all the necessary data for the field engineers. If this information could be accessed securely "on the move" they could save the engineers from making unnecessary telephone calls, and frustration from sitting in call queues. This would also free up office based resources from relaying information to the field.

The Solution

Guided by the requirements of Healthcare Computing, HCL Solutions delivered mobilised engineer calendars in a matter of days. The field engineers were supplied with BlackBerry^® 9000 (Bold) smartphones and with them they can now access the SAP B1 data themselves - as they require.

The BlackBerry 9000 (Bold) handset was the device of choice because of its usability, reliability, security features, and its compact size.

The data is delivered securely to the handsets using the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. The engineers are now able to retrieve a daily calendar showing their jobs, customer information, job details and call history. They can check the current status of any other service calls, and the service history and asset register of a piece of customer IT equipment by entering its serial number. When onsite with a customer the engineer can also check that there aren't any outstanding open service calls for them.

The Results

The solution has provided Healthcare Computing with a cost-effective, highly secure data access. No additional user licences were required to access the SAP Business One data, and the whole solution was bolted onto their existing BlackBerry infrastructure, meaning that no additional installations were required.

By empowering the remote workforce with the information that they require, Healthcare Computing have seen clear improvements in the efficiency of their Service Desk. Resources are being used elsewhere on the Service Desk that have historically been the first point of contact for engineers requiring information.

Feedback

"Enabling the engineers' calendars on our BlackBerrys has streamlined the information transfer process. This enables engineers to get the correct and accurate information onsite quickly and efficiently improving the customer experience by reducing resolution times."

Neil Payne, Managing Director, Healthcare Computing Ltd

"Mobilising the engineers' calendars has slashed the numbers of phone calls I receive from and make to engineers. This frees me up to get on with more pressing responsibilities. The flow of information has improved by 100 times."

Lauren Hughes, Scheduling Manager, Healthcare Computing Ltd

"The engineer calendar solution has helped me to keep track of my day quickly and easily. I can see exactly what is required, where it is needed, and when to do it. It's revolutionised the way the other engineers and myself work, and improved the service given to customers too. "

Daniel Severs, Engineer Manager, Healthcare Computing Ltd