360 Scheduling at the Heart of a&o Service Performance Improvement
IT services and support supplier a&o has established a new three-tier structure for its engineering teams and adjusted its service offering to meet stringent SLAs. At the heart of its Field Service system the 360 Dynamic Scheduling Engine has automated much of the dispatch process, helped reduce the number of dispatch staff, removed the need to deploy engineers by territory and provides alerts when SLAs are in jeopardy.
Formerly part of EDS Global Field Services, a&o now employs more than 2,500 people and provides services and support for all areas of IT infrastructure in the UK, Germany, France, Spain and Benelux. Employing 500 people in the UK alone, a&o generates £70m in revenue from this area, dividing its services into three main divisions, IT service support, infrastructure support and remote services.
Field service continues to form an essential part of the various options supplied to the majority of customers, although this has adapted to react to the considerable technological advances that have occurred during the company’s 40 year history.
a&o has created a three tier structure for its field service teams. Tier one is involved in basic maintenance and support, typically for desktop items that are often cheaper to replace than repair. Tier two engineers are engaged in providing services of a more demanding nature, while tier three includes the provision of complex support structures, some of which have SLAs of two hours and require dedicated engineers on site.
In addition to establishing a structured service operation, the company has also implemented the 360 Dynamic Scheduling Engine (DSE) from 360 Scheduling. This enables calls to be processed taking into account details such as location, activity and skill sets required, the SLA time and complexity of the call.
The company’s engineers now sign on at the start of their day, using GPRS-enabled Windows Mobile PDA devices with mobile data managed by Cognito. As service calls are progressed, the system automatically adjusts the engineers’ schedules as more calls are added throughout the day.
a&o been able to reduce the number of people employed in the dispatch department, as fewer people are required to deal with the growing number of engineers. “The 360 DSE runs itself and we need less people to be involved in the office. The system also alerts us when an SLA is not going to be achieved,” explained Adrian Cooper, Business Development Director at a&o.
“Our scheduling was handled on a territory-based system before, which was the most practical way. However when calls were near the boundaries of the territory, it sometimes meant that two engineers were dispatched when one may have been enough. The system we use now has allowed us to replace that method and make more efficient use of engineers’ time,’” said Cooper.
So far the 360 Dynamic Scheduling Engine has been implemented with the first two tiers of the service operation and now a&o are working on the roll out the system to tier three, which will include GPS tracking and provide additional information such as an engineer's estimated time of arrival.
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