Work Management Concepts…To Make Life Easier, Faster and Less Expensive. Part 1: Centralize for Success

September 8, 2011 — Dean Perry

This is the first in a short series of articles describing some of the crucial changes for success that SSP has uncovered in development of our custom work management system, Workforce Management. All of the functionality described in the series was derived from real requirements and brainstorming sessions with actual utilities, and all is currently available in the WFM software. You can learn more about this tool here.

Part 1: Centralize for Success

When implementing a system to digitally manage work orders/service requests, one of the most efficiency-improving ideas to consider is this: have a central location for important functions related to the WO/SR, and manage it smartly.

There’s a reason the “cloud” mentality is growing, and it’s that people have realized it’s kind of nice always having access to their most important documents and tools (including applications) wherever they are, whenever they need them.

How can we improve utility work management here? By making some specific pieces of information available anywhere, to anyone (with the proper permissions), and by tying it directly to a single record – in this case, to a single work order.

Here are the main ingredients:

1.  Put it on the web.
Or on an intranet. Accessibility is core to the new way of thinking of utility work management. When everyone (with permissions) can access the same tools, update the same records and view the same data (securely), big money is saved, and less time is spent on the small stuff.

wms-intranet

Let’s look at an example: one of the departments a work order is guaranteed to pass through also happens to be the department you don’t see hanging around the water cooler at the office… field crew.

Workflows can vary, but typically, when finished with a job, the field crew foreman/leader will need to report what he or she did in the field and how it compares to the estimate/design, etc. If your work-order management system is on the web, he or she can do that from the comfort of their truck, or even their home, provided they can find some web access.

This will also allow for better back-office access and simpler integration to other existing systems, like a customer information system. I’ll have more on this topic in a future installment.

*A side-note regarding those crew foremen who refuse to touch a laptop: with all due respect, 1996 called and it wants its attitude back… These folks will eventually learn to change, because they will be passed up by their more savvy colleagues if they don’t. You can help them by making the digital work order extremely easy to access and update, and by using an awesome UI, good search tools and account-based queues for orders assigned to a specific crew.


2.  Allow attachments.

The problem with digitizing paper work orders is that they are often not delivered alone, as a single piece of paper. All kinds of things get stapled or paper-clipped to them – important things!

Maps, printed emails, change requests, job packets, photos, permit copies, and even handwritten notes can find their way to the stack of information that eventually becomes a job in the field.

The funny thing about those extra documents is the vast majority of them start out in digital form. Thinking logically , if you want to manage the work orders digitally, why not manage these things digitally too? (I can hear forests everywhere cheering.)

wms-attachments

The important part is to be smart about the functionality and the basic schema. In other words, we want to attach the documents directly to a single work order, a unique record, and make it viewable at all times – so that, just like in “real life,” additional info always stays with the order.


3.  Centralize communication.

How many times does a Distribution Engineer trade emails with an editor, scheduler, supervisor, etc. about different jobs? What if he or she asks a question in an e-mail, receives an answer in response, and then needs to access that information a couple weeks later? They’re searching through a lot of e-mails for answers, that’s what.

wms-comments

To tie digital communications to a work order, apply a commenting (message) board approach to the system, again attached to each unique work order. Integrate it to Outlook, or your utility’s email client of choice, to allow for an email to be sent to selected user(s) with the comment and WO/SR # in the email. And, if you are web-accessible, you can even put a link to the work order directly in the email for super-easy access. That way, you can always find your answers quickly, and others can view them as well.


4.  Track changes.

Most utilities have a pretty extensive workflow for their WO/SR’s, which can create a headache when management needs to investigate recent work. Where does the order stand right now (status)? Who updated the address for this job? At what point did that meter information get entered?

This problem can be easily solved by tracking all significant changes, by user and date, and displaying the history for permitted users. A relatively simple software module can do the trick.

wms-history

The important thing is that the changes are related to a single order, and can display directly on the WO when requested. Put another way, the changes are kept central to the order and are displayed centrally in the wms user interface. (Are you sensing a theme here?) The result is that users are able to quickly see who did what, when and where to each and every order.

Centralizing crucial information for each unique work order/SR is one of the first changes you want to make to improve your WMS efficiency in a huge way. Having a web-based system gives you the extra power to link back to this unique record and view this info with a click or two. In next month’s installment of this series, we’ll talk about another great concept to make your work management easier, faster and less expensive.

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