Infinity engineers now in constant contact

By ADAM GIFFORD

IT services company Infinity Solutions has issued its engineers with wireless-capable Palm computers loaded with a stripped-down version of its Concord job scheduling application.

Geoff Trask, Infinity Group's general manager for support services, says it replaces a cumbersome mix of pagers, mobile phones and laptops.

Infinity hopes the application, specially tailored by Christchurch-based Palm application specialists Holliday Group, will help in meeting demanding service level agreements.

The original specification was written in late 1999 within Trilogy Business Systems, before it became part of Infinity Group.

"We decided on Palm very early - the Microsoft Windows CE platform was lagging in its capabilities, and Palm enabled built-in modems," Mr Trask said.

Telecom advised Trilogy to use its CDPD network for connectivity. Mr Trask said Infinity's 60 engineers would typically be on five to 10 sites a day. In the past they phoned the call centre to update job schedules and order parts, and would file worksheets at the end of the day.

"That means we couldn't get real-time performance indicators. Now, when they get to the job they touch a button on the screen and that updates the central database. We are able to report effectively on performance hourly instead of daily."

Infinity Solutions is acting as a service arm for other organisations such as Electronic Data Services (EDS) and Air New Zealand, which have their own help desks.

Tying everything together are service level agreements which need large amounts of data to work smoothly.

The new system means, for example, that when the EDS help desk receives a call about a fault, it allocates a trouble ticket and sends the information electronically to Infinity's customer service desk, which allocates the job to an engineer or branch.

When the request flashes up on the Palm screen, the engineer can accept it, reject it or refer the work on to another engineer. Because each job is reported on as it is completed directly into the system, details which may be forgotten by the end of the day get picked up, and bills can be produced as soon as the job is done.

"Little problems go away when you can see who talked to whom, and the date and time they were on a job," Mr Trask said.

Future versions will include the capacity to record signatures signing off a job or delivery, and more monitoring tools.

Holiday group head Phil Holliday said the application connected automatically to Infinity's back end database whenever it was on the CDPD network.

"The problem with mobile wireless is the engineer may be in a basement for an hour. With this, as soon as he gets back into range the application accesses the database. It's hands off - the engineer doesn't have to force it to make contact," Mr Holliday said.

The application relies on the HGL Communications Server gateway, which allows connection on any network to any back office or legacy system. Holliday Group developed the server using Jade after being unable to find a similar tool on the market.

"It shouldn't be rocket science but it was a serious piece of work, costing several hundred thousand dollars to develop," Mr Holliday said.

Holliday Group was bought last month by British listed technology company iTouch for £7.5 million in cash and shares. Mr Holliday said HGL, which has 27 staff in Christchurch, will continue as a wholly owned subsidiary. It is establishing two-person offices in London, Sydney and Cape Town.