Savings gain in meter reading

By MICHAEL FOREMAN

Transferring a meter reading system to wireless handheld computers is helping a Christchurch data collection company to cut costs and shave job turnaround times.

Datacol managing director Grant Thomson said the $5000 brick-like units used by his company's 100 data collection contractors to read electricity meters were due for replacement.

Apart from cost and bulk, their big drawback was that data could be fed into the company's back-end system only at the end of each day via a modem.

Datacol had transferred the company's database on to a $300 Palm handheld computer in a proof-of-concept system, but additional software was needed to handle communications between the handheld and the back-end system.

The requirement became urgent when, late last year, Thomson showed the prototype to an electricity retailer to win a new contract.

"As we had found out about the tender late, we had about two weeks to complete a working prototype in order to compete for the contract."

Thomson contacted Christchurch's iTouch Business Mobility because it the company had developed similar applications for other industries.

ITouch software development management Rod McKay said it took just over a week to adapt iTouch's wireless communications and applications software to work with DataCol's database.

Thomson said an initial trial of 25 handhelds showed the wireless system would deliver hardware savings of at least $3000 a meter reader, as well as efficiency gains.

"We can now allocate rounds to contractors in the field via Telecom's CDMA network, and they can download the data to us from the field. We've turned on a lot of flexibility and halved our turnaround time on each job."

Thomson said the remaining data bricks would be replaced as contracts expired, giving him up to 80 field staff with wireless handhelds this year.