What else affects the infrastructure: How to ensure the quality of equipment installation

We in “Latera” have been developing billing for telecom operators (providers of wired and wireless Internet, TV and telephony, backbone and satellite providers) for 8 years. And during this time, we realized that to increase the level of services provided, the operator needs not only billing, which is a basic component of the business (without it, nothing will work), but complex automation.

And one of the important elements of this “complex” that directly affect the quality of services and customer experience is the work of equipment installers. Such remote employees and the quality of their work must be monitored, and this can be done with the help of special software. In our today's material - the story of how we created just such a product.

A bit of history

The market of telecommunication services in Russia in zero years grew at a rapid pace. Many operators appeared who spent their efforts on connecting more and more users and developing their own infrastructure. At the same time, not so priority issues, such as the satisfaction of these users, attention was paid much less. This stage of rapid development was in full swing when we launched our billing in the middle of zero years.
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However, later the rapid development stopped - there were objective reasons for this. The main one - almost everyone who needed the Internet has already found a provider. This means that new telecom operators have nowhere to get “new” customers who have not previously been connected to the network. You can only lure them from competitors. And here already begins to play the role of quality service.

The users spoiled by the large choice pay attention to the speed of problem solving by the technical support service, the quality of work of installers installing the equipment, and the stability of its work.

And here it turns out that very often the quality of its installation and configuration influences how the infrastructure works. But this requires outreach work, which is not so easy to manage.

What is the problem

In the IT field, various applications are distributed that help improve the quality of work and provide managers at various levels (for example, team leads) the ability to control the performance of tasks by team members.

In the case of field work, things are much more complicated. It is difficult to find out how well the cables were installed or the equipment installed. Usually, problems at this stage become known after another failure, when, after calls from disgruntled customers, another team leaves for a place to troubleshoot.

Accordingly, many operators are faced with the need to somehow control their field staff, but another problem arises - many of them value freedom in their work and are not particularly eager to understand new systems. This means that such software should be as simple as possible.

In the west, such services are called Field Management Software. And it was precisely such a tool, honed under the realities of Russian providers, that we decided to make for our clients. Later it was allocated to a separate service Planado .

How a mobile application for installers improves infrastructure quality

There are a number of situations in which errors may occur during installation and adjustment of equipment. The first of them - many installers believe that they know how their work is done best of all. Moreover, this knowledge may not coincide with how you really need to do it, and lead to various inaccuracies that adversely affect the quality - for example, installation or installation can be made "by eye", and some important stages of work are simply missed. .

The lack of a single standard of work performance, which is monitored by the management, carries with it another serious disadvantage. In the event that a new employee comes to work, he has to independently consider what to do and how. It will take a long time until he is transformed from a beginner into an experienced worker, and the number of mistakes made can be very large.

From the very beginning we decided that our service should help to cope with the problem of creating a single standard of work and help control compliance with the requirement. This can be done by implementing the functionality of checklists (checklists) - this is how you can establish a mandatory procedure for performing a certain work (for example, replacing equipment).



You can monitor the following of the plan using the function of sending a photo report from the application to the office - so the managers at the company's office can immediately see if the work has been done in accordance with the requirements and, if necessary, contact the employee and make corrections.

Thus, experienced employees can set a clear scheme for the implementation of each specific type of work, eliminating unnecessary initiative, and for beginners to facilitate the adaptation process - because if each order is arranged in steps, then it is easier to carry out.



The history of the development of the project interface, we told in his blog on Megamind.

What else gives the software for field management

Tools like the Planado service we developed, as we called our project, allow us not only to improve the quality of work of installers, but also reduce the total waiting time for the master client. In such systems, there may be a function that allows managers in the office to see the location of installers on the map and in real time to control the routes of their movement, bypassing traffic jams and choosing the nearest orders.



Planado desktop application and brigade staff display on a map

This allows you to increase the number of orders per day and reduce the waiting time for the client.

For example, according to a McKinsey field management systems survey, one of the American cable companies increased the number of orders for equipment installation per day by 80%. This, in turn, led to the situation that the installer’s waiting time was reduced by 30%.

Another example is a company selling security equipment, has increased the number of installed alarms by 35%, and the time of arrival of installers has been reduced by half.

One more problem is being solved, but already from the side of the workers - in the spheres requiring departure, not all applications left are actually fulfilled. The client may confuse time or simply leave, forgetting about the order.

Online scheduling systems can automatically send an SMS to the client on the appointed day and time so that he does not forget about the visit of employees - this reduces the percentage of failed orders.

Conclusion: not only infrastructure

We have been working in the field of telecommunication services for a long time and know well the needs of such companies. Therefore, starting work on a new service for managing mobile workers, we focused on the needs of telecom operators.

However, in the course of development, it became clear that such a tool could also help companies from other, sometimes completely non-technical industries - for example, on-site cleaning.

Over time, the number of applications of the tool is growing, so we created a special calculator that helps to calculate the potential benefit from using the service in each case.