Hayat Communications Field Services Software Case Study

Middle-Eastern Telecommunications Leader Revolutionizes Field Services with Rapid Mobile App Development (RMAD)

Business Challenge

Much of the work done by Hayat Communications relies on its employees doing field work in multiple countries. The company wanted to improve its efficiency and field team productivity by building a field services software platform that combines a mobile app with a back-office application. The company was looking for a field services solution that would:

• Improve productivity by replacing an ad-hoc voice/instant messaging communications system with one that helped staff more accurately dispatch and manage work assignments.
• Give database access to field teams so they can get site and asset information, inventory availability, work requirements, and work history rapidly and dependably.
• Relieve the back-office workload by allowing data to be accurately captured in the field. The Company believed this would greatly improve efficiency and data accuracy because data would be captured by the staff doing the work onsite in the field, not by supervisors in a different location, hours or days after the site visit.
• Improve reporting accuracy and reduce time required to prepare reports by consolidating all field team activity data in a central database with easy-to-use analytics capabilities.
• Improve customer service by providing real-time status updates, instead of taking hours or days to collect and consolidate data requested by customers about activities in the field.

Solution

Hayat Communications created a document outlining the system's requirements based on a comprehensive audit of requirements by multiple departments and current projects in all the countries in which the business operates. Based on the document and additional research, Hayat decided to develop the solution itself, using a Rapid Mobile Application Development (RMAD) platform. It compared RMAD solutions from a number of field service app vendors and found that Alpha Anywhere was the best suited for the project. 

"Alpha Anywhere ticked all the boxes," says Nikos Kazantzis, Group Head of Systems Integration for Hayat Communications. "It offered numerous out-of-the-box advantages, of which offline-capability on mobile devices was the most significant --- most other platforms didn't have that capability built-in." 

Kazantzis adds that two other elements made Alpha Anywhere stand out: It offered end-to-end development capability (including server, client, mobile, and database), and it would allow Hayat to build a significant amount of the platform using GUI-based tools with little or no coding. 

Hayat had outside expert developers build and test core components, business logic and functions, but most other work was built by Hayat staff using Alpha Anywhere. 

"Having us work this way put immense power in our hands, because we had many different project requirements in different countries and regions," Kazantzis says. "With Alpha Anywhere, we could quickly adapt to specific needs in each geographic area." 

Development went quickly. Within the first month, Hayat had built its first demo, including a mobile app, for a major fixed/wireless network operator. Within six months, the system was operational across more than 6,000 sites with 300 users. Six months after that, the system had doubled in size. 

"We couldn't have built something this large and sophisticated this quickly with any other platform," Kazantzis says. "It was a tremendous time-saver, and let us build exactly the solution we had envisioned." 

The finished system, named CMRI, (Computerized Maintenance, Rollout and Inventory) supports the full range of Hayat operations, including the following modules and capabilities:

• Request management: Similar to a Help Desk module, including tracking tickets, with live SLA tracking
• Work orders: The core element, which includes all data related to an activity on a site
• Personnel management and dispatching: Location- and user-status based, notifications on mobile devices, complete access to data from field, user-tracking capability
• Task planning: Schedulers, bulk updates, calendar views
• Inventory management: Including field-level tracking – including vehicles in warehouse
• Asset management
• Reporting: Live dashboards as well as pre-configured or customized reviews of work, activities and materials

Results/Benefits

With Alpha Anywhere-created CMRI, Hayat has gained significant benefits, including increased productivity, improved dispatching and field management, increased accuracy, and better customer service. 

Hayat also saved significantly on licensing costs. "With Alpha Anywhere our cost was not directly dependent on the number our users or sites," Kazantzis says. "Typically, software vendors in our sector charge ‘per user' or ‘per site' license fees, and sometimes both. Because Alpha Software doesn't charge that way, we saved a tremendous amount of money, particularly as we expand its use." 

With CMRI, work is assigned, managed and logged through one system, instead of multiple ones as was done previously. Accessing data, all the way from a single work order up to a global summary takes only a few mouse clicks. Anyone with the right permissions can access part or all of the data and reports instantly. Previously, getting a daily report took hours, and had involved all department heads. 

Unnecessary phone calls and instant messages have been minimized – only emergencies now require calling. Because field workers update their status on a live basis, the company now better knows the status of its work in the field. Workers spend less idle time because people are assigned to work according to live metrics, leading to improved productivity. 

Customer service and customer relationships have been dramatically improved. Customer requests are answered on the spot, and customers can see the location of field technicians. Customers can also see all the data about work done by Hayat on their jobs, including time-stamps for when work was done. 

Summing up the benefits of Alpha Anywhere, Kazantzis says, 

"Thanks to Alpha Anywhere, we built a comprehensive system spanning countries and departments that has saved us time and money, lets us operate more efficiently, and improves our relationship with our customers."