The cure for a workforce management headache? Go digital!

Learn how Slovakian energy firm VSD raised productivity and lowered costs with an electronic workforce management solution.

Managing a workforce is a complex operation that includes planning, work order implementation and controls. But it needn’t be a headache: Workforce management has benefited significantly from digitalization in recent years.

Slovakian energy company Východoslovenská distribučná, part of innogy (VSD) saw its productivity increase and its costs drop when Deutsche Telekom’s Slovakian subsidiary PosAm implemented an electronic workforce management solution for the field service in 2013. Last year, VSD extended this solution to other internal processes.

The workforce management problem
The Slovakian firm, which specializes in the distribution and supply of electricity, employs about 70 field workers in its metering service division. They address over 100,000 requests per year across Slovakia.

The previous, paper-based system for managing their activities was time-consuming, error-prone and prevented an optimal allocation of tasks. This quickly changed when PosAm digitized and automated the entire process.

The solution
The electronic workforce management system installed in 2013 introduced intelligent planning and automatic data collection to the field services unit. It works because: 

• It ensures that each task is assigned to the right employee, with the relevant tools and skill set, at the appropriate time. 
• To achieve this, the system automatically takes into account factors like the availability, competence and geographic location of field workers when planning and allocating tasks.
  
  

The spinoff for field agents
The system has made life easier for field agents too: 

• They now receive work orders directly on their mobile terminals.
• When they carry out installations, inspections or readings, all of the related data is automatically recorded: Client details as well as delivery and consumption data are transmitted directly to a mobile application.

The spinoff for customers 
The efficiency gains achieved by VSD since the digitization of its workforce management have led to cost savings for the company but also to better service for its customers: 

• Field missions can now be planned three times faster than before. 
• They can be completed more swiftly, with a proven productivity increase of more than 20 percent. 
• The automatic collection and centralization of data has all but eliminated the risk of errors in recorded meter information.

And now?
In 2017, VSD decided to scale up the solution to cover other fields of activity and tasked PosAm with upgrading the system accordingly. It again tasked PosAm with the upgrade.

“That is how, after four years of smooth collaboration, a satisfied customer selected us, among its many workforce management vendors, to be its main supplier of workplace management solutions,” said Juraj Pavol, Product manager at PosAm.