Bredenoord

About Bredenoord

Everything revolves around energy. It’s what ensures people can live comfortably and it keeps the economy going. Through its solutions, Bredenoord provides power that makes it possible to conduct business in a successful and powerful manner. Especially in places where energy is not always a given. Bredenoord ensures entrepreneurs and institutions can work exactly as they like and that government organizations can do whatever they need to. The company’s Third Party Service Department enables this by providing service and maintenance for third-party-owned energy facilities.

The challenge

Bredenoord worked with a software package that primarily provides ERP functionality. This offered limited support for Field Service Management processes. As a result, the Third Party Service Department’s service assignments were carried out using analogue work orders. This made the process time-consuming, error-prone and unclear. Information was not available in real-time. Furthermore, the customer expects fast processing of invoicing and follow-up of any residual items.

“With the implementation of FSE, Bredenoord can empower its ambitions.”

 

Danny Davelaar – Manager Service International

Chosen solution

With FSE, a solution was chosen that establishes a uniform foundation for rapid international roll-out in the future. For example, terminology initially geared towards use within the Dutch organization, can easily be extended to other languages.

The planner has real-time insight into daily progress and the location of service engineers in the field. Work can be closely followed on the digital planning board, in the form of a Gantt-chart, where each status has its own recognisable colour. A map displayed beside the planning board shows assignment and mechanic locations. This allows planners to select the most suitable employee in the event of an urgent job.

Service assignments are planned in alignment with service mechanics’ availability and skills. If large equipment is needed to execute a job, it is reserved and linked to that job. At the start of the working day, the mechanic quickly sees on an iPad whether they need to attach a trailer to their bus.

• During work preparation, materials needed to successfully complete a job have been determined. The engineer makes consumes the allocated materials after obtaining them from the warehouse. In addition, the engineer can scan any additional used materials. The total of consumed materials and hours is automatically processed for administrative purposes.
• As a service to the customer, a report is generated showing an overview of work performed and materials consumed. In this report, the customer also sees the resulting maintenance or inspection list with his or her signature.
• A dashboard gives Bredenoord insight into the progress and completion of the work, technicians’ deployment and travel time, (un)successful execution and compliance with any contractual agreements.

Implementation

Bredenoord captured its requirements in user stories. Through intensive cooperation between Bredenoord and BlueHike, these user stories were discussed in a pre-project refinement phase. This ensured that FSE requirements and functionality were aligned.

In the early stages of the project, a multidisciplinary team carried out a Proof of Concept that demonstrated that the Field Service Edge solution could be correctly integrated with the existing ERP package without problems. Using an Agile working method, the team developed and successfully delivered the requirements over the course of ten sprints.

Results/benefits

• The engineer has all customer and object information available, enabling him/her to provide better customer service
• Integration with Bredenoord’s ERP system allows immediate processing of all transactional information
• Digital planning board with real-time insight allows more effective scheduling
• Planning optimization engine automatically creates the right link between order and engineer
• Digitalisation of the Field Service process makes paperwork redundant
• An integrated analytics dashboard enables fast adjustments
• A unified foundation has been laid so that future international roll-outs can be realised easily
• Improved professional customer-facing image