The VINCI Energies Group has more than 83,800 workers and 1,800 business units spread across 56 countries. Sotécnica, one of the group’s companies in Portugal, specialises in maintenance, HVAC services, electrical installations and energy. Despite being one of the main players in the multi-technical services market, clients complained about one thing.
Technicians acted fast to get the job done, but the entire quoting process was slow.
This problem, which became so obvious to their clients, was only the most visible consequence of an enormous administrative burden in the back office. Every day, thousands of work orders (WOs) accumulated to approve, in a mix of preventive maintenance tasks and urgent breakdowns, with the extra challenge of managing everything that was happening on the field.
Many WOs were still on paper. Field technicians were not always able to communicate with the back office to get updates. The client, in turn, was unable to follow the status of their requests.
Evolution had become a priority, motivated by three factors, which, until then, had conditioned day-to-day operations:
- excessively bureaucratic process
- software with little portability
- communication failures
When Sotécnica decided to look for a new maintenance management software solution, they needed to tackle these three issues. The new solution had to automate administrative processes, be mobile-friendly, and compatible with carrying out operations on the field, with the bonus, whenever possible, of improving their clients’ experience.
Infraspeak was up to the task. In January 2019, they started a pilot project on two contracts. The teams tried the solution – technicians, managers and contract managers – to make a choice that could benefit the entire operation. The decision to implement Infraspeak in the rest of the country was unanimous.
Due to the inventory’s size, the process was carried out in several stages. The first was uploading all information to Infraspeak in a structured way, with new parameters and associated NFC tags. Then, there was the standardization of WOs by assets and, finally, the migration to Infraspeak. After 3 or 4 months, the Sotécnica’s units had already received training and were using the new platform.
As Infraspeak allows for the aggregation of several assets in the same WO, Sotécnica reduced the work orders for preventive maintenance by 87.93%.
This significant reduction in administrative burden freed up time to tend to other requests. Sotécnica’s team is much quicker to respond to new requests, WOs are no longer on paper, and all information about the equipment is centralised in a single, cloud-based platform. In fact, with NFC tags, even technicians take less time to open and close jobs.
“Both web and Android versions are user-friendly, intuitive. Compared to other systems, designing the PMP is extremely simple. ”
– Daurísio Eliandro Ferreira, Operational Technician
There is a guarantee that there will be no loss of information and that each work order’s status can be tracked in real time. Communication between the field team and the back office has become more assertive. Reports, previously printed and delivered on paper, are available digitally after the work is completed. There was a significant reduction in the use of paper, which is aligned with the strong environmental commitment of Sotécnica and its clients. Clients have access to information and they can follow the entire process, which provides them with a more integrated experience.
Another welcome surprise when implementing Infraspeak was the ease of integrating with other tools. In the field, they integrate Infraspeak with Centralised Technical Management (CTM) software, while in the back office the highlight is the integration of the billing software with the Infraspeak Sales app, which facilitates the entire budgeting and billing process.
“Today we have a more reliable, centralised and accessible process for all parties involved in each of the contracts. Not only on the field, which is where things happen, but also in our back office, where the sales process has become much more fluid.”
– Miguel Macedo, Business Unit Manager
What’s next? Sotécnica’s managers maintain the intention of using Infraspeak Direct™ to communicate with clients, not only to speed up breakdown reports, but also to send quotes and continue to streamline operations. And we are sure that as the Infraspeak Platform evolves, there will be more surprises in the future.
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