Northumbrian takes field service experiences to new heights
The UK-based water company migrates to the cloud-based Oracle Field Service to ensure rapid and positive responses to customers.
“In light of market challenges, we realized that a cloud solution would allow operators to deliver field work more efficiently, which is key to offering a first-class customer service. And it didn’t make sense to plug a legacy system into the other new technology solutions we had just invested in.”
Business challenges
Facing market challenges, Northumbrian needed a cloud solution to make field work more efficient. The water provider needed to upgrade from a legacy system to better complement other new technology the organization had already adopted.
We have embedded new and more efficient ways of managing processes exploiting the functionality available in the new solutions which is a massive cultural change for us, so we have a mix of internal and external resources focused on leading us through this change.
Why Northumbrian Water Chose Oracle
Along with avoiding the technical debt of integrating a legacy system with a new technology stack, Northumbrian decided to implement Oracle Field Service because it enabled business staff to easily configure the product, freeing technical resources that had been spent on workforce management to work on other high-profile projects.
In order to ensure fast, safe, efficient, and positive interactions between field workers and customers, Northumbrian Water needed a cloud adoption strategy that was flexible, focused on the utility industry, and would integrate seamlessly with any system. It also needed to offer a 360-degree view of the organization to replace inefficient and siloed business processes, while also delivering a digital experience that had a strong out-of-the-box features.
Results
Since implementing Oracle, Northumbrian has renewed its customer experience commitment with built-in, time-based machine learning and predictive features. The water company was able to create inbound and outbound integrations with Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing for more visibility into customer service.
In addition, the water utility developed a mobile phone app that integrates with Oracle Field Service. The app was not only convenient but also helped improve training for field workers, making it easier to capture more job site information to relay back to the utility.
Also, instead of relying on IT to manage the system back at the office, Oracle Field Service can be easily configured by functional resources, allowing IT staff to focus on innovation.
Once the implementation is complete, NWL expects to see a higher percentage of system-scheduled jobs and improved C-Mex scores which is the new industry measure for customer service.