PayPoint Limited is one of the UK’s leading premier
branded retail networks for the easy local payment of household bills, mobile top ups and in their latest venture, the convenient withdrawal of cash from instore ‘link’ cash machines. PayPoint commenced trading in 1996 and initially collected payments through its network of retail agents for its founder client investors. Some of these investors included British Gas, BBC TV licensing and London Electricity.
Since these humble beginnings PayPoint has massively added to its existing customer base and has now grown its retail agency network, developed many new services and now has over 500 clients. These latter developments have seen PayPoint develop strong client relationships with many of the UK and Irelands major energy, cable and telephony companies. This client list also extends to numerous water companies, local authorities (for rents and council taxes.) PayPoint’s clients pay fees for each collected payment and for the last financial year the company processed over 259 million payments, with an approximate value of £2.9 billion.
The Challenge PayPoint have approximately 17,000 outlets using their payment collection systems. These include around 14,000 retail agents with dedicated PayPoint terminals and 4,800 outlets with connections to PayPoint systems. Pre Portech solution, PayPoint collected their data via a variety of manual means including mainly paper based formats such as A4 questionnaires (with tick boxes) and then followed by the manual input of data. Manual analysis followed this before results could be reported back to the relevant departments and sometimes this could take up to 10 days from the initial data collection.
Problems associated with these methods included:
1. Delay in the collection of data which eventually became out dated.
2. Issues related to storage and handling of large volume of paper based forms.
3. Human errors due to unrecognisable handwriting and typing errors.
4. Duplicate work procedure due to re- entry of data.
The call planner software impressively schedules jobs automatically focusing on user based parameters. At the start of the day the start time and mileage is entered and confirmed. The calls can be sorted by name, post code and even due date within the post code. When a call type is selected the app determines the form to be completed or the Field Service Executive (FSE) is presented with a list of all forms available. An option is also available to show all completed but not closed jobs, allowing the FSE to return at a later date fulfilling the objective of the call. Once loaded onto the device the field personnel can then upload the information remotely (from home) outlining their days activity and events. Data is transmitted from the device in real time over the 4G network and any updates from head office are also downloaded during the session. Signatures are instant as customers can now sign directly onto the PDA doing away with pre-historic paper based formats also dates and times are now an accurate reflections of the day’s events.
There is no longer an issue with any missing or irretrievable data/documentation as now everything is recorded and then stored electronically.
Other benefits have included:
1. Recording of business development prospects.
2. More efficient time and territory management (sales and drive time).
3. Stock management (volume and value of stock).
4. Mileage and expense monitoring.
5. Mobile customer detail database.
6. Accurate Data entry
7. Reduction in time of gathered data being transformed to business management information.
In Conclusion Portech has implemented a bespoke mobile software solution for PayPoint that has completely re invented the way in which the company works.
Simon Watts at PayPoint comments, ‘Portech did a fantastic job with a second to none service. The guys are approachable and adapt to change, ensuring complete customer satisfaction.’ adding Portech are good partners to have on board.’
By utilising the benefits of a mobile computer system many of their paper based systems are a thing of the past. FSE’s are now more productive and reporting and analysing data has been made simpler via the electronic format.
Webster and Horsfall, a 297-year-old Birmingham company
at the forefront of wire manufacturing, has transformed its stock taking with a new stock management system from mobile computer solutions provider Portech Systems.
Responsible for the first ever transatlantic cable and based in the city of Birmingham, Webster and Horsfall combines its wealth of experience with state of the art modern technology to manufacture and supply the highest quality wire products for a diverse range of applications such as shipping, mining, oil drilling, orthodontics and green energy.
While manufacturing will remain at the core of its business model, the company has started a new venture into the distribution of steel wire and wire rope. With over 5,000 items of stock and a new diversification strategy underway, Webster and Horsfall recognised that accuracy of stock was of increasing importance, and needed to transform its stock take to improve visibility of products for sales teams.
Portech’s dedicated mobile solutions team developed a bespoke and flexible software for data collection that supported Webster and Horsfall’s custom business practices and used specific terms relevant to its industry. To speed up the development process, Portech complemented the new software with some tried and trusted communications modules that its team had developed over the years.
The software was loaded onto durable, ruggedised mobile computers with integrated barcode scanners from Unitech.
Portech specified and recommended the devices, which allowed both touch screen and keypad operation. Portech also provided durable labels and tags attached to the wires.
The new system was piloted before being rolled out. As expected there was some initial resistance, however Portech trained employees to demonstrate ease-of-use. Once the staff realised that data collection would no longer be an arduous task, and information was fed into the back-office system immediately, they embraced the system.
Robert Horsfall, Director at Webster and Horsfall commented: “We selected Portech as it is an agile family run business, just like ours. The team is friendly and personable, and very knowledgeable. The offer of a bespoke and flexible solution was something that we had not believed was possible, but with Portech’s specialist help we have transformed our stocking processes, which are now accurate, quick and smooth.”
The new system is saving Webster and Horsfall both time and money. Whereas previously, the whole site shut down for five days during stock take, now the work has been reduced to two working days, and the success of the new system has enabled Webster and Horsfall to conduct quarterly counts, and a new system is also being put in place for perpetual counts.
Sales teams at the manufacturer also have increased visibility and can track products easily to respond to urgent calls. Webster and Horsfall is therefore able to offer its customers a better service as can turn around orders on a faster basis. For example, if a crane goes down on port or construction site, the manufacturer can now locate and ship products quicker than before, helping to keep customers happy and improve its reputation as a trusted supplier.
The system has been so successful that Webster and Horsfall is now working with Portech to conduct perpetual stock takes, with a new version of the software being developed for the hand scanners that automatically checks physical and system stock.
Rather that quarterly stocktaking, sample checks will be made every week, and this new system should be in place by the end of 2017, with employees currently relabelling all bins with bar codes.
Vimto
Out of Home (OoH), the 40-year veteran drinks industry supplier has consolidated its distribution, scheduling, billing and stock management with Portech Systems Field Service Executive (FSE) workflow management system. Following Vimto OoH’s acquisition of frozen drinks supplier The Noisy Drinks Co. in 2015 the company had been operating a combination of paper-based job management and a previous version of FSE developed for the frozen drinks market. Now, Portech’s new FSE serves all of Vimto OoHs mobile field staff and provides a unified view of stock, work and assets across all parts of the business.
The new FSE system provides a centrally managed data collection point that communicates with Vimto OoHs range of mobile computing devices and eliminates the need for drivers to make multiple return visits to a depot each day. The system also integrates with Vimto OoHs Sage invoicing system and legacy IT systems, reducing the time taken to generate invoices and improving data quality.Additional benefits for Vimto OoH include: Ability to handle between 850-900 jobs per week. Accurate records of stock, assets and maintenance history. Diarising scheduled maintenance calls and ensuring that they are made. Improved visibility over mobile workforce. Maximised active time for field engineers. Better information available to field based team.
Graeme Hodges, Internal Operations Manager commented:
“Portech is a great team. The support is perfect for our needs, very flexible and responsive. With remote access to servers and data, the Portech team can dial in very quickly and securely to help us service our customers.”
“They really understand our business model and requirements. This knowledge has been built up over several years, and we trust them to deliver new features and functionality to improve our business processes with the bespoke system they have developed for us.”
The system has been rolled out onto Vimto OoH’s existing mobile and rugged handhelds. Portech advised Vimto OoH on hardware selection for temporary drivers and the FSE system also runs on the ruggedised ToughTab tablets procured for those drivers. Shaz Naeem, Managing Director, Portech Systems, added: “We had been working with The Noisy Drinks Co. for over ten years and when the Vimto OoH team saw the effectiveness of FSE they recognised that it was the right workflow and stock management solution to help them grow the business further.
“Vimto OoH is just one of the companies that is benefitting from Portech’s expertise in transforming paper-based stock and work management systems with mobile technology that streamlines job management and eliminates the need to shut down operations for stock-taking.”
The Delta Music group
has over three decades of experience in delivering home entertainment products to markets around the world. Delta Music plc is the UK arm of the company – which also has operations in Germany and the USA – and it has long been established as a supplier of top class audio and visual home entertainment products. Their producers, engineers and designers, use state-of-the-art digital technology to create the best looking and best sounding products on the market.
Their extensive catalogue of CDs boast a wide range of genres including classical, pop, rock, jazz and new age, and has made them one of the leaders in their field. Their DVD catalogue has also grown dramatically over the last five years and offers a wide selection of TV programmes, children’s, special interest, documentaries, music, classic film, and exclusive content.
In the Uk Delta Music’s products are sold into multiple stores such as HMV, Virgin and WH Smith and have a dedicated team of merchandisers that are responsible for helping retailers maximize sales by regularly servicing and updating each outlet with new stock. Delta operates from offices, and 40,000 sq. ft of warehousing, located in the South of London and as well as serving retail and wholesale accounts, they also provide a bespoke racking service, namely Delta Music Merchandising (DMM) for a number of clients.
Delta’s continuing goal is to develop new and exciting products for the entertainment marketplace in order to serve their customers’ needs.
At the time Delta were using profiles to represent the merchandise in the racks. At this point the merchandiser was using a manual profile sheet for each rack. From this manual profile sheet the merchandiser had to calculate how much of the aforementioned merchandise (cd’s tapes, DVD’s etc) had been sold.
From this information the merchandiser was also to conduct manual stock auditing procedure calculations such as maximum quantity per rack and also re-order levels and varying demand trends by product(s).
On average one order was producing 11 order sheets that then had to be finalised upon completion by another daily call report, outlining the different items of stock that had been sold that day. Once this report had been collated it was the merchandiser’s responsibility to then fax or dispatch the form via mail to head office. With a single merchandiser visiting approximately 7 outlets per day the above paper based reporting format was both an administration and a data input burden.
As a day of the existing method resulted in head office receiving approximately 825 pages of manual data that had to be inputted each evening onto the central database system manually.
Some other problems faced during a typical day are summarised below:
• Delays in receiving the blank Profile forms from head office.
• Logistical issues at head office in regards to sending new profile forms to mobile staff.
• Typical problems relating to manual form filling i.e., lost paper work, incorrect order quantities etc.
• Collating information at the end of the working day could take an additional 2 hours to summarise correctly.
• Escalating telephony costs in faxing an average of 55 sheets at the end of the day.
• Head office receiving on a daily basis 55 sheets from up to 15 merchandisers resulting in 825 pages that required manually sorting and entering onto the centralised database.
• All of the above resulting in lengthy order turnaround at Deltas’ expense.
• Un-authorised returns of products which also lacked any accompanying paper work.
The Solution Portech have presented Delta Music with their m-sales mobile solution with Windows mobile computers. The bespoke software has been tailored to mimic the profile concept, considerably reducing the amount of problematic paperwork. The simple user friendly system requires the merchandiser to work down the profile on the screen merely entering the quantity of merchandise found in the racks and the customised software generates an order by profile. The daily call sheet is sort by price and effectively summarized at the touch of a button eliminating the ever time consuming process of manual calculations. m-sales have enabled Delta Music to control returns more effectively by restricting profiles for which items can be returned. This has eliminated the returns of items which are not allowed to be sent back to Delta Music by the retailer. The returns process ends with the printing of a detailed summary which is sent back with the returned items allowing the warehouse staff to reconcile the details with the central database. Another vital component of m-sales utilised by the merchandisers is the stock take functionality.
The merchandiser can carry out a stock take on the fly while visiting the retailers which in turn gives a snap shot back at base of the stock levels at the shops.
The merchandiser effortlessly connects the mobile computer to the telephone line, thus connecting to the central database and downloads the necessary information. During this session any updates such as profiles or new customers are downloaded automatically onto the mobile computer. And all collected data during the day such as sales orders and stock information are uploaded from the mobile computer. Another benefit of the solution was the facility or the mobile workers to send and recieve emails via the mobile computer, something which was not avialble before.
Data received back at the server end is automatically integrated into the companies account package hence allowing the swift production of invoices and management reports and hence removing the need of additional manual data entry into the central database.
Conclusion Having moved away from paper based formats Delta Music now enjoy a tailor made mobile solution, eliminating the tedious ineffective disadvantages in which the manual system created. With all the information from the mobile computer automatically updating Delta’s accounts system, staff moral and productivity has increased with the company operating more efficiently and cost effectively.
This sentiment being relayed by Nicola Searle – Assistant FD Delta Music Ltd who said “The software that they designed made a massive difference to the business. Jobs that were taking 2 days now take 15minutes! Hooray!”
Lowri Beck Services Limited was established in 1996
as an independent meter reading company in the newly deregulated energy market. Today, Lowri Beck provides an efficient, cost-effective metering and business solutions service, which extends beyond utilities to all companies that need the accurate collection, management and transfer of data electronically.
Headquartered in Lancashire, UK, the company employs 350 mobile field staff and its customers include EDF Energy, Npower, Scottish and Southern Energy, Scottish Power and Calorgas.
Lowri Beck installed the first version of PortechFMS in 2003. It has since proven to be a cost-effective, flexible and easy-to-use mobile workforce solution for all of Lowri Beck’s field work needs.
The Challenge Lowri Beck has achieved steady year on year growth since its foundation, this has meant that it has also increased its field based staff coverage to meet its customer’s needs for UK wide data collection. In early 2005 Lowri Beck realised that their mobile workforce software was not going to meet its future needs much beyond the end of 2006.
Some of the areas which were highlighted as future limitations were:
• Speed of data transfer.
• Number of Staff in the field.
• Scalability of the Communications module.
• Functionality.
• Capability of communications with field staff. With a growing workforce and client base, Lowri Beck needed to continue to guarantee its customers a very high level of service, with the ability to:
• Provide full visibility over its mobile workforce productivity.
• Maximise the field operatives’ active time.
• Reduce costs per visit.
• Improve information available to field based staff.
Microsoft’s .Net technology allowed Portech to make better use of the handheld hardware and the back end communications software increasing the speed of both usage and data communications. With the speed of growth being experienced, Lowri Beck required partnership with a company which provided excellent before and after sales service, outstanding technical knowledge, experience in mobile software and the ability to support Lowri Beck’s needs as the company grew and as its customers’ requirements changed.
Portech’s ‘can do’ attitude and responsive technical support in its previous contact with Lowri Beck was crucial in winning the software development contract. Portech’s size also counted in its favour. As a small company, it offered Lowri Beck a bespoke solution and the agility and flexibility that its competitors could not match.
The Solution The PortechFMS software solution is a centrally configurable data collection application for handheld PCs. Its primary role is as a workflow management tool to organise and handle job tasks for the service industry. Other features include the ability to provide Lowri Beck with a real-time insight into how field staff are operating, allowing staff to send messages to head office, book holidays and submit timesheets and mileage each evening.
Regular backups, security of information and centralised management of the software are crucial to Lowri Beck’s requirements, with over the air updates to both the software itself and job definitions.
Lowri Beck found PortechFMS simple to install and operate on its fleet of pocket PCs and rugged handheld devices.
The PortechFMS solution also offered Lowri Beck enhanced functionality with features including:
• Work Navigator – a list of jobs sent from head office in a tree structure, grouped and separated by due date, postcode or job type.
• Validation – data is validated as it is entered to ensure data integrity.
• Tight integration with the mobile phone hardware built into the devices to enable business and emergency only phone calls, and track calls, contact field personnel at any time, while maintaining control over call charges.
• Scheduled download of field staff activity to monitor productivity every hour or on demand.
• Communications in the field which avoids paperwork and mobile field staff only uploading information at the end of the day.
• Bespoke screens for different client companies allowing field staff to service multiple clients per day.
In September 2006 Portech delivered a PortechFMS, on time and within budget, which implemented all of the requested features. Roll out of the software was done with a minimum of disruption by Lowri Beck’s Hand-Held Helpdesk team. Today PortechFMS serves all of Lowri Beck’s mobile field staff.
Tracy Sanderson, Business Analyst at Lowri Beck commented: “Portech has been essential to the success of our business. The PortechFMS ensures the delivery of business critical information to our customers and automates this process through its simple to use mobile workforce technology. The system is constantly improving and the service is incomparable – the Portech team are friendly and approachable and work with us on a true partnership basis. The PortechFMS has improved our competitiveness: we find that our field staff can attend more calls, even adhoc calls, we can update the mobile software remotely, we have access to full communications while our staff are in the field, and our operatives are equipped with an easy to manage console which speeds up data input and reduces cost per call”.
The Future Portech continues to work with Lowri Beck to deliver mobile solutions. The existing solution is to be enhanced further through the introduction of GPS mapping. This additional feature will provide Lowri Beck’s operatives with real time location and route information to speed up call times.
Chris Walker, Operations Director continued: “PortechFMS is a strategic solution for Lowri Beck and will remain at the core of our future mobile workforce strategies as we continue to grow. It has consistently proven to best fit our needs and integrates easily with our home-grown databases”.