Innserve Orders VISITOUR Field Scheduling Solution
Reading, UK – Innserve, the drinks dispense technical services specialist, will upgrade its field force productivity and response management with VISITOUR. Extensive testing proved the dynamic scheduling solution enhances operational efficiency for more than 400 field-based maintenance and installation technicians.
Innserve is an established service provider specialising in the supply, installation and maintenance of beer and soft drinks dispense systems. Their mission is to ‘Keep Britain pouring’ across more than 90,000 premises in all parts of England, Scotland and Wales.
With requirements including real-time capacity optimisation, technician skills matching, and embedded route planning, Innserve has selected VISITOUR to provide a dynamic scheduling solution to be integrated with their existing job management system.
An initial Scheduling Test was followed by a comprehensive trial period spanning two months, where VISITOUR proved it could solve complex challenges throughout resource planning and in-day field service management.
With requirements including real-time capacity optimisation, technician skills matching, and embedded route planning, Innserve has selected VISITOUR to provide a dynamic scheduling solution to be integrated with their existing job management system.
An initial Scheduling Test was followed by a comprehensive trial period spanning two months, where VISITOUR proved it could solve complex challenges throughout resource planning and in-day field service management.
Replace manual planning and complex routing
“We had been relying on manual scheduling and route planning, which restricted our visibility of travel and idle time,” explains Alan Gormley, Director of Transformation at Innserve. “We wanted to increase the number of customers that we see on a daily basis and we knew a big part of increasing our productivity was to find a solution that would automatically allocate jobs to our field technicians in the most efficient way.”
Manual scheduling had led to challenges when attending reactive, in-day priority visits;
"We have three core job types; maintenance, installation, and service. Whilst the opening hours of premises restricts the times we can visit for planned work, in-day priority visits operate under strict SLAs. These can relate to gas safety and this requires a field technician to be properly trained and certified to work within a regulated environment.
Meeting these obligations meant our regular work was being pushed out of the schedule, thereby impacting on cost and efficiency."
Meeting these obligations meant our regular work was being pushed out of the schedule, thereby impacting on cost and efficiency."
Alan Gormley
Director of Transformation, Innserve
A dynamic scheduling proof of concept
The opportunity for automation and the proposition of a Scheduling Test attracted Innserve to Solvares. Working with Innserve’s IT, Operations, and Service Delivery teams, Solvares took historic planning data and presented the outcomes VISITOUR would have instead designed.
This included typical everyday field resourcing issues, such as prioritising critical reactive orders, re-optimising space left by last minute cancellations, and calculating the effects of increased task times on job completion results.
The results also illustrated the difference when actual time-of-day route planning is embedded and calculated into schedules.
This included typical everyday field resourcing issues, such as prioritising critical reactive orders, re-optimising space left by last minute cancellations, and calculating the effects of increased task times on job completion results.
The results also illustrated the difference when actual time-of-day route planning is embedded and calculated into schedules.
"We have tried other solutions in the past and found them somewhat inflexible. However, Solvares' Scheduling Test, compared against our own historic data, gave us the confidence to proceed with a trial. With the support from Solvares we quickly moved towards 99% of our service jobs becoming allocated automatically.
Across the two trial months we saw a marked improvement in our KPIs through using VISITOUR. Accurate planning led to a significant drop in travel time, and the required time on site. In some cases, our completed jobs per operative per shift increased by 20%!
With intelligent time-of-day routing, we’ve reduced idle time, and raised productivity within our planned work by a further 10%.
Most importantly, the flexibility is incredible. Our trial exposed previously hidden challenges around bundled work. VISITOUR had the power and functionality for us to tweak our workflows and solve these quickly."
Across the two trial months we saw a marked improvement in our KPIs through using VISITOUR. Accurate planning led to a significant drop in travel time, and the required time on site. In some cases, our completed jobs per operative per shift increased by 20%!
With intelligent time-of-day routing, we’ve reduced idle time, and raised productivity within our planned work by a further 10%.
Most importantly, the flexibility is incredible. Our trial exposed previously hidden challenges around bundled work. VISITOUR had the power and functionality for us to tweak our workflows and solve these quickly."
Alan Gormley
Director of Transformation, Innserve
Improving efficiency in field service operations
VISITOUR will enhance Innserve’s field performance with AI-enhanced transparent scheduling decisions, accurate travel times, and decisively calculating a more efficient use of the field force. It is using its new operational improvements for a competitive advantage; capitalising on the automation VISITOUR provides.
The transformation will be felt throughout the business, says Alan:
"With the integration to our job management system and our field technicians' mobile devices, we have the results to prove Solvares' scheduling automation is powering our operations for the better.
Dynamic scheduling with critical skills matching means our Planning team's effort is greatly reduced. Jobs are now cost-optimised into schedules, without the requirement to include 'buffers' for travel, meaning work is now balanced for our 400-strong field force.
The released capacity means Innserve has reached new levels of efficiency and productivity."
Dynamic scheduling with critical skills matching means our Planning team's effort is greatly reduced. Jobs are now cost-optimised into schedules, without the requirement to include 'buffers' for travel, meaning work is now balanced for our 400-strong field force.
The released capacity means Innserve has reached new levels of efficiency and productivity."
Alan Gormley
Director of Transformation, Innserve