Apa Nova Bucharest is optimizing the work of its field resources with the help of Bento Field Service Management

 

The Challenge

Apa Nova Bucharest is part of the Veolia group, a world leader in the provision water, energy and sanitation services, with a turnover of 25 billion dollars and 165,000 employees on 5 continents. In Romania, Veolia has a turnover of over 300 million euros annually and approximately 3,500 employees. As part of the concession contract concluded with the Municipality of Bucharest, Apa Nova undertook to observe more than 20 indicators tracking the quality of services provided throughout the concession period (2000-2025). However, without adequate measurement tools, the company could have risked failing to observe the criteria imposed by the Municipality of Bucharest. Apa Nova became aware of the obvious need for an IT solution that would monitor, centralize and automate all field operator interventions, with a response time in line with the provisions of the contract.

The Solution

To launch the project, Apa Nova Bucharest initiated a tender procedure, following which Bento was declared successful in September 2016. Bento decided to use its expertise in processes specific to utility companies in order to create a solution customized to suit the client’s needs. 16 developers, testers, analysts and system architects were assigned to this project. It involved analysis of all types of interventions, documents produced following interventions, means of travel to incident locations, data reporting and centralisation. Together with the client, we identified possibilities of optimization and extension of the project through interfacing with SAP IS-U – an integrated information system that operates the meters and the specific measurement systems, and that carries out automatic monthly billing based on indexes. Finally, acceptance of the project took place in just a few months. The production phase stated in March 2017, using 20 fully configured tablets, that are in operation 24 hours a day, in shifts.

Benefits

This solution resulted in significant improvement of the communication between dispatch and field resources. The system collects real-time information about incidents and displays the location of resources. When an incident is reported, resources closest to the place of intervention are sent to intervene. The system automatically remove overlapping or duplication of resources for the same intervention and recommends optimal routes depending on the quality, availability and distance from the incident. In addition, the management has a command panel to monitor the real-time resolution of field incidents. This solution resulted in a significant decrease of intervention time – which is now below 2 hours – one of the key indicators set under the concession contract.