Most asset managers at European utilities, telecoms,
transport and related service companies are aware of the benefits
of providingreal-time informationto field
engineers, but few are implementing strategies to make this
possible.
Failure to implement such
mobile information systems means companies in these sectors
with about 500
field workers are losing out on savings of about £1.3m a
year.
This is one of the key findings of a survey by research company
Coleman Parkes, which interviewed 292 managers at companies in
these sectors in the UK, France, Spain, Portugal, Finland, the
Netherlands and Sweden.
The research, commissioned by IT services company
LogicaCMG, looks at the challenges, performance and potential
for improvement for mobile field work on physical assets such as
pipes, cabling, and roads across Europe.
"We commissioned the research to get a better understanding of
the value of mobile technologies to companies that carry out field
work on physical assets across Europe," said Nigel Spooner, group
director for enterprise asset management at LogicaCMG.
He said most of the results were in line with LogicaCMG's
expectations. The research found that although most companies in
these sectors share the same needs and concerns, some were of
greater importance in some sectors than others.
The inability to reschedule workloads was the greatest concern
for utility companies (83%), access to real-time information was
most important to airports (84%), and improving customer
information in the field was the highest priority for telecoms
companies (86%) and utilities (84%).
However, the research found that relatively few companies had
any strategies in place to meet the needs they had identified.
"One of the most surprising findings was that an average of 46%
of companies surveyed did not yet have a single repository for
asset information. That is a significant proportion. We thought it
would be much less," said Spooner.
The research also found that most companies do not yet have a
strategy to integrate geospatial information relating to location
with other information about their assets.
"Without this, they will struggle to unlock the potential
productivity improvements of around 9% identified in the study,"
said Spooner.
On average, 54% of companies said that the increased use of
contractors meant that their systems did not get the right
information at the right time. This figure was the highest in the
utilities sector, where 84% reported this problem.
Spooner said although most asset managers recognised the
problem, many were being prevented from solving it for a variety of
reasons.
"Financial constraints are inevitably a factor for some despite
clear business cases. Technology is also evolving rapidly, so many
are adopting a wait-and-see approach in the hope of getting more
for less in future, but most simply do not have access to the right
information," he said.
The research report noted several new communications and
geospatial technologies had emerged in recent years to enable
companies to be more agile, backed by improved information exchange
between companies and workers in the field. Despite this, there had
been comparatively little investigation of the effectiveness of
mobile workforces across Europe.
For this reason, Spooner said LogicaCMG would make the research
report freely available. He said the finding would be of most use
to managers or directors of companies with large work crews
involved in construction, maintenance, or repair work and whose
activities were not yet optimised.