EDF
Energyhas expanded its use of automated
scheduling and routing software for maintenance work to manage a
500-strong field salesforce.
EDF Energy has bought extra licences of Clicksoftware's
optimised scheduling solution,
ClickSchedule, that will allow it to route and schedule
door-to-door field sales staff who encourage households to switch
energy provider.
Using the software to coordinate the presence of sales visits
with local marketing programmes will increase its market share, the
company hopes.
ClickSchedule optimises variables such as resource availability,
skills, location and equipment with real-time events such as
unscheduled emergencies or jobs that take longer than expected to
produce individual work schedules.
Lisa Lewis, EDF Energy project manager, said having a single
platform for managing the firm's field resources meant it could
leverage all of its resources to deliver improved customer
service.
EDF Energy has been using ClickSchedule since 2001 to support
multi-utility meter reading services to UK energy suppliers.
ClickSchedule provides 450 meter readers with 150 to 200 jobs a day
in urban areas to produce up to 10 million meter readings a year,
of which 80% are electricity and 20% gas.
It expanded its application in 2005 in the meter operations
group, and ClickSchedule now schedules up to 5,500 jobs a week for
225 technicians.
EDF Energy generates nearly a quarter of the UK's electricity,
employs nearly 20,000 people, and has nearly eight million
customers.
