Recent Project Profiles

ScottishPower is the UK's leading supplier of energy products, serving more than 5.1 million domestic and business customers. In 2006, ScottishPower was acquired by Iberdrola, one of the world’s biggest renewable energy companies.

ScottishPower field technicians had many paper-based work practices, resulting in low productivity in a wide range of daily remote tasks. There was an abundance of unnecessary dead time (returning to base, travel time and waiting for information to become available,) plus additional fuel and wear cost. Data inaccuracy and job-scheduling delays were common.

ScottishPower selected the Advanced Mobile - Packaged Mobile Application Platform for its organization-wide mobile application strategy, and procured an enterprise license to mobilize unlimited lines of business. Initially, ScottishPower leveraged the framework to extend its inspection based asset management system while incorporating full integration with ESRI GIS spatial maps. Today, ScottishPower has five independent and unique Windows and Windows Mobile-based applications deployed, all with a common look and feel.

The applications are Mobile GIS for Inspections, Satellite Navigations, Field Sales, Helicopter Inspections and Work Management. Each application mobilizes separate lines of business; all coordinated through the Advanced Mobile central integration engine to a variety of both standards-based and proprietary ScottishPower database systems.

INVESCO is one of the world's largest mutual-fund companies, marketing its products under the AIM, INVESCO and Atlantic Trust brands.

INVESCO was spending an excess amount of time completing IT asset inventories and related asset-management tasks. Since all asset management processes were paper-based, illegible handwriting often led to errors and overall asset-inventory data was rarely accurate.

INVESCO chose the Advanced Mobile - Packaged Mobile Application Platform, which was configured to meet INVESCO’s unique business-process requirements for Mobile Asset Management. The resulting solution is integrated with the Oracle E-Business Suite's Financial and Asset Tracking business applications.  Specifically, the Mobile Asset Management solution automates previously manual intensive processes for asset receipts, asset movement, asset inventories and asset retires. By leveraging bar-code scanning throughout the solution, operations are more efficient and data accuracy is improved to ensure every IT and facilities asset is tracked and visible throughout the INVESCO organization. The synchronization logic of the solution leverages a disconnected, or "right-time," connection paradigm, which eliminates INVESCO’s dependency on real-time wireless networks.

CoServ Electric provides reliable electric power to more than 135,000 residential, commercial and industrial members across six counties in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. It is the second-largest cooperative in the Lone Star state.

CoServ wanted to automate its manual, paper-based work processes for managing daily remote service orders. Field technicians were accruing costly travel time to and from the office for the sole purpose of retrieving paper service orders. In parallel, CoServ wanted to process service-order assignments with the single click of a button, as opposed to the exhaustive paper-trail exchange it had in place.

CoServ selected Blue Dot and the Advanced Mobile - Packaged Mobile Application Platform and configured a Mobile Work Management solution with the unique added capability to electronically assign work orders to individual field technicians. The mobile application, optimized for a rugged tablet computer, automates the review and capture of all service-order information, including account data, account history, parts usage, labor, comments and job status. The data is collected on the tablet device, then synchronized over a cellular network to ensure CoServ‘s customer service and management personnel can see it in a timely manner. A Work Assigner Plug-In was designed and built to interface with Blue Dot’s  Mobile Command Center, enabling a CoServ administrator to assign and manage service orders. The Mobile Command Center also
provides CoServ with standard modules for mobile device management and mobile-
application provisioning.

Duro-Last Roofing Inc. is a leading provider of custom-fabricated, reinforced and thermoplastic roofing systems.

A review of its field-inspection process showed Duro-Last was taking excessive time completing seven different paper-based inspection reports during onsite customer visits. Basic handwriting illegibility, paperwork handoff processes and re-keying of inspection data were prone to error, resulting in noncompliant inspections data being entered into Duro-Last’s corporate database systems.

Duro-Last implemented the Advanced Mobile – Packaged Mobile Application Platform for its organization-wide mobile inspections initiative and configured the solution to convert all paper-based inspections forms to electronic applications. The resulting solution is optimized for Windows-based rugged PCs and automates the collection and synchronization of bidirectional inspection data in a real-time connectivity environment. Additionally, each mobile inspection application enables Duro-Last field inspectors to assess and document roof conditions (including on-site sketches of damage), capture photos and record signatures acknowledging completion of inspections.

Beyond the initial solution, Duro-Last continues to benefit from a configurable platform that enables its internal IT organization to modify existing forms, add new inspection processes and even develop entirely new mobile applications for other business units.

Scottish Water provides water and wastewater services to 2.2 million households across a geographic area one-third the size of Britain.

Scottish Water had antiquated, paper-based work processes for managing day-to-day remote tasks. Field technicians received all tasks for the day via manual paper tickets. Emergency-service tickets previously required individual phone calls, relying on a technician's personal notes to properly record information. Also, many of the processes required manual deprogramming of data before the information was available for customer-service and reporting purposes.

Scottish Water implemented the Advanced Mobile – Packaged Mobile Application Platform and procured an enterprise license for an organization-wide, work management mobility project. Initially, Advanced Mobile was leveraged to extend Scottish Water's work and asset-management systems, automating a wide range of remote tasks. The Mobile Work Management solution runs on a mixture of Windows and Windows Mobile-based handheld devices and tablet PCs.  It expedites the process of assigning work orders directly to field technicians and increases efficiency by applying more accurate labor costs to assets, speeding up completion of
work orders from the field to back-office systems and significantly reducing the need
for manual deprogramming.

Hunt Refining Company is a petroleum refining and marketing company that owns and operates a 52,000-barrel-per-day refinery and provides its customers with a variety of high-quality products such as gasoline, fuel and oil.

The organization found it was spending a considerable amount of excess time managing its storeroom inventory and purchasing unnecessary stock.  All storeroom transactions were paper-based, prone to error and not recorded into back-end systems appropriately.  This resulted in inaccurate inventory levels, unnecessary stock orders and delays in critical maintenance.

Hunt Refining implemented the Advanced Mobile – Packaged Mobile Application Platform as its enterprise-wide, packaged mobile-application platform. The solution was configured to operate on Windows Mobile-based rugged handhelds leveraging Wi-Fi (real-time) communications for all synchronization processes. Specifically, the mobile application was configured to drive efficiency through the use of bar-code scanning. It automates storeroom issues, inventory adjustments, transfers, cycle counts and part look-ups. Once the information is collected on the mobile device, the data is immediately synchronized and integrated with Hunt’s JD Edwards ERP system.

EKPC is a not-for-profit generation and transmission utility that generates energy and ships it to cooperatives, which then distribute it to retail customers. Today, EKPC provides wholesale energy and services to 16 cooperatives through power plants, peaking units, hydropower and more than 2,800 miles of transmission lines.

EKPC has contracted Blue Dot’s Professional Services Group to design and implement a Mobile Workforce Management Solution to handle a wide range of mobile tasks in work management, inspections, inventory management and asset management.  All mobile functionality will be fully integrated into the PeopleSoft 9.0 Financial - Supply Chain - Asset Lifecycle Management product applications.

Unique to this project, Blue Dot will incorporate the ability to view equipment in the field using GIS mapping technology. Providing the EKPC field technicians with a complete set of mapping, operational and infrastructure data will further increase their productivity and provide EKPC with an unparalleled return on investment.

All of the mobile applications delivered to EKPC will be managed and supported by Blue Dot’s Mobile Command Center.  Specifically, the Command Center handles sophisticated mobile-device management, application provisioning, reporting and overall system monitoring.

Norfolk Southern Corporation is one of the nation’s premier transportation companies.  Its Norfolk Southern Railway subsidiary operates approximately 21,000 route miles in 22 states and the District of Columbia, serves every major container port in the eastern United States and provides superior connections to western rail carriers.

Norfolk Southern has contracted Blue Dot’s Professional Services Group to design and implement a Mobile Workforce Management solution to help track locomotive maintenance.  The solution will be designed and built with Blue Dot’s Advanced Mobile – Packaged Mobile Application Platform to help track parts and handle both repair and replacement within specific work orders.  The locomotive-maintenance application will run on rugged mobile devices and initiate access to work orders for individual locomotives.  Once a work order is made available on the mobile device, the user will drill down to perform actions on unique parts that need to be replaced or repaired.  Information about the parts can be saved and submitted to the Norfolk Southern’s back-end systems through a unique messaging client.

Since the initial solution was built and implemented with the Advanced Mobile – Packaged Mobile Application Platform, Norfolk Southern will benefit from having an enterprise mobile infrastructure to facilitate the growth of new mobile applications while simultaneously integrating to multiple back-end applications and systems.