When field work translates into double work

One of the world’s largest food and beverage companies was looking to increase field technician productivity and simplify their work lives. Technicians work on service requests that often require them to fix machines at client locations. This includes manually tracking their tasks, maintaining a record of spare parts and tools required, and filling out forms and time sheets when they return to their base location.

The cumbersome task was heavily dependent on the technicians’ memory and discretion. The food and beverage leader was keen to deploy a solution to reduce technician efforts and streamline the reporting required. The solution needed to be available on handheld mobile devices to automatically record travel and work time to reduce the burden on technicians.

The company decided that a scalable, flexible low-code platform like Mendix was the right approach, but it needed an experienced partner to develop the type of native mobile application required.

Reducing manual work with Mendix

Atos was engaged to build a Mendix-based mobile app to be downloaded and installed on handheld devices carried by the company’s field technicians. The Mendix low-code platform enables users with limited or no coding expertise to quickly create full-featured applications using pre-configured modules and workflows.

This solution enables field technicians to monitor and review job requests and update their information on-the-go. They can raise and resolve issues specific to their task list and the machines at customer locations. In addition, the app also records the distance traveled and hours worked for each service request with only a few clicks.

It works in both online and offline modes, ensuring no information is lost due to network constraints or lost connectivity. The app simply stores the data locally, then synchronizes once it is back online.

Working smarter, not harder

As a result of the new solution, the food and beverage company’s field technicians have seen an overall boost in productivity. They can now avoid the duplicate effort of manually recording hours, mileage and parts in a logbook, then re-entering the information upon returning to base.

The mobile app also provides better operational transparency, accurately recording key stats like repair times, travel, parts consumption and others, enabling better record keeping and more informed business planning. Because the app doesn’t require connectivity, field technicians are free to complete their tasks wherever they are — without the inconvenience of waiting for a network to be available.

Finally, because the solution is built on a low-code platform, business users can easily maintain and update the app or roll-out new features without relying on skilled developers.