In São Paulo, one house is robbed every hour and the country has homicide rates 30 times higher than in Europe. Information like this released by the Public Security Secretariats and revealed by the 2018 Atlas of Violence helps to understand the Brazilian concern for security. In this vacuum, monitored alarm companies continue to sell, even in times of crisis. According to data from the Brazilian Association of Electronic Security Systems Companies, four years ago the segment earned R$5.1 billion, a respectable figure.
ADT, a Johnson Controls group company, is a pioneer and world leader in monitored alarms, the most widely used security system in the world. It has been recognized in several countries since 1874. It began operations in Brazil in 2001 and is prepared to serve its customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
The growth of the business and the emergence of new technologies required the adaptation of all the company’s systems, including the automation of the Technical Area. “In 2015, we began a technological overhaul of our entire portfolio. We had a completely wired installation with analog communication and no interactivity, and that had to change. We started using wireless systems with exclusive devices and an app option to have greater interaction with the customer,” said Maurício Dantas, Corporate Technician at ADT.
No more paper forms
One of the ADT team’s priorities was to automate the management of field resources. Dantas says that the technicians’ day-to-day work involved receiving maintenance and installation requests, but that the service orders were filled out by hand and often in illegible handwriting. “It didn’t make sense to keep paper and service orders filled out in a way that was almost impossible to understand. It was out of this need that we came up with 3CON and OfficeTrack, with the initial idea of having an electronic form that would replace paper,” he recalled. OfficeTrack is a state-of-the-art application, developed by the Israeli company OfficeCore, which manages the entire workforce and field resources.
The executive says that they did a trial with OfficeTrack to see how the implementation of the electronic form would be in practice and to prove the return on investment. “We started between February and April 2017 with just five technicians using the electronic forms to test the application. We were even able to know where the technician was, which was already a breakthrough, because we didn’t have this control,” he recalled.
After completing the tests, and satisfied with the results, all ADT technicians started using the app, including features such as routing, which optimizes routes and time in traffic, increasing productivity. “Thanks to routing, we’ve seen a 14% gain in the number of technicians. It’s as if we’d gained one and a half more technicians and we’ve also managed to reduce mileage by 14% and travel time by 11%,” said Dantas.
After the initial implementation phase, ADT began to use practically all of OfficeTrack’s features, such as fleet management, which, according to the executive, is fundamental to meeting occupational safety requirements. “The app monitors all the activities during the day, and the technicians receive the work order on their cell phones. The schedule information goes to the customers and everything appears in the report after the job is completed, including the productivity and performance of the technicians,” he said.
The executive said that in the first year of using the app, one of the main benefits he saw was real-time control over field activities. “This is 80% of my success, because it gives us the chance to manage unforeseen events. If I see that the technician isn’t going to be able to attend to the job, I can pass it on to another professional without interfering with the schedule of the client who is waiting. This has led to an increase in productivity, a reduction in idle time, a reduction in labor risks – thanks to the electronic point function – as well as a reduction in travel time,” he said. These advantages helped calculate the ROI – Return of Investments: “OfficeTrack paid for itself in 4 months,” he revealed.
He also highlights the ease of integration with other systems and the fact that the application is user-friendly and interactive, whether on mobile devices or on the web platform, which greatly reduces the learning curve. Dantas also draws attention to the manufacturer’s good reception of updates and continuous improvements, as well as the support that is always available. “We like to give ideas about improvements and new features in the application, such as ‘lunch time’, because we need to get the technicians to stop for lunch,” he said.
Challenges and the future
Maurício Dantas says that the biggest challenge he faced in this digital transformation was in terms of changing the culture. “Our biggest challenge was the internal resistance of some technicians to abandon paper forms and start working with smartphones and mobile apps,” he explained. Another issue was the need, at certain times, for IT professionals to be present to customize and integrate the system. “For the application to be able to adapt to the needs of the company and its clients, it is extremely important to have the help of IT professionals, at least at the start of operations,” he warned.
The focus now, according to the executive, is to complete the integration with the back-office and legacy systems and start using OfficeTrack’s advanced features, such as Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA Module) and Booking. “Our business is very dynamic and we have to serve the customer very well and in an agile way. For those who already have their alarm monitored, having the system unavailable is like having no internet. OfficeTrack’s features help us to optimize our processes and make the customer feel the difference,” concluded ADT’s Corporate Technician.
