BigChange Mobile Technology Helps Vianet Keep the Beer Flowing

Vianet, the international provider of actionable data and business insight through devices connected to its Internet of Things (“IOT”) platform, has rolled out a 5-in-1 Mobile Workforce Management Platform from Leeds-based BigChange.

The cloud-based system provides intelligent job scheduling, real time-vehicle tracking and a mobile app for engineers – giving Vianet a paperless end-to-end solution for the business. Through the optimisation of the field service operation, Vianet has achieved a 10 percent improvement in Service Level Agreement (SLA) performance.

Vianet was first established 23 years ago and is the UK’s specialist in the monitoring of draught beer dispensing equipment. The Stockton-on-Tees based company collects data from 12,500 sites which dispense over 570 million pints of draught beer every year. The company also provides contactless payment and ERP solutions for some of the biggest names in the vending industry, combined Vianet monitor data from more than 230,000 connected devices providing detailed insight via its smart platform.

Craig Brocklehurst, Commercial Operations Director, Vianet says:“BigChange has completely transformed Vianet’s field service operations.”“We now have complete visibility on the whereabouts and status of each engineer so we can provide a faster, more dynamic response. And we’ve eliminated paperwork and with automated job scheduling the whole field service operation is optimised. That’s boosting productivity and allowed us to improve our SLA performance by 10 percent.”Vianet’s iDraught system intelligently monitors all aspects of the draught beer operations. This helps to ensure quality and product yield is maintained also ensuring equipment is working properly so that the pub operator gets the best return from their draught products.“The equipment monitoring is automated to the extent that the landlord may not actually be aware of any issues until they get a call from us saying we believe we may have identified an issue”Brocklehurst explains.

In pubs and bars, Vianet’s systems monitor dispensing equipment with automated alerts if there is a drop in performance or a fault. Within BigChange jobs are then created and the closest engineer is immediately assigned and scheduled. Equipped with rugged tablets, engineers use the BigChange JobWatch app for their job inspections and reports, including photographs of the site on arrival and on completion of the job.

With around 2000 calls a month, Vianet’s 24 engineers install and maintain their monitoring equipment for both draught drinks dispensing and vending across the UK. With real-time tracking, the office has full visibility of the location of each engineer allowing jobs to be dynamically scheduled. BigChange also monitors driver performance which is displayed on the engineers’ login screen to maintain awareness and encourage good, safe driving. The tablets are also used for daily vehicle checks in place of paper reports.

Brocklehurst says:“Using JobWatch gives us a complete, real-time view of all jobs, backed up with time and location data linked to comprehensive and accurate reports. So, we are much better informed and we can closely monitor work performance from afar and increase the knowledge we have which in turn helps us in the training of our engineers. All this has significantly reduced the need for on site inspections by team leaders and again this allows us to be more productive as a company,”With BigChange ensuring more reliable and comprehensive information from the field – in real time – Vianet can provide much better proof of service. For work that falls outside the usual contract, such as damaged equipment, invoices can be raised much more quickly.

Vianet particularly like the flexibility and scalability of BigChange according to Brocklehurst:“BigChange has been a revelation when it comes to sales and customer relations. Just about anything we are asked to do we can now do as the system can be configured accordingly. We can create our own workflows and job sheets and adapt the system to the specific needs of different customers; that gives us an invaluable competitive edge.”