We try to invest our money back into our operating regions wherever possible. The quality and value that Shout deliver makes that a very easy decision. We have worked with them over a period of several years now, developing apps for our customers and employees. They have been great to work with.
Nigel Watson
Chief Innovation Officer - Northumbrian Water
Improved UX
Informed scheduling
Powerful integrations
Phase 1
The challenge
Consolidating work management into a single application
Field operatives were previously using a combination of disparate devices to carry out their work onsite.
Integrating with their digital ecosystem
Building a solution that would work alongside Northumbrian Water’s existing applications was vital to limit the disruption and expense of significant change to back office processes.
Delivering robust offline capability
Teams were often working in remote locations where connectivity could prevent them from accessing necessary systems.
Phase 2
The approach
By analysing the challenges experienced in the field, we were able to implement business rules that allowed field teams to capture key data and complete essential tasks in as few steps as possible, for a clean and frictionless user journey. We harnessed remote storage and activity queuing to make sure connectivity would not interfere with productivity.
The simple interface surfaces a host of complex integrations. Utilising Microsoft .NET MAUI and the Azure Cloud app service, we delivered an application that worked seamlessly with Northumbrian Water’s complex architecture, and made their existing systems work harder for them by taking advantage of the functionality available via mobile.
Personnel coordination
Fieldworkers were able to view shifts, sign in for work and log their availability to perform tasks, with all of their information and progress updates being transferred back to corporate systems when connectivity was available.
Task management
Making use of geolocation to be able to allocate themselves to nearby jobs, maintenance operatives and technicians could access and update all information and attachments relating to a task, using the camera and QR code scanning to efficiently provide comprehensive job information as efficiently as possible.
Customer communication
We made reaching customers effortless, with the ability to make in-app calls or texts and employing the Google Maps API to provide directions without the need to locate customer information.
Phase 3
The outcome
At its heart the project aimed to further Northumbrian Water’s efforts to cultivate a winning employee experience, by providing the tools to make jobs easier. But in the process the app has become fundamental to the delivery of their water services, achieving significant benefits to operations and making a positive contribution to the customer experience.
Field based teams are spending more time solving problems and less time on admin, while the greater visibility of their activity has enabled the group to set achievable KPI’s, improve on resolution times and identify further opportunities to streamline their field processes.
The success of this project led to our appointment to work on Northumbrian Water’s customer facing app and we’re proud to continue supporting them in strengthening their digital initiatives, through our ongoing software partnership.
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