Regulator Ofwat’s warning that it will intervene in water companies that fail to meet its ‘high bar’ for customer service has led to increased interest in cloud-based technology, provider WorkMobiles has said.
Yorkshire Water has invested heavily in advanced technology to improve services, it said, having adopted the company’s mobile data capture app. Field engineers previously had to reply on paper-based forms and handheld cameras to capture information, and then drove back to head office to load their job data into the company portal.
There are now 1,800 Yorkshire Water employees using the app, whose design allows users to create mobile forms relevant to their specific job, including site inspections, health and safety forms and time sheets.
Job details can be sent to employees in the field, and project data can be captured in real-time.
A Yorkshire Water spokesperson said: “Our main challenge was that our previous data capture process was simply not cost-effective and meant that our teams were spending extra hours travelling back to base to record their job details.
“With our aim to roll out the WorkMobile application across various departments in the business, we have calculated that this will result in huge cost savings for us and our customers.”
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