ISS efficiently manages over 100,000 work orders each year with Praxedo

Tell us briefly about your company and what you offer.

ISS is a leader in facility management services with an international presence in over 30 countries. The organization was founded in Denmark in 1901, and now employs nearly 420,000 people worldwide.
 
ISS’ core services include facility management, cleaning, logistics and production.

Our subsidiary in France employs 300 technicians, each equipped with Praxedo’s field service management mobile application. Our technicians carry out an average of 100,000 work orders annually, or nearly 30 work orders per technician, monthly.

Can you describe ISS’ pain points before implementing Praxedo software?

We decided a field service management software was needed in 2017, as we were facing a series of challenges that warranted more efficient operational processes.

A need to track our work orders from start to finish

Firstly, we needed to respond to our customers’ needs for traceability. Our customers have their own requirements and specifications, and they appreciate that we’re accountable for the work that our teams carry out within their buildings.

A need to digitize our reports
 
Given the large number of work orders we carry out, manual work order processing on paper was no longer meeting our needs. We really needed to digitize everything.

We also wanted a solution with a mobile app that our cleaning and inspection teams absolutely needed to complete their reports in the field.

A need for more reliable reporting

Last but not least, we had some concerns about paper documentation. Information was sometimes left out or difficult to read and this impacted our administration and accounting processes. The Praxedo solution allows us to configure forms the way we want so that technicians can access them through the mobile app. With electronic reporting, we can now view and validate the data in real time – which wasn’t the case before.

The search for a field service management solution began with ISS’ innovation department. We had tested one system within our Hygiene and Prevention division (which has since been resold by ISS), but the results were unsatisfactory – there were problems with reliability and technical stability, and the process for configuring forms was too complex. That experiment led us to consider several other solutions available on the market, and ultimately, to choose Praxedo.

Praxedo was like a “Swiss army knife” in its flexibility, and this is what attracted us to choose it.

Quick and ultra smooth deployment

In contrast with the software we had previously tried, Praxedo was easy to implement. It was smooth and super quick, thanks to the close collaboration and guidance provided by their Customer Success Management (CSM) department. We still work with their CSM team, coming up with solutions when we have specific needs, but we’re still able to develop or add to them independently within the system. Praxedo also provided us with a deployment guide, which enables us to manage 100% of our needs internally, without the CSM if need be.

Who in your organization uses Praxedo, and how?

We generally use Praxedo in the typical way – our operations teams use the web interface to plan work orders, organize technicians’ schedules, and track their progress in real time, while our field teams use the application on their mobile devices.

In the field, our mobile technicians access their schedules as well as all the information they need to carry out a work order. Customer details, site access information, specifics on the type of service required, related documentation, etc.

Our technicians also use the forms within the application to complete their work order reports. They are guided through the process, which eliminates errors and omissions. The form must be 100% complete before a technician can validate it.

Beyond the digitization of our work order management and reporting, we use other intelligent features and functionality, including:

• For business analysis: Praxedo Web services allow us to export data to our software system and we can capture data automatically. We also use a Business Intelligence tool to build dashboards, enabling ISS management to oversee and analyze our performance.

• A customer portal: We implemented a stakeholders’ portal in collaboration with a customer in the public transport sector for whom we provide bus cleaning services. The portal allows the company’s management team to view the status of their service calls in real time.

• Dispatching of documents: Our reports are generated automatically through a set of scenarios we’ve created in the Praxedo system, triggering the dispatch of documents following a service call. The entire work order report is delivered right to the customer’s inbox.

What are the main benefits?

Better service quality

By structuring the workloads of our field personnel, we’ve been able to significantly improve the quality of our service. By viewing the forms on the mobile app, technicians know exactly what they need to do; and the mandatory fields let them know what they must complete to validate the work order. This allows us to standardize our teams’ operating procedures and reporting, which simplifies the administrative process considerably.

The data collected by our technicians during service calls is now more reliable, because we can guide their input through our custom forms and provide a step-by-step linear progression toward the completion of the report. We no longer deal with missing information or illegible handwriting. Everything is complete, clear, and usable.

Greater productivity

In eliminating administrative delays, we’ve also increased our productivity. Reports are sent to customers instantly, as soon as work orders have been carried out and validated. It’s a quick and transparent process. Each customer has access to all the information related to the work done at their site by our technicians.

More autonomy and flexibility

Another advantage of using Praxedo’s solution is the functional flexibility and empowerment it offers. The field service software allows us to respond to internal needs as they arise, without having to develop a specific technology. Everything is managed through the app’s settings, enabling us to adapt to an endless variety of needs. For example, when we wanted to integrate a customer satisfaction survey directly into the app, Praxedo made it easy.

It can adapt to the services we offer

Our needs change depending on the services and the industries we support, and Praxedo adapts accordingly.

For example, in the healthcare sector, it’s essential that we guarantee the traceability of our work orders and provide proof that the job was done. The web interface and mobile app make this possible, and we can easily consult the work order history in real time.

In banking, we have digitized our technicians’ work orders so we can better plan customer requests for our field service teams, who use their phones to receive requests and view their schedules.

Also, we can now digitize reports for QHSE inspections carried out by agents in the field following an incident. No complexity is too difficult for Praxedo. In fact, it is helping us meet our customers’ very specific regulatory standards.

What sets Praxedo apart is the depth of the solution’s functionality and the flexibility of its settings. We now respond to varying business needs across multiple sectors. For an organization like ISS, it’s critical to have this in place to manage work orders for our customers, who are all very different.

How do you envision your partnership with Praxedo in the future?

Our teams are constantly developing new projects, and as soon as it’s feasible, we will look into the possibility of implementing Praxedo for:

• Digitizing professional interviews
• Tracing supply deliveries
• Tracking unique work order requests

Praxedo is evolving too, and continues to offer new features which we look forward to implementing.

There is still so much potential to explore, and we know we can count on their support teams to guide us through our future projects.

If you could summarize the Praxedo solution in 2 ways, what would they be?

Flexibility

Flexibility, because it’s the primary advantage for us. Its in depth functionality means we can adapt the tool proactively to our varying needs. We don’t need programming experience to build a solution that does what we need it to do. It’s very easy.

Reliability

Reliability, because Praxedo software makes our field service management a lot more reliable. The platform is robust and can manage a high volume of work orders each day without a hitch. Praxedo helps us be more responsive, and more structured in the way we communicate with our customers about the status of their work orders. The impact of the solution on ISS’ brand identity has been very positive.