John Moore Security

Hull-based John Moore Security specialises in the design, installation and maintenance of electronic security systems. Having grown significantly in both scope and scale since it was established in 1987, the firm provides sophisticated intruder alarms, fire alarms, access control systems and closed circuit television (CCTV) solutions to customers throughout the UK.

The challenge

With over 14,000 customer sites to maintain nationally, both for routine servicing and unscheduled call-outs, it’s vital that John Moore Security deploys its team of 28 field-based engineers efficiently.

Until recently, a member of the company’s Service Control team would allocate an engineer his first job at the beginning of the day via telephone. Upon completion of the job, the engineer would obtain customer sign-off on a printed worksheet – a requirement for the company to maintain its accreditation by the National Security Inspectorate as a gold-standard supplier – and call the Service Control Centre for details of the next job.

Engineers would typically post or deliver their completed worksheets to the office every few days, where the details of each job would be entered manually into the relevant customer’s file. After being confirmed as a billable call-out, an invoice was produced for each job and posted to the customer.

Managing Director, John Moore comments: “There were two main problems with the process we were working to.

“Firstly, it wasn’t as streamlined as it could have been, both in terms of giving engineers all the information they needed regarding a call-out and in processing completed worksheets. “Secondly, because we maintain so many sites, the sheer number of worksheets being completed over the course of a year meant that we were in real danger of running out of filing space within our office premises, which would have resulted in the need to rent alternative storage space for paperwork.”

The solution

John Moore Security recognised that employing the right communications technology in the form of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) could improve the efficiency of its operations and address the impending problem of data storage. PDAs are wireless, hand-held computers integrated with a mobile phone. By equipping its engineers with these devices, John Moore Security has been able to transform its operational processes.

Using PDAs supplied by Kingston Communications, the company worked with its specialist software supplier to introduce a more efficient system of allocating and processing jobs. Engineers now receive written details of jobs via their PDAs, together with the recent maintenance history of the relevant site. Once a job is complete, an electronic signature is obtained from the customer and the engineer transmits the record of the job directly to the customer’s file on John Moore Security’s system, with no manual keying required.

The benefits

The new working practices have delivered clear benefits to the company in several different areas, as John Moore notes: “Using the PDAs rather than printed worksheets speeds up our operations dramatically – not only do we have a record of what work has been undertaken as soon as a call is completed, but the information goes straight into our system automatically. This saves processing time and means we can provide faster advice to customers regarding any outstanding security issues.

“Because engineers now have much more information about a site and its maintenance history when they arrive at a job, time is often saved during calls too” adds John. “And the fact that engineers are able to send images of a site to the office via their PDAs definitely has its advantages – a picture paints a thousand words and it’s often easier to come up with a solution to a siting or access control problem you can see than one that’s described to you.”

Finally, keeping electronic rather than paper records means that data storage is no longer a problem. John Moore concludes: “Implementing new technology obviously requires some financial commitment and can present challenges, but the solution we’ve put in place was relatively simple and less costly than people might imagine.

“We’ll certainly see a return on our investment in this system within a year, and are already looking at other ways in which we can use technology to streamline our operations, make better use of our resources and improve the service we provide to our customers."