Swansea Council streamlines property maintenance with Oracle Field Service

Swansea Council is one of the UK’s largest local authorities. It manages around 13,000 homes along with 800 commercial buildings, which are maintained by a workforce of close to 300 plumbers, electricians, and other trades.

Planning appointments to carry out maintenance and repairs, and the recording of completed work, was previously completed using a time-consuming manual process. Office staff had to prepare “job cards” and load them on an Orchard CRM system, along with Oracle Time and Labor for timesheets.

With local authority funding under significant pressure, the council needed to automate this process and reduce manual effort. Improving the accuracy of data collection in the field was another goal.

Swansea Council selected Oracle Field Service for its enhanced planning, scheduling, and mobile capabilities. Simultaneously, the council could use its investment in other Oracle solutions (such as Time and Labor), to integrate the end-to-end field service process.

Automated scheduling would help the council eliminate effort from its processes and focus on delivering within agreed service levels.  Similarly, the mobile capability would enable the tradespeople in the field to quickly and easily progress, complete, and collect data on the task at hand.

The Oracle Field Service plug-in framework would allow the Council to rapidly deliver some of its specific, bespoke requirements for complex project work, without having to customize the core Oracle software, or change the core configuration of the solution.

Swansea Council deployed Oracle Field Service to all of its 300 tradespeople carrying out tasks that range from the very simple (such as repairing a broken window), to the very complex (tackling a full renovation). In so doing, it was able to automate, optimize, and streamline planning, scheduling, and completing work in the field. The council was able to deliver on some of its more complex requirements without interrupting day-to-day business.

Residential tenants enjoy an improved experience. Anyone who reports a fault immediately receives an appointment date and time, allowing tenants to choose the slot that suits them. This was achieved using a custom-developed booking portal via the Oracle Field Service plug-in framework.

The council now better coordinates different tradespeople to deliver full renovation projects, ensuring that the individual tasks are linked to one another, scheduled in the correct sequence, with other dependent tasks already completed.

Importantly, the council could accurately record the outcome of a service visit to a property, including time spent on the task and required billing codes. This significantly reduced the processing time of the task closure, reconciliation, and billing process, via the seamless integration back to Orchard CRM and Oracle Time and Labor.

Overall, Swansea Council gained efficiencies in both back- and front office processes, while improving service users’ experience.

Oracle Field Service was implemented for the council by OFS-certified experts Leadent Digital. Leadent  combined deep Field Service knowledge with quick, targeted development to use the power of the plug-in framework and deliver the council’s requirements in full.  An almost entirely remote delivery model, during the pandemic, enabled an effective, efficient implementation.