Schrack Seconet transforms field service operations with Oracle

Founded 1994 in Vienna, Austria, Schrack Seconet manufactures and distributes integrated fire alarms, security, and communication systems, as well as healthcare systems and solutions for hospitals, nursing homes, retirement homes, and psychiatric clinics.

The company’s equipment and systems are serviced by a team of 330 technicians through six Austrian branch offices. The scheduling and allocation of these technicians was previously done manually by administrative personnel who needed to factor in travel distances, appointment times, staff qualifications, working time models, and material consumption. The process, conducted through spreadsheets, was rigid, time-consuming, and non-transparent.

Already on the digital transformation path, Schrack Seconet decided the next step was to optimize field service planning. The goal was to deploy a cloud platform that could meet the growing needs of the company’s technical support department.

Schrack Seconet also wanted to centralize its data, and achieve real-time coordination and communication across branch offices, warehouses, internal and external technicians, service partners, and customers.

Schrack Seconet carefully reviewed and compared a total of five different field service management solutions. Ultimately, Schrack Seconet decided on Oracle Field Service because of its broad spectrum of field service management features, capabilities, and functionalities. Schrack Seconet also chose to use Oracle Integration Cloud to quickly and easily integrate Oracle Field Service with Schrack Seconet’s ERP and support ticketing systems.

By deploying Oracle Field Service (OFS), part of the Oracle Advertising and Customer Experience suite of applications, Schrack Seconet gained the ability to easily schedule technicians to service the company’s equipment across Austria. The company’s service administrators also gained real-time insight into service orders, equipment components, and actions undertaken by service technicians in the field.

With OFS, Schrack Seconet matches the right technician to each service job and seamlessly connects service orders with spare parts, helping the company to fulfill service commitments on time.

Field service employees benefit from OFS’s intuitive mobile app, where they can import orders, create service reports, record working hours, and register material consumption on the spot, ensuring data is captured accurately. By automating standard processes in the background, OFS empowers the company’s technicians to focus on customer service and satisfaction.

Schrack Seconet also used Oracle Integration Cloud for integrating OFS with its Microsoft NAV Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system and ServiceNow ticketing solution. In the future, the company plans to integrate more non-Oracle products.

Schrack Seconet worked with Oracle Partner Primeone Business Solutions to launch a proof of concept and implement Oracle Field Service as a central interface for scheduling field technicians. Primeone guided Schrack Seconet from the concept phase to implementation and further development. The go-live in the first branches took place in March 2021. The company started with 50 users in 2021 and is on its way to a complete implementation for all 330 field technicians.

“It was important for us to have a solution integrator that has the necessary skills and is based in our region. Oracle Partner Primeone convinced us from the first meeting,” says Markus Volkmann, head of digital strategy, IT services and corporate development.