Data analytics improves maintenance of essential safety measures

Maintaining essential safety measures (ESM) requires access to analytics and data collation to manage technician performance and track revenue and costs.

Linkfire maintains over 6000 buildings of various sizes around Victoria, and was previously managing its compliance with Australian Standard 1851 (maintenance of fire protection systems and equipment) with an outdated system that was fully dependent on an in-house server. This did not provide the company with the analytics and data collation it required.

Management was relying on technicians to provide a report of task progress, with no real supporting evidence.

The company implemented a cloud system from Uptick. This has seen improvements in the day-to-day operations of the company, with the ability to track key KPIs and analytics in real time paying major dividends to overall performance and bottom line revenue.

The biggest efficiency gain created by the system is the time it takes technicians to complete their allocated jobs. Previously technicians would be weighed down by a heavy paper-based system that would necessitate them scribbling down notes by hand, which would then need to be processed by the office staff before any action could be taken.

By simply digitising the field operations through the Uptick interface, Linkfire’s technicians are getting through 25% more jobs each month than previously. The field app is simple and easy to use, which means they are burdened with far less paperwork and days are organised in a more logical and geographical sequence.

Technicians are now able to generate their own reports and defects with relevant photos before even leaving a site. With the pre-made lists of asset remarks, reports are systemised and consistent. This provides reporting accuracy and clarity for their clients. Since implementation of Uptick, reducing double handling has allowed Linkfire to scale fast and improve its field to office staff ratio to 2:1.

The overall defect quote conversion rate has grown from 30% to 50%, which is due to the speed in which reports and quotes are being sent to the client, decreasing drastically from two weeks to only a couple of days. Clients can now simply approve quotes electronically on the spot in real time.

Report turnaround times to the client have reduced from 1–2 weeks to just two days, there has been an increase of 20% on the number of properties serviced, while the time taken to schedule tasks is now eight times faster.

Image courtesy of Uptick.