Since equipping mobile employees with PDAs, Bradford Community Housing Trust (BCHT) has increased productivity and reduced fuel costs.

BCHT manages 22,000 homes in the Bradford district, providing additional support to tenants on housing-related issues.

Employees are often away from the office on site visits, and before the introduction of T-Mobile MDA Vario II devices, which are high-speed download packet access (HSDPA)-enabled, working practices were less efficient.

The building services team’s 250 operatives, such as electricians and plumbers, used to have to get a list of jobs for the day from an office, and return after each visit to process paperwork.

‘One repair job would generate quadruple copies ­ Bradford Building Services, the operative, the housing office that originated the repair and the tenant would each get a copy,’ says IT manager Jason Baines.

‘Now we have a call centre and a dedicated repair hotline which is backed up by a team of schedulers who send out jobs to operatives’ PDAs, so there is no need for them to travel to the office to pick up jobs or return after jobs are completed as all paperwork is done electronically.’

The reduction in unnecessary travel has reduced fuel costs by 25 per cent and increased productivity.

‘Indications are that BCHT will improve productivity by 20 per cent and probably more. We are able to keep the workers at the coalface,’ says Baines.

Customer service has also improved, as once an operative has updated the system about a job completion on his PDA, the customer is contacted by the call centre to check on satisfaction levels.

‘We can also better manage materials since introducing the PDAs, as we can select the right person with the right tools in the right location for a job,’ says Baines.

There are 100 devices live in the field with other devices being used for mobile email and testing. Full device take-up is expected to exceed 150.

‘We roll out 20 devices at a time to help manage support and training and smooth take-up,’ says Baines.

Senior executives also use the PDAs for mobile email using Windows Mobile 5, to stay in touch with the office when attending offsite meetings.

‘The devices are HSDPA-enabled so that staff can download files and access back-office applications at high speed,’ says Baines.

He says BCHT chose T-Mobile for cost and high customer service. The supplier charges £8 per month for unlimited data use, which Baines says ‘blew away the competition’. He is also impressed with customer service levels.

‘There was a problem with HSDPA handover from 3G to GPRS as HSDPA doesn’t work on the GPRS network and calls were lost, but T-Mobile’s technicians upgraded all cells in the area within a couple of weeks,’ he says.