Centrica, the parent company of British Gas, is extending its use of mobile technology following successful trials.

The company announced last week that it is proceeding with a programme to equip senior staff, having already saved 5,500 man-hours in a pilot project.

The company has started giving field staff mobile technology, and wants to extend the benefits to senior staff regarded as the organisation's decision-makers.

'In terms of the benefits, we were expecting to see personal productivity gains because we do have some of those metrics for our mobile field engineer workforce; that includes the time spent duplicating effort because they're out or moving around or actually trying to get hold of people,' said Centrica's chief technology officer Kirk Downey.

In the initial trial Centrica directors were given a selection of HP Tablet PCs, iPAQ PDAs and Motorola smartphones ? all running Microsoft Windows. Each director saved between 30 and 90 minutes a day in terms of productivity.

'Teams were saying they were collectively more effective because decisions were being made faster,' said Downey. 'Mobility is the enabler, the goal is organisational effectiveness.'

The company's adoption of mobile technology came from a project to replace and update its PC desktop system, says Downey.

Centrica is working with HP to embed the tools and drivers necessary for mobile working into the company's systems, and accommodate an organisation-wide mobile strategy before the end of next year.

'We have quite an aggressive strategy of equipping all 24,000 non-field operational staff in the UK with the right tools to allow them to work effectively, either in the office or in a mobile way, if they work in many different places or from home,' said Downey.

'One of the real driving factors for putting in the desktop architecture was working with HP and Microsoft to expose it to other solutions.

'We are hedged against this rapid movement in the mobile marketplace so we will be able to support future devices.'