The final Frontier?

At many telcos, one of the last areas to automate is service management. But because this area is traditionally both time- and labor-intensive, it can benefit tremendously from automation.

Pacific Bell's skilled technician force numbers 10,000. Trained in both POTS and newer technologies like ISDN, digital subscriber line and data networking, Pacific Bell's field technicians are responsible for keeping telephone systems and data networks running 24 hours a day.

In 1994, field technician planning, scheduling, work and time reporting was done manually. At that point, the company began to develop an automated system that was introduced in 1996. Since then, the automated system has paid for itself many times through improved planning, reporting and manpower savings.

Pacific Bell may have been able to complete the project more quickly, but the company would have paid a price, both literally and figuratively, in higher costs and lower employee morale. Pacific Bell's approach allowed the company to recognize the progress it had made during one step while planning and developing the next one. Revisions and enhancements to work already completed maximized the value of each subsequent step.

Paperwork nightmare Pacific Bell's technicians work out of service and support bases called garages, where they receive work schedules and equipment needed for the day. The garages are staffed with supervisory and clerical personnel to plan, schedule and manage normal work flow - and emergencies - and record the work done each day.

Garage personnel did all of the work manually. In 1994, however, the company recognized that automation could significantly improve the planning and scheduling between the work force and the workload, called force-to-load. Several managers began working with Expertec Corp., a software development and installation company based in Detroit, to develop a plan to automate the time reporting functions.

Force-to-load management determines the work force availability for the next one to two weeks, so that a company has enough people to handle the customer requests, or load. For work force estimating, the garage supervisors first identify who is available to work. They use the aggregate work time to forecast the jobs to be planned.

The method used in 1994 to report the available work force required many faxes, phone calls, printed reports and considerable amounts of paperwork. Each field supervisor faxed a weekly forecast of available work force to the management control center. This was followed by one or more daily updates.

Pacific Bell tracked changes and performed manual calculations of the number of people and hours available. It resolved discrepancies by phone calls and additional faxes. From this information, the manager made work load assignments to the supervisors.

Time reporting clerks completed daily paper time sheets from information provided by the field technicians showing the work items done each day and the account to which each item should be billed. This information came to the clerks via phone calls and faxes. The clerks needed detailed information about the company rules, union rules and any external rules on how to record and assign the hours worked. The rules for straight time, time-and-a-half, double time, hours worked, hours off, vacations, travel and meal allowances had to be recorded manually.

The time sheets were approved by the supervisors and entered into the mainframe computer system so that technicians could be paid. The many personnel rules required by the technicians' union as well as federal and state governments made time sheets difficult to understand and manage. Errors occurred frequently, and both the time reporting and the corrections were very intensive and time-consuming.

Data entry and time sheet entry error resolution kept the clerks - and frequently the supervisors - busy. Additionally, the technicians' time sheets were filed and kept for six years.

To monitor and report the work required to do various field technician jobs, Pacific Bell employed a performance development plan. The focus of the system was tracking resources, time and effort to accomplish the work performed. This was a manual system of recording, calculating and reporting performance information.

This productivity information helped determine training requirements, equipment needs, facility needs and other issues. It was a very subjective process, however, because people count and account for things differently.

Employees gathered and disseminated current information primarily through phone calls and faxes. Work force availability was calculated manually from faxes. Time sheet reporting was usually done through phone calls made by the technicians to the time clerk. Payroll generation was done on a mainframe with overnight response.

Work load planning and force-to-load calculations were done manually; work assignments were distributed by phone calls and faxes. The entire application was working well, but it required a lot of people and time to keep it going. It certainly looked ripe for automation.

The transition Over a period of a few months, the Expertec and Pacific Bell team designed the application that would automate these activities. The team considered using a mechanized forecast that would enable users to click a mouse and view the work force status. Then, since the planned work is usually performed, the technicians' time sheets could be automatically generated.

A phased approached was used to develop and roll out the systems. The first was the technician contract maintenance system, aimed at managing the flow of field technicians' work and scheduling information. This system provided automated time reporting of work performed. It was implemented across half of Los Angeles, then rolled out statewide.

Next the team added mechanized time reporting to automatically generate the technicians' time sheets using company and union payroll rules. Third, they developed applications training for garage supervisors, covering both basic PC skills and training for the new systems. After that, on-line documentation and "help" features were developed for the Pacific Bell intranet.

State-of-the-art features, including a graphical user interface, real-time updates and electronic signatures on time sheets, will help keep the system current for as long as possible. For portability and to simplify future development, these features were based on standard Microsoft software tools, which also facilitated integration with desktop applications such as word processing, spreadsheets and databases.

The application was based on expert systems technology (Figure 1). Expert rules for handling many different situations are built in. Additionally, the expert system rules can be modified when needed to fit different circumstances. The process resulted in fast, accurate and consistent use of the rules across the state.

Training on the new system had to cover not only its use but also the union, company and other rules for time and expense reporting. In addition, training was required on basic PC skills, use of the standard desktop suite of software, use of the help and support services, and use of the new procedures for handling force-to-load planning, time sheets and work reporting.

Supervisors were familiarized with the electronic time sheets along with the time reporting rules from the union and Pacific Bell. The clerks that had previously checked the time sheets were being reassigned after the new systems were installed, so the supervisors had to know the rules for exceptions that the automated time sheet system did not handle.

The training plan involved a team going to each service center or garage, installing and configuring the software and network systems, training the managers, supervisors, clerks and technicians who would be using the system and then providing follow-up support via a hot line or additional visits.

Two surprises emerged during training. First, the supervisors that were familiar with PCs rapidly integrated all their other reports with the on-line systems to free up more time. Second, the supervisors that were unfamiliar with PCs had a very hard time getting used to the systems.

Because the training was flexible to the needs of individual users, it aided in the successful transition from manual to automated systems.

Since the system rollout, the daily information on the work force is on-line. Supervisors and routers throughout the state now plan and report each day's schedule by reviewing up-to-the-minute resource information. Pacific Bell is building history data now that will help it do force-to-load planning even better.

Streamlined time reporting Another benefit of the system is that the whole time reporting process has been streamlined. The planned schedule data becomes the time sheet for each technician, and changes are made to reflect what actually occurred.

Usually, the field technicians work their schedules. The supervisor reviews the work planned with the time sheet, which shows the work actually done, and updates the records. Overtime, time-and-a-half, double time, and meal allowances are immediately calculated according to the expert rules and transferred to the payroll system.

The work time reported affects several other operations: It goes into the payroll system and expense tracking systems; it goes into the executive information systems; and it goes into productivity measurement systems. The information is periodically used to help determine the rates and returns allowed by the public utilities commission for the telephone company.

Another system capability is productivity tracking, which involves the number of service orders and cases per day and the number of rework items. The system can make many measurements now that it could not make in the past. Many of these involve comparisons over time.

Pacific Bell needed to know the differences between crews and individuals so that it could determine where to train, provide equipment and look at facilities. Having consistent data now allows the company to do that.

The Expertec applications were planned for the Microsoft/Intel platform and for Windows NT 3.51 servers. The clients were planned to use 3.11. The entire application was developed in C++. Three months of daily records are kept on-line, with additional months stored off-line.

In the event of a power interruption, the Expertec software goes through an orderly backup and shutdown. Then it restarts and comes back on-line automatically when power is restored.

To ensure the accuracy of the systems for the unions, company management and outside regulators, Coopers and Lybrand validated the systems.

Documentation for the systems is available on-line through the Pacific Bell intranet. The documentation is fully indexed and cross-referenced giving users quick, complete access to all the information they need. Since the documentation is maintained on-line, users can be certain they are checking the latest, most accurate reference. The telephone hot line staffed by Expertec provides support during business hours.

Although some supervisors initially were skeptical of using a computer for service management, they were eventually won over by the hands-on training and the expert systems, and by speedier payroll processing and reduced paperwork (Table 1). Pacific Bell now plans to expand the system into several related areas.

Augie Cruciotti is General Manager of Service Operations-South at Pacific Bell, Pasadena, Calif. Scott Simanson is Regional Manager for Pacific Bell's Northern California Work Coordination Center, San Ramon, Calif.