Justifying Mobility: The New Customer Ethos

Introduction
The emergence of powerful mobile computers in the last several years has resulted in unprecedented opportunity for utilities and other organizations to automate field operations. Increasingly, utilities are implementing mobile systems that streamline and automate field activities ranging from meter reading to pole inspection to mobile distribution design.

A sign of the growing importance of mobile applications resides in the fact that this technology is viewed increasingly as an integral part of key business processes rather than as a way to automate isolated outdoor tasks. For many companies, implementing mobile technologies goes hand in hand with re-engineering efforts aimed at increasing an organization’s overall efficiency and effectiveness.

This drive to become more efficient and boost productivity has, of course, been a key factor in many of the changes occurring in the utility industry in the last decade. It has also been a key factor in justifying mobile computing projects. Where, besides the field is there potential for such large pay-off in terms of productivity gain?

Certainly, the drive to increase productivity will continue to be a major justification in any field computing project. But there is another equally important factor at work today that we refer to as the new “customer ethos”. By this we mean the following: a guiding belief in customer satisfaction that pervades a utility’s organization and decision-making process.

This paper describes that phenomenon and relates the new customer ethos to mobile computing -- both in a conceptual sense and in practical examples drawn from a case study at Southern California Edison Company. This case study is based on a mobile distribution design application that has been fully implemented and allows distribution planners to create facility designs at the job site based on the company’s assemblies database.

The significance of this case study is that it demonstrates a customer service ethos in the form of a highly innovative field application. Faced with deregulation and profound changes in the industry, Southern California Edison has chosen to implement new projects which meet the twin goals of improving productivity and increasing customer satisfaction. Mobile Design is one such project.