As organizations learn from the past and take steps to prepare for the future, wrapping new ideas and new technologies into existing organizational processes is a critical means for driving improvements while providing a leg-up on the competition.

A perfect example of where the past meets the future is with the company De La Rue. De La Rue is the world's largest commercial security printer and papermaker, involved in the production of over 150 national currencies and a wide range of security documents such as traveler's checks and vouchers. With over $1 billion in annual revenue and a global workforce of more than 6,200 people in 31 countries, De La Rue also specializes in cash-handling equipment such as cash dispensers and note counters.

In Canada, the company plays a pivotal role in the nation's banking system. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, De La Rue has 65 mobile field technicians and 7 dispatchers who specialize in currency handling in the banking industry, casinos, race tracks, and transit industries. They work hard every day to keep the ATMs, cash counting machines, and other cash handling equipment throughout the country in tip-top shape.

The challenge of modernization

Last year, De La Rue was at a serious turning point in its history. Its aging business processes and technologies were not cutting it in a heated and competitive landscape. To understand how they arrived at this point, it is important to first understand where they were coming from.

De La Rue was a typical out-bound service provider, and their Canadian field service workers made nearly 230 service calls on any given day. In keeping with traditional service processes, repair requests were funneled through central dispatch, which in turn passed orders on to the field workers.

At the beginning of each day, the dispatchers prioritized the orders and sent each technician a laundry list of "to-dos" that they were expected to complete unless told otherwise. However, in an industry where emergencies can happen at the drop of a hat, this system wasn't responsive or effective enough. Far too often, dispatchers would receive emergency calls and need to re-direct technicians over the phone.

Given the mounting frustrations of workers, slow response times, and dissatisfied customers, the company came to a pivotal crossroads: it could carry on with the way things were being done and risk alienating customers, or it could take the plunge and embark on a radical change in the way it conducted business.

De la Rue chose the latter and immediately began looking for new ways to dramatically overhaul its dispatch and service delivery process. After determining the major pain points, they concluded that they had all the human elements they needed for success, but were not exploiting the advantages that modern technology could provide. At that point, they began looking into a number of options to provide the right people with the right technology, including mobile technology for their field service workers that would allow them to streamline their coordination process, increase efficiencies, reduce paperwork, and reduce the number of times that technicians needed to return to the head office.

Mounting problems

By the summer of 2005, competitive pressures were at an all-time high for De La Rue. The problems that prompted them to begin searching for technology solutions began to escalate, and they were facing a number of service-related challenges that were directly impacting their bottom line.

First, dispatchers lacked real-time information on the whereabouts of their service technicians in the field. Without this information, they were forced to make inefficient decisions relating to both the routing and scheduling of their technicians.

Second, the company had continued to rely on an out-of-date voice-based dispatching system via mobile phones, which was inefficient, error prone, and very costly, with field worker's average cell phone bill reaching $300 per month and caused many frustrations between dispatchers and technicians, as dispatchers were constantly trying to coordinate last-minute changes with technicians on the road.