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A safe bet for field worker efficiency Print E-mail
Gamestec has dramatically enhanced its ability to manage remote workers, improve customer service and measurably boost overall operational efficiency by deploying a mobility solution from TBS.
Gamestec operate more than 60,000 gaming and amusement machines at pubs, bars, leisure venues, licensed betting offices, and clubs throughout the United Kingdom. Based in Leeds, the company has more than 50 years experience, and 1,200 employees in 18 regional offices.van unloading

Situation
In its day-to-day activities the company depended on several unreliable manual processes. For example, collecting cash from machines required that their 350 employees travel to various sites to read meters, copy electronic data onto a paper docket count and reconcile cash. Though the collectors were all field based, they had to visit a Gamestec office each day to collect their paper schedules and dockets, and then again after the visits to deliver the filled-in dockets. This process was time consuming and potentially inaccurate, due to possible errors in calculations and problems interpreting handwriting.
In 2002, Gamestec decided to streamline the manual processes that were involved in cash collections. It asked companies to tender bids on designing a new system, and hoped to find a solution by using mobile technology.

Solution
Initially, Gamestec decided to streamline the manual processes that were involved in cash collections. They chose TBS, a specialist provider of enterprise mobility solutions, to implement their TaskMaster solution to enable the mobile employees to exchange information with their office-based systems.
“TBS offered an open solution, in the sense that we could also use other applications, such as notepads and diaries, on the PDAs,” said Calvin Martin, IT Director at Gamestec. “Other suppliers restricted use to their application only.”
Each cash collector uses a Windows Mobile™ powered PDA that features the TaskMaster Smart Client application which has been configured to Gamestec’s workflow and information requirements. The solution and hardware was further adapted to enable the cash collectors to plug directly into the back of each machine enabling transactional data to be downloaded and immediately transmitted back to the Gamestec host system in real time. TaskMaster automatically calculates the revenue share including the total amounts to leave with the site manager and to deposit in the bank. TaskMaster then prints a receipt with all the details to leave on site.

engineerService
If a machine breaks down, one of the company’s 180 field-based service engineers would use radio technology to receive information from the Gamestec call centre. All information – the location of the faulty machine, directions to the site, the type of problem encountered, the parts needed and the type of remedy being carried out – was communicated by voice over radio channels that were often plagued by interference.
This manual process did not compliment Gamstec’s innovative site-based machine management network, called MIDAS, which was used to provide an operating platform to track game usage and to diagnose problems. “The industry is changing from what we called ‘furniture removal’, where changing a game at a site involved replacing the machine, toward content management where we manage the content on a machine which remains on site,” said Graham Wood, Operations Director at Gamestec.
Gamestec asked TBS to help design a similar solution for its service engineers. Using TaskMaster, the engineers now receive real time service management information directly to their PDA’s, and for sites that are equipped with MIDAS, auto diagnostics can automatically despatch a service engineer without any human intervention at either site or at Gamestecs’ offices.
Gamestec also use the optional TaskMaster Studio configuration tool to enable them to make changes to the solution themselves (such as creating new tasks or workflows for the field workers) without the need to involve TBS. This means changes can be made very quickly, and once a change or enhancement has been made, TaskMaster wirelessly deploys the updates without the field workers having to return their PDA’s.

Benefits
Efficiency improvements
The result of these efforts is that Gamestec has dramatically improved the efficiency of its field-based employees, providing them with a method of communication which has led to real time information exchange, improved data accuracy, increased revenues and reduced administrative costs.
Likewise, service engineers have become much more efficient by immediately communicating what parts are needed and why, enabling problem resolution to be provided in the shortest possible time.
“We have brought about a very positive cultural change in the business,” says Wood. “Our engineers and cash collectors are now totally field based and can make the best use of their time. They no longer have to visit an office to pick up or return work. The cash collectors no longer have to write information in dozens of fields on the paper-based docket.” Overall, Gamestec estimate an improvement in the cash collection process of 30 percent.

Taskmaster screen shotImproved accuracy and significant cost savings
By removing the errors which could occur when data was recorded in handwriting, data accuracy has also improved. Machine uptime has dramatically increased because service engineers can respond to problems more quickly, which leads directly to higher revenues and further improved customer satisfaction.
Cash collectors no longer have to perform manual revenue share calculations. “Errors in calculations were very difficult to spot retrospectively after the information was input into our systems,” said Woods. “We also had customers who were highly dependent on this information being passed to them, and who levied fines against us for errors that were generated against this process. So reducing these errors has effectively increased our revenues.”
All of these benefits have come about while reducing administrative costs at Gamestec. Workloads have been reduced for office staff who no longer need to re-type cash collection information, or process incoming service requests. These reductions in administrative costs have totalled around 15 percent.
Furthermore, managers of both the cash collectors and service engineers have gained more detailed real time information about where their employees are and what they are working on. With this knowledge they can improve safety considerations for field workers, improve routing to reduce transportation costs and otherwise improve companywide productivity and decision-making.
With both projects running successfully, Gamestec is now considering TaskMaster to provide similar benefits for 120 members of its installation teams and 60 to 70 members of its account management teams.

TBS
6 Derby Road
Belper
Derbyshire
DE56 1UU
United Kingdom
Tel +44 (0) 1773 596 900
Web: www.tbsmobility.com
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Gamestec - for more information about Gamestec products and services, call +44 (0) 113 258 9495 or visit their website at www.gamestec.co.uk