ETSA Utilities, the primary distributor of electricity to South Australia, has selected standalone mobile business software, the ClickSoftware Mobility Suite from ClickSoftware Technologies Ltd. The suite will allow the business to extend the benefits of its existing enterprises systems, leverage its mobile workforce, improve productivity, reduce costs and provide services to customers.

ETSA Utilities focuses considerable effort upon achieving regulated requirements for high levels of service, reliability, safety and efficiency. The ETSA Utilities Field Services department is crucial to this as it is responsible for the construction, break/fix and the maintenance of the network for residential and commercial customers. The department identified mobile computing as key to delivering its regulatory obligations.

ClickSoftware's Mobility Suite leverages ETSA Utilities' existing investment in technology by providing a two-way conduit that feeds important information from enterprise systems to workers on the move, whilst also collecting important operational information from their mobile devices to be fed back to the enterprise. This rapid access to applications - removing considerable administration - is particularly helpful in providing mobile workers the information they need to plan and execute their daily work. They can view the details of their next job, plan their route, perform and closeout the job.

The ability to collect operational information easily is also important. Automatic population of the SAP application at ETSA Utilities' headquarters should help eliminate costly errors, double entry and the often lengthy search for valid data associated with the manual process previously used.

"The primary reasons for ETSA Utilities selecting the ClickSoftware Mobility Suite are its flexibility, low cost of ownership and completeness of solution," said Grant Roach, Manager of Business Improvement, "We went through a thorough evaluation process and by any standard the solution offered by ClickSoftware is a leap forward in mobile business computing. We will benefit from a host of powerful functional and technical advances. Its open architecture allows us to plug in any application with an integration point, its intuitive interface is easy for workers to use."

Initially a pilot is being rolled out in just four months, with a view to extend it across the entire business over the coming year.