Hand-helds expedite field work. (Wireless: mobile computing).

Palen/Kimball Co. in St. Paul, MN--a national heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration service company--offers value-added solutions for industrial, commercial and institutional facilities. The competitive field-service industry demands innovation and change if the company is

"A gap in our IT infrastructure hindered our ability to support the front-line people--the field technicians--and our customers," says Chris Markert, president of the 50-employee company with $10 million in annual revenues. "We needed to centralize our corporate knowledge base and be more efficient in delivering information services to those areas--including the corporate office."

From an operations point of view, Ron Schmidt, vice president of services, says, "This has always been a paper-intensive business, and there has always been an administrative load on the field-service technician. But paperwork isn't his real job. Taking care of the customer's heating and air conditioning problems--that's me technician's job."

Jim Adamson, IT manager at Palen/Kimball, defines three strategic goals. "First, we wanted to improve customer service. Second, we wanted to build our corporate knowledge base, which was severely lacking. Third, we wanted to increase customer revenues."

FieldCentrix automated Palen/Kimball's field-service operations with three components of its Enterprise suite of mobile and dispatch software--featuring hand-held computers; reliable, inexpensive wireless data communications; and the Internet, furnishing a seamless data connection among its field technicians, office personnel and clients. The system allows a fast, accurate exchange of information, and eliminates delays inherent in telephone and paper-based communication.

Today, FX Mobile makes information about the job site, equipment repair histories, parts usage, site contacts, billing data--whatever the technician needs--accessible at the press of a few keys on one of the Itronix T5200 hand-held computers running MicrosoftWindows CE operating system. The day's work schedule is provided, including electronic work orders and equipment inventory by job site.

In the past, each Monday morning the technician completed all paperwork for the previous week. Service work orders and time sheet information flooded into the corporate office all on the same day. Five copies of each report were processed and filed by Thursday to prepare invoices for customers and provide input for the payroll system.

Now, when work is completed at the job site--even emergency weekend or holiday service requests--the service order is automatically forwarded to the central office for invoicing. At the office, FX Service Center is integrated with Palen/Kimball's accounting systems, where information from service orders is exported directly to that system, automatically generating the customer invoice and preparing company financial statements.

This process saves the technician time and effort and eliminates the Monday morning paperwork bottleneck at the office. Accuracy and speed of invoicing, as well as the payroll process, have improved dramatically. "Before, it took up to two weeks to match and process service reports and time sheets. Now, the process can be done in less than 40 minutes," says Scott Stokke, Palen-Kimball service supervisor. "We have reduced administrative costs by as much as one full-time equivalent person."

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