Changes in the utilities industry — specifically the introduction of smart meters — have forced companies to adapt. Paper forms and clunky spreadsheets have been replaced by mobile apps that optimize workflows and provide faster, more efficient service. There are countless mobile apps to deploy into the hands of your field service team to accomplish this. Below are some of the key mobile apps that will boost performance in the field without shocking your system of processes.
Asset Management
Prolonged downtime not only slows your internal processes but also affects your bottom line. An asset management app allows your field technicians to inspect and maintain assets to virtually eliminate downtime. Determine site readiness, submit inspections, and build preventative maintenance programs to ensure your assets are successful from installation to upkeep. With built-in scheduling, you can automatically create maintenance events when an asset is due for repair or upkeep, without ever having to send a technician on site.
Any asset management form that is submitted can easily be retrieved and turned into a PDF, word document, or your customer-facing format of choice.
Environmental Management
Are you tired of search and rescue missions for completed inspection reports? With an environment management app, you can call off the search parties. These apps allow you to build a virtual database that keeps all reports in and place. It’s an efficient and effective way to show historical compliance.
Are you tired of reports that misunderstand compliance requirements? Embed guidelines directly into your environment management app to ensure that compliance requirements are met the first time. Are you tired of being tired? We don’t have an app for that. (We recommend another cup of coffee.)
Safety Management
What’s the definition of a shock absorber? Webster’s might not define it as an unsafe utility employee, but we do. The utilities industry is dangerous if meticulous safety audits are not enforced. A safety management app allows you to deploy and perform safety audits quickly. Dropdown menus speed up the process and advanced conditional logic lets you create rules to add or remove sections depending on user answers.
If an incident does occur, rich media capabilities enable pictures to be quickly captured, attached, and sent to safety managers. With notifications built-in, safety managers receive instant notifications when a safety violation occurs.
Analytics
The introduction of smart meters has increased the quantity of data that’s processed daily by utility companies. It’s no longer enough to manually input data into static spreadsheets and hope for the best.
Data needs to travel between hands rapidly, with real-time updates to analytics software. Better, it should be gathered together on one dashboard to allow for accelerated decision-making. An analytics app makes capturing data and harnessing the power of advanced analytics a breeze.
Conclusion
The best mobile apps for utility companies can be deployed quickly for fast business results but are flexible, secure, and scalable enough to both fix the roadblocks of today and solve the challenges of tomorrow.
That’s where TrueContext shines.
TrueContext is a low-code application platform for field service management that can deploy all the listed apps and more. With TrueContext you can power your utility field service team with a data ingestor for analytics, a compliance powerhouse, and an asset management pro — with or without a network connection.
Ready to ditch paper and embrace apps? Book a demo to see how TrueContext can fill in your utility app gaps.
