Johnson Controls empowers 7,000+ technicians

The Challenge

Johnson Controls (JCI) is a global HVAC, electronics, and automotive parts organization that generates over $30B from operations in 150 countries. With over 100,000 customer sites in North America alone, providing world-class service is critical to their success.  

JCI needed a solution that would push their digital transformation goals and tackle key challenges like empowering technicians of varying experience levels to reliably complete complex tasks and workflows without relying on paper-bound tribal knowledge and generating customer-facing documents to confirm services rendered. All this, while offering enterprise-grade capabilities like SSO and secure integrations. 

Adding to JCI’s complexity, as an international business, JCI’s workflows encompass diverse equipment, services, regions, and languages. This diversity meant they needed a platform that would allow citizen developers to create tailored apps that they could own, adapt, and scale at will depending on customer or technician input. This agility was important not only for initial deployments but also for scaling the selected platform into new and evolving business processes.

Over 50 low-code apps deployed…
“In the past, if I had to deploy an app without that flexible technology, it would take months and a minimum of $300,000.”

BUDDY SAUCIER
VP, HVAC SERVICES
JOHNSON CONTROLS

The Solution

JCI identified TrueContext as a robust yet agile platform that had the enterprise capabilities and flexibility they required. The deployed solution empowers citizen developers to rapidly build custom field apps for various use cases and regions that integrate across FSMs, EAMs, CRMs, and systems of records.

JCI began their deployment with a single process: an app to communicate work performed and suggest follow-up actions to a client. This app supports field technicians by eliminating repetitive data entry and improves the installation and maintenance tasks they perform on HVAC equipment.

“The very first apps that we deployed took 5-10 minutes to develop. We probably spent more time whiteboarding the app than it took to build and actually deploy it out to the field.”

JIM McKIEL
SR. OPERATION PROGRAM MANAGER
JOHNSON CONTROLS

From there, the solution has scaled across the organization to fundamentally change the way they do business. Whether an app is deployed to speed warranty claim invoicing from months to days, to automate installation or replacement workflows, or to track field technicians’ productivity within planned project scope using the integrated analytics software, JCI does it with TrueContext.

The Benefits

Custom apps allow Johnson Controls to push the depth of visibility in the field. It enables them to move with the market with rapid app iterations and eliminate time spent on paperwork and cumbersome processes. This has freed time to focus on what drives real value in their organization: service excellence.

Technicians can now capture before and after asset photos, access contextual asset history, and trigger automatic data sharing across workflows. And, when they require changes, these alterations to the app can occur almost instantaneously. TrueContext has not only helped create wider visibility into the field for line of business owners but has also championed transparency and trust with the customers with customer-facing forms.

Improved field visibility, data collection, technician empowerment, and customer transparency has meant greater customer service, which is a huge differentiator. “We want to give [technicians] all the tools that we possibly can to help them become the hero in front of our customers therefore when the time comes they need additional service, they’re going to look to Johnson Controls” says David Bishop, Director of Service Operations.