Are you the box?

At LoJack, field technicians do more than install stolen vehicle recovery systems. They also give input for developing IT migration plans.

Bob Lem, vice president of IT for the company in Westwood, Mass., says a technician's comment recently led to the purchase of ViryaNet Service Hub portal software for mobile workforce access and management. The software will replace LoJack's proprietary system, to eventually automate and optimize nearly 300 field-service schedules nationwide for delivering next-day and same-day service.

It's feedback that's educational, yet off-the-cuff, and it shaped a phased rollout to accommodate LoJack's fourth consecutive quarter of sales growth. Scheduled for this month, the Service Hub launch will let LoJack scale operations, reduce travel time and boost the number of daily installations.

Like Lem, you're probably also seeking innovation in your IT department. However, the challenge is, how do you think outside the box when essentially you and your peers are the box? The answer is to seek the input of people on your staff and even non-IS people throughout the organization.

Lem discovered hidden opportunity when folks let down their guard. In a 45-day information-gathering process, a 10-person core team consisting of sales, field operations, marketing, finance and an outside systems consultant shared views of how they'd scale the mobile workforce access and management system. The initial bias was that the order-entry system presented a bottleneck.

After taking a whiteboard to each department's procedures, IT drilled down further with a five-member team, who sat in for a day on the job with department line managers. The routines revealed that the current 30-second order-taking system was simple, yet efficient as compared to industry best practices.

People were relaxed after spending time together and conversation flowed naturally, leading IT to an "aha moment" during a particular installation ride-along, Lem says.

A technician had finished one job and was driving with the team to the next dealership when he noticed a LoJack truck driving in the opposite direction. "The tech says, 'That's one of the things that I'll never understand, if I was back here, and he was back there, then why am I driving to where he was and he's driving to where I was?' That was a good point," Lem says. "In retrospect it sounds like a no-brainer when you think about the dynamic changes that happen every day. Optimizing drive time would be a big enhancement for us . . . something we should focus on first."

The technician's feedback revealed key frustration points, such as an inability to process dynamic orders and rescheduling based on cancellations and workers calling in sick, that would make the system difficult to scale and grow.

While LoJack isn't disclosing how much it invested in the new system, pricing starts at $750,000 for ViryaNet Service Hub, Service Scheduler and eContract applications it also plans to use. In terms of return on investment, LoJack estimates that 25% efficiency savings will pay for the first phase of field service initiative in six months.