Safer, More Efficient Cities with Salesforce, Heroku, IoT and Smart City Development
Smart city development, creating smarter, safer, more efficient cities is at the top of most City Manager to-do lists. Getting there requires a proactive approach that optimizes the use of all available resources, ensures safety issues are handled quickly, and that all pieces of this puzzle work together to create a cohesive city solution.
Mike Salem, Lead Sales Engineer at Salesforce, understands the challenges cities face. He routinely meets with city officials and helps them understand how Salesforce enables safer, more efficient cities.
The maturation of Internet of Things (IoT) technology has brought the capabilities of connected cities and their management to new highs. Recently, Salem collaborated with the RadialSpark team to develop an end-to-end solution that demonstrates the combined abilities of Salesforce, Field Service Lightning, and a custom Heroku application to automate field service management.
“A city’s environment is shaped not only by people who have an important influence, but by everyone who lives or works there.” ~ Robert Cowan
Fixing What’s Broken
In traditional field service management scenarios, schedulers and dispatchers rely on citizens or city workers to report the need for maintenance. If a traffic light malfunctions or a digital highway sign is damaged, the need for repair must first be recognized and communicated.
The severity of the damage and priority is determined based on the safety threat posed to citizens. A traffic light outage poses a significant public safety threat and is prioritized for immediate repair. Once the repair is scheduled, a field technician must go to the traffic light, assess the damage, and determine which supplies are needed to complete the repair. In many cases, the right supplies are not on the truck, which means that the technician must schedule a return trip to fix the light. It also means that the threat to public safety is prolonged.
If this traffic light were managed by Salesforce and Field Service Lightning, the technicians would have been alerted and dispatched to the repair without the need for human intervention. The issued work order would have included all needed tools and supplies to affect the repair and the risk to public safety would have been cleared as quickly as possible.
“Great cities are not static, they constantly change and take the world along with them.” ~ Edward Glaeser
Looking at the Smart City Development Stack
Deploying automation in your city starts with your Salesforce implementation. Salesforce houses your work orders and stores content. Field Service Lightning is a core offering of the Salesforce platform. Access is determined by your Salesforce subscription level and can be configured based on your subscription and your needs. Heroku integrates seamlessly with Salesforce and connects fielded equipment with the Field Service Lightning App.
A sensor on the fielded equipment alerts the custom Heroku application to the need for attention. This kicks-off the creation of a work order in Salesforce, which is deployed through the Field Service Lightning App to the right technician.
Technicians in the field utilize the Field Service Lightning App to find the most efficient route to the repair, record notes, send pictures of damaged equipment to tier II teams, ask for repair assistance (if needed), note repair status, and view their upcoming stops.
If connectivity is dropped at any point, all data is stored on the device and synced seamlessly when the connection is restored. There is never an interruption in available data, and there is nothing for the field team to do to complete the sync.
“The people it really speaks to are the city managers who can say, “it wasn’t me who made the decision, it was the data.” ~ Usman Haque
Analyzing Collected Data
In addition to automating scheduling and providing streamlined access to data and reporting tools, implementing a connected city solution allows you to gather data at every point. This information is accurate, reliable, and readily available to decision makers.
When connected with Einstein Analytics, cities can view dynamic dashboards that allow them to drill down into the each data set to further maximize resources. The dashboards allow you to view KPIs such as mean time to repair, first-time fix rate, and travel time. You can filter data by resources, priority, or any other category and quickly switch from work type to account to product.
Not Just for Cities
Any team that provides service in the field can benefit from the implementation of IoT connected technology. Whether you are servicing HVAC equipment, repairing home appliances, or keeping up with a fleet of commercial vehicles, connected technology will ease scheduling, provide reliable data to improve resource utilization, and ensure that your team of technicians is operating at peak performance.
Service providers, both government and commercial, that provide this level of service are building trust with their citizens and their customers. In a government setting, this creates an environment in which the public knows that their city is a safe and well-maintained municipality. Local officials can rely on their city management team to provide superior service while optimizing the use of all resources.
In a commercial setting, your business stands out among the rest. Calls are answered faster, service is completed quicker and both your customers and your bottom line grow thanks to better utilization of resources. IoT is not just for the tech giants of the world, it is improving businesses of all sizes and in all industries through smart city development.
Michael Rockford, CEO and Founder of Radialspark, a registered Salesforce partner and leader in custom software development and implementations.
Originally published on www.radialspark.com
