O2 helps ScottishPower keep the lights on

ScottishPower's electricity network is not small. With over 650,000 individual sites, it's long enough to stretch three times around the world, and covers some of the most remote areas in the UK.

Keeping the network running is no easy task. Resources need to be allocated efficiently, so that staff can fix system faults as quickly as possible, if ScottishPower is to meet its customer service targets. Bill Maternaghan of ScottishPower says, "When the lights go out it's our responsibility to get those lights back on in the shortest possible time."

That means getting engineers on site as quickly as possible. Once this would have meant relying on local knowledge and maps. But ScottishPower's mobile workforce needed a quicker and more efficient solution. Which is where O2 came in.

"I decided to engage our O2 data specialists," says Laurence Daly, the O2 Account Manager, "to develop an in-house solution that ScottishPower could trial free of charge." This involved engineers from O2's network coverage team checking the mobile signal at each of ScottishPower's remote sites, using a laptop to record the signal's strength. "Once detected," says O2 network engineer Ivan Malanczyn, "we can fit equipment that detects the weak signal, amplifies it, and retransmits it."

The next stage was the roll out of the Xda sat-nav project, which allows ScottishPower's engineers to navigate directly to anywhere a system fault has been detected. "As ScottishPower receive a fault," says Laurence, "they poll their engineers to determine the nearest engineer to the fault. Once he accepts the job, the ordinates of the fault are actually automatically downloaded on to the device itself and a route planned for the engineer."

Security was a major issue that needed to be solved. ScottishPower wanted to make sure that, if an Xda was stolen or mislaid, site details were made inaccessible. O2's solution was to not only encrypt the device, but also the SD card inside, meaning that the information contained on the Xda would be inaccessible to anyone who found the handset by mistake.

O2 also helped in the roll out and implementation of the Xdas to ScottishPower's engineers. "We had a requirement for 1,200 of our workforce to receive the Xda," says Bill Maternaghan. "O2 not only provided the solution for us, but offered to pre-configure the Xdas, ready to go, straight from the box." This meant installing the software on to the devices before delivering them back to ScottishPower, who then deployed them to their engineers.

ScottishPower's partnership with O2 has been a successful and productive one. O2's leadership in mobile data technology has helped to cement ScottishPower's lead in customer service. "We've seen real benefits in response times to system faults," says Maternaghan. "This translates into improved customer service and customer satisfaction, and that means potentially millions of pounds of savings for our business."

And with a network of ScottishPower's size, that's no small achievement.