BlueTrail & Mila Maintenance – Mobile Solutions Delivered in Partnership
BlueTrail, leaders in developing mobile applications for the
enterprise, has been working in partnership with Mila Maintenance since 2002.
Until two years ago, Mila Maintenance (part of the Mila Group, working to minimise the long-term maintenance costs of PVC-U and aluminium window and door products within the housing stocks of local authorities and housing associations) had not been at the vanguard of the mobile computing revolution – PCs were installed just six years ago in the maintenance and services division and until recently most reporting had been a paper-based activity, with information transferred on to computers at head office. Tristan Cooke, project manager at Mila Maintenance could see the potential of computerisation for his engineers and started to instigate major changes, initially with on-site engineers using laptops.
Tristan takes up the story: “Lotus Notes is ubiquitous across all divisions of Mila and we originally sent our maintenance engineers out armed with a laptop installed with Lotus Notes. However, the nature of the environments in which they work and security issues surrounding laptops didn’t make this a viable option.”
As the shortcomings of the laptop were becoming more apparent, PDA technology was becoming more accessible and cost-effective and Tristan approached Common Time, developers of the Cadenza range of middleware, to build Mila Maintenance’s first pocket PC application. This was an early success, and encouraged Tristan to commission a further mobile application, this time to be developed by CommonTime business partner BlueTrail, specialists in integrating mobile applications into enterprise systems.
BlueTrail & Mila Maintenance – Mobile Solutions Delivered in Partnership
Tristan continues the story: “When we had need to develop a second application I was more than happy to follow Common Time’s recommendation and meet up with BlueTrail. Bob Flynn, BlueTrail’s managing director came up for a meeting in our Barnsley head office at the start of 2002 and we discussed what I had in mind. Bob talked me through how the application could be developed, and we agreed to go ahead. I think the whole process from the initial meeting to deployment of the application, which was for risk assessment and safety reporting at head office, was only a matter of two to three weeks.”
The relationship between the two companies didn’t stop there. Tristan was by now developing some basic Lotus Domino systems himself, and was keen to extend his knowledge into building mobile applications. BlueTrail devised a bespoke two-day workshop for him focussing on building mobile applications using Common Time’s Cadenza mForms. Day one of the workshop was purely theoretical, working through examples. Day two was completely “hands-on” with Tristan developing an application of his own with the knowledge gleaned the previous day.
The application devised during the workshop was for a live contract requirement with the Nuneaton and Bedworth Council, requiring the replacement of friction hinges on PVC-U doors. The workshop-generated application was a great success and was used by Mila’s engineers for eight months during which time they recorded all relevant works information on their HP Ipaqs and then uploaded it directly to head office at convenient intervals during the day.
BlueTrail & Mila Maintenance – Mobile Solutions Delivered in Partnership
Supported by BlueTrail, Tristan and his team have developed another application for use with a contract awarded by the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, which is a responsive maintenance contract. This application enables engineers to record information required for the costing analysis of each job undertaken and produce invoices.
Tristan says of how he works with BlueTrail: “The relationship we have with BlueTrail is fantastic. They’re always there with advice and support on how we can improve existing applications and are full of ideas and technical know-how for my ideas going forward. Currently all our PDA applications are used solely for project reporting, but the next step is to incorporate some business housekeeping issues, such as timesheets and expenses. The potential uses of PDA technology in our line of business are immeasurable, especially in relation to our longer term contracts and the plan is for BlueTrail to keep us at the forefront of this technology and the possibilities it provides.”
Bob Flynn, managing director of BlueTrail concludes: “We consider Tristan Cooke quite a hero, here at BlueTrail. With other clients we tend to have a more conventional relationship but working with Mila Maintenance has been quite inspirational. Not only has Tristan grasped the potential of this technology from an early stage, but he has gone the extra mile and is now able to build and deploy mobile applications into his own organisation. We are delighted to have been part of Tristan’s ‘virtual team’ in helping him achieve this, and we look forward to working with him on his plans for the future.”
For further information about BlueTrail please visit www.bluetrail.co.uk.
For further press information, please contact:
Richard Spence – BlueTrail – 0781 3945561