Mobile Computing Case Study - Autoglass®

Windscreen repair company develops specialist application in 4 weeks - increasing the number of jobs completed per technician and speeding up payments

Background

Autoglass® is the leading vehicle glass repair and replacement specialist in the UK. The company is part of the Belron® Group, the world's largest automotive glass replacement company which includes Carglass®, AutoRestore and vehicle inspection company motorcheckª.

Autoglass® has over 2000 employees, 1200 of whom are mobile technicians working out of 119 branches. Their national glass repair and replacement service is available 24/7 and serves over 1.3 million customers each year.

Challenge

Autoglass® offer a mobile windscreen repair service which eliminates the need for some windscreens to be replaced.

There are rules in the MOT vehicle test specifying that certain windscreen chips must be repaired, particularly if the damage is in the area swept by wipers. Left unattended, it is possible that chips can turn into cracks, necessitating a completely new windscreen.

The administration of the repair service was previously based on a paper system which required a significant amount of data to be entered for every job. Technicians had to visit the office twice a day to collect and drop off paperwork. When technicians required additional job information they had to take up the time of call centre agents reading out the details.

Payments were processed on a weekly basis once all paperwork was collected.

Solution

An end-to-end mobile application was developed in just 4 weeks and rolled out to 150 Autoglass® repair technicians.

The service fully automates repair jobs from beginning to end.

Ownership of the vehicle is initially validated and the owner's insurance checked to see whether it covers windscreen repair. This is achieved via an interface to the DVLA.

Data is entered directly into the technician's device in front of the client. This takes just a few minutes per job and completely replaces the previous paperwork. Photographs of the windscreen are taken before and after the repair for validation. Finally, the client's signature is captured on completion of the job and a fully itemised receipt is printed.

Benefits to Autoglass®

The application has vastly increased the efficiency and cash flow of the service. Rather than completing paperwork and getting it to and from the local depot every day, each technician's time is now spent more productively on-site completing additional jobs.

The service bills jobs as and when they complete rather than on the previous weekly basis, vastly reducing the payment cycle.

Finally, eliminating the need for manual data entry has significantly cut the number of duplicate and erroneous entries - this was particularly an issue for fields such as the Vehicle Registration Number VRN.

Result

Nigel Doggett, Managing Director at Autoglass® is very impressed. "Our clients are delighted to be offered such a professional, customer focused service. They love to see technology in use, making the whole process so quick and easy."

"By freeing up time spent recording information on paper and getting that paper to our local depots, technicians now complete typically 1 or 2 extra jobs per day. We have also significantly reduced our travel time and costs."

"Finally, less time is spent in conversations between our technicians and our call centre - enabling the call centre to talk to more customers. All of these simple factors ensured that the service paid for itself in just a few weeks."

"Importantly, the rapid development has put us well ahead of the competition. We were very impressed with the simplicity of the build and test process, especially the fact that we could plug in ready-made functions such as the signature capture."

"It's a win-win situation for everyone - we complete more jobs, the customer gets a repaired windscreen and the insurance company avoids the potential cost of a windscreen replacement."

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