About Pidpa
Pidpa and water, a perfect combination. As one of the largest Flemish water companies, Pidpa provides delicious, pure drinking water to more than 500,000 customers or nearly 1.2 million residents in the province of Antwerp, delivered right to their homes. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Every day, Pidpa purifies groundwater into drinking water, totalling more than 175 million litres per day. Pidpa delivers this drinking water to homes without any loss of quality or interruption. For this, it relies on an impressive infrastructure: 59 water towers, 26 extraction points, and over 12,700 km of piping. Each of these is a link in the distribution chain that is maintained, renewed, and expanded.
The Pidpa story doesn’t end at the tap. Pidpa offers municipalities a wide and varied range of services in terms of sewage management. This includes quality management of waste and rainwater tailored to the needs of each municipality.
Pidpa is the ultimate “partner in water”. To underline this, it offers a wide range of water services: consultancy, scientific and technological research, customer service, educational projects, and protection of natural resources. Pidpa has it all covered.
The challenge
The goal of the ‘Mobile Working’ project is to deliver a solution for a large and diverse user group:
- Each group has its own workflow and therefore different information needs.
- One group may have 2 work orders in a day, while another group sometimes has more than 20.
- Certain user groups are already accustomed to working with a mobile solution, while others are not.
- The application is used for various purposes, such as conducting site inspections, preparing work, laying connections, performing repairs, or changing water meters.
- The tasks of the user groups vary greatly. Some user groups need to supervise and prepare work, while others need to report repair work or take meter readings.
- For an ICT organization, it is also a major challenge to choose and implement a future-proof solution in the rapidly changing mobile world that seamlessly integrates with the SAP system.
The implemented solution is technically, functionally, and architecturally very robust, allowing Pidpa's requirements and desires to be excellently met with this proven solution.
Chosen solution
Pidpa has chosen Ideo Mobile Service & Asset Management based on the SAP Mobile Platform. Employees are supported by intuitive screens that they have co-designed in interactive UX design workshops conducted by Ideo, allowing them to fully recognize their own workflow.
Many ICT organizations are currently concerned about making a good and future-proof choice in the rapidly changing technology landscape. Ideo provides relief to Pidpa by offering a standard product: Ideo MSA. Ideo MSA is built on the robust technology of the SAP Mobile Platform. By deploying the standard product, Ideo can provide Pidpa with guarantees regarding the future-proof nature of the chosen solution and the underlying technical infrastructure.
The application ensures uniform process handling and simplifies management by equipping the six different user groups with a single mobile application that supports all their various processes and needs.
The success of this project is evident in the first week after its launch. Users are enthusiastic about working with the application. Besides Ideo, the Business and ICT departments of Pidpa have been closely involved in the project. Workers, supervisors, and site inspectors have actively participated in interactive UX design workshops from the beginning of the implementation. Through the joint effort of business and ICT, Pidpa has ensured that the mobile application is fully tailored to real-world situations.
The change process for end-users was crucial for Pidpa and received the attention it deserves.
Due to the high level of involvement during the design process, the transition has been very gradual and smooth, as stated by Hans Hendrix from his role as Project Manager.
During user training, it was often indicated early on that the application is logically structured and that extensive training was actually not necessary.
“End users have been involved from the beginning. The change process of the end users has received full attention as a result, and has proceeded very gradually and without much resistance. This has resulted in a high level of recognition of the workflow and thus rapid user acceptance.”
Hans Hendrix, Project Manager and Head of Distribution Department, Pidpa
"The application speaks for itself!"
Stefan Meys, Director of Finance and ICT, highlights that this project is characterized by the great enthusiasm of the entire team: Pidpa ICT, end users, functional managers, process owners, and Ideo. All involved employees have been highly motivated throughout the project to achieve this wonderful end result. Normally, a project of this magnitude is always characterized by a dip in enthusiasm that eventually fades away. However, in the ‘Mobile Working’ project, this dip was not observed.
Result/Benefits
- Efficient working through a fully digital workflow consolidated into one solution for all daily tasks;
- Data input at the source and automatic processing in SAP, document management, and customer-facing interactions, resulting in cost savings due to fewer errors, less re-typing, no data loss, etc.;
- Rapid user acceptance through close involvement and full attention to end-user change management;
- Robust offline working platform, suitable for large amounts of data with fast and efficient data exchange;
- Reduction of management costs, one solution for six different user groups;
- Assurance and support from Ideo in terms of underlying SAP technology.
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