Big Energy Data Management

Recent times have seen the advent of cloud based services and solutions where energy data is being stored in the cloud and being accessed from anywhere, anytime through remote mobile devices. This has been made possible by web-based systems that can usually bring real-time meter-data into clear view allowing for proactive business and facility management decisions. Some web based systems may even support multi utility metering points and come in handy for businesses operating multiple sites.

Whereas all this has been made possible by increased use of smart devices/ intelligent energy devices that capture data at more regular intervals; the challenge facing businesses is how to transform the large data/big volume of data into insights and action plans that would translate into increased performance in terms of increased energy efficiency or power reliability.

A solution to this dilemma facing businesses that do not know how to process big energy data, may lie in energy management software. Energy management software?s have the capability to analyse energy consumption for, electricity, gas, water, heat, renewables and oil. They enable users to track consumption for different sources so that consumers are able to identify areas of inefficiency and where they can reduce energy consumption, Energy software also helps in analytics and reporting. The analytics and reporting features that come with energy software are usually able to:

? Generate charts and graphs ? some software?s give you an option to select from different graphs

? Do graphical comparisons e.g. generate graphs of the seasonal average for the same season and day type

? Generate reports that are highly customisable

While choosing from the wide range of software available, it is important for businesses to consider software that has the capacity to support their data volume, software that can support the frequency with which their data is captured and support the data accuracy or reliability.

Energy software alone may not make the magic happen. Businesses may need to invest in trained human resources in order to realise the best value from their big energy data. Experts in energy management would then apply human expertise to leverage the data and analyse it with proficiency to make it meaningful to one?s business.

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How FieldElite helps Electricians

The need to hire an electrician arises more often than we expect. It’s quite common to come across problems with structure-wiring, whether at home or in your business premises. It’s, therefore, not surprising to come across a home or a business owner in search of electrical services.

Whether a startup or a fully-fledged business that offers electrical services, there are challenges that come with running the venture. Where you have field service electricians, the challenges are even compounded, more so on matters of assigning tasks, receiving complaints from customers, and receiving field service reports.

As we all know, an electrical business isn’t just limited to the management of field service electricians. You’ll have to manage all the processes, a responsibility that can be quite daunting.

It doesn’t have to be difficult, though. You can take advantage of a field service management software program to make the entire management process effortless.

FieldElite is one such software. With FieldElite, you can assign tasks, communicate, and receive reports from your electricians on the go. Incorporating field service management in your electrical business enables you to run your business operations smoothly. 

Below are some of the benefits of using FieldElite field service management software. 

Increased Efficiency

Improved efficiency is the number one benefit electricians can get from field service management software. With FieldElite, electricians can accept jobs while in the field and add attachments together with client signatures using their smartphones or tablets. From the field management software, they can get information on the optimal route to the site, the tools required for the job, the service history of the customer, and contractual commitments.

Managing and scheduling tasks on FieldElite are just a few clicks away for office-based operators. That means reduced travel times and delays that often cripple workforce management.

Improved Professionalism

FieldElite field management software gives you a professional edge over your competitors. With this field management software, you can store all your business-related information in a central place. Therefore, each of your electricians can access the data from anywhere using their smartphone or tablet installed with the FieldElite mobile application. As such, there?s no breach in communication, and that means the electricians will get the scheduled tasks on time. Building such relationships with your team in the field encourages teamwork and motivates each team member to play their part. Again, since you can monitor what’s going on in the field, you can address the issues raised by your electricians or customers as soon as possible. 

Effective Communication

Timely communication is very essential if you’re working with field technicians. Since you’ll not always be with them in the field, it’s always important to establish a proper communication channel to ensure information reaches them in time. With FieldElite field service management software, electricians receive notifications and details about tasks assigned to them via the FieldElite mobile app.

On the other hand, office-based staff can access the report with the details of the job once the electrician completes the given task. This implies that both the electricians and the office-based operators can get communication instantly, enabling them to see and manage their workloads. Individual electricians can close jobs on-site and proceed to the next task without having to do paperwork reporting. For this reason, electricians can complete multiple tasks within a short time, which improves their overall productivity.

High Accuracy

With FieldElite field service management software, missing data or incomplete information is a thing of the past. Electricians no longer have to deal with paperwork, which can be daunting and time-consuming, yet with a million and one errors. With FieldElite advanced mobile features, all field service processes and operations are automated. The electricians are left with quite little to do, and that minimises data entry errors.

Because the managers get real-time updates from the field techs, they can accurately maintain and track the field processes. With FieldElite mobile features, managers can get information regarding the job status, the actual time of arrival, and the time taken to complete the task. With such updates, the electricians are better placed to do the job well without wasting much time, thus improving their overall productivity. 

Improved Co-ordination With The Team 

Apart from improving the productivity of the electricians, FieldElite improves coordination with the entire management team. For instance, an electrician can be assigned new tasks within the same area where they’re currently assigned instead of sending another to complete a task in that same place. FieldElite makes this possible by always capturing the current location and job status.

Whenever a new request is made in an area, FieldElite first checks the database to confirm if there is an electrician already assigned in that area. If the status of the ongoing assignment is complete or almost complete and the new task request can wait for the remaining time, the electrician in the field would be assigned the new task. By doing so, the business saves on cost and time and minimises movements. 

Improved Customer Satisfaction

As an electrician, you’ll only be satisfied if the service you offer makes the customer happy. Apart from fixing their wiring problems, they?d be happy if you responded quickly to their request. This is only made possible with field service management software. With FieldElite, managers can notify the electricians on the service requests in their respective areas, allowing them to respond to the call within a very short time. Not only does this give you some level of satisfaction as the business owner but it’s also a win for the company. 

Make your field work-flow better with FieldElite, and improve the productivity of your electricians. With FieldElite releasing regular and timely updates, users aren’t left behind whenever there are changes in the field service industry. The updates introduce new features and capture new standards to ensure that you get the best experience with the software at all times.

Without Desktop Virtualisation, you can’t attain True Business Continuity

Even if you’ve invested on virtualisation, off-site backup, redundancy, data replication, and other related technologies, I?m willing to bet your BC/DR program still lacks an important ingredient. I bet you’ve forgotten about your end users and their desktops.

Picture this. A major disaster strikes your city and brings your entire main site down. No problem. You’ve got all your data backed up on another site. You just need to connect to it and voila! you’ll be back up and running in no time.

Really?

Do you have PCs ready for your employees to use? Do those machines already have the necessary applications for working on your data? If you still have to install them, then that’s going to take a lot of precious time. When your users get a hold of those machines, will they be facing exactly the same interface that they’ve been used to?

If not, more time will be wasted as they try to familiarise themselves. By the time you’re able to declare ?business as usual?, you’ll have lost customer confidence (or even customers themselves), missed business opportunities, and dropped potential earnings.

That’s not going to happen with desktop virtualisation.

The beauty of?virtualisation

Virtualisation in general is a vital component in modern Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery strategies. For instance, by creating multiple copies of virtualised disks and implementing disk redundancy, your operations can continue even if a disk breaks down. Better yet, if you put copies on separate physical servers, then you can likewise continue even if a physical server breaks down.

You can take an even greater step by placing copies of those disks on an entirely separate geographical location so that if a disaster brings your entire main site down, you can still gain access to your data from the other site.

Because you’re essentially just dealing with files and not physical hardware, virtualisation makes the implementation of redundancy less costly, less tedious, greener, and more effective.

But virtualisation, when used for BC/DR, is mostly focused on the server side. As we’ve pointed out earlier in the article, server side BC/DR efforts are not enough. A significant share of business operations are also dependent on the client side.

Desktop virtualisation (DV) is very similar to server virtualisation. It comes with nearly the same kind of benefits too. That means, a virtualised desktop can be copied just like ordinary files. If you have a copy of a desktop, then you can easily use that if the active copy is destroyed.

In fact, if the PC on which the desktop is running becomes incapacitated, you can simply move to another machine, stream or install a copy of the virtualised desktop there, and get back into the action right away. If all your PCs are incapacitated after a disaster, rapid provisioning of your desktops will keep customers and stakeholders from waiting.

In addition to that, DV will enable your user interface to look like the one you had on your previous PC. This particular feature is actually very important to end users. You see, users normally have their own way of organising things on their desktops. The moment you put them in front of a desktop not their own, even if it has the same OS and the same set of applications, they?ll feel disoriented and won’t be able to perform optimally.

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Vendor Selection

When shopping for an IT solution for your enterprise, there are two things you should scrutinise: the product (or service) itself and its vendor. Many times, companies overlook the importance of the latter, giving the reason that “it’s only the product we need”.

Wrong.

What about after-sales technical support and training? Ok, so you have an in-house team with the required competency for that IT solution in question… not that I believe it’s reasonable basis to pass up on the expertise that the vendor can provide. How about upgrades, patches, and documentation?

Still unperturbed? Here’s one factor that you may not have started to consider – What happens to your product if the vendor goes bankrupt or gets swallowed by a merger and acquisition? Surely, you no longer believe this is far from possible, do you?

But how are you supposed to know the financial stability of each vendor or whether it is an acquisition target? Well, you can either conduct your own research or you can leave that up to us. Part of our job includes not only establishing linkages in the industry but also being in-the-know on such relevant information.

Evaluation of Business Needs

You can’t separate vendor selection from the process of choosing the desired IT tool. That’s why our vendor selection services starts by defining exactly what your business needs are.

Once we’ve pinned down your needs, we can then narrow down the list of possible IT solutions. Only then can we proceed with the main vendor selection process.

Have you ever been caught in a situation wherein you thought you knew what you wanted, only to end up realising it’s not what you were looking for after all? We’re here to make sure you don’t get caught in that kind of situation when choosing an enterprise-class IT solution.

With the TCO (total cost of ownership) of such solutions typically running up to hundreds of thousands of euros, you can’t afford to arrive at what you really want by way of trial and error.

These are the things you stand to benefit the moment we start working with you:

  • Thorough assessment of your IT needs. We’ll consult the people in your organisation who’ll be affected the most in order to obtain a clear picture of what your specific needs really are. Most IT solution purchases are made with very little consultation that, after installation, many of the end users don’t benefit at all.
  • Minimal interruption during assessment. As with all our other services, we see to it that the interruptions we make are absolutely necessary. So the moment we start with our work, you can still continue with yours.
  • Insightful suggestions of the required IT solution. You still know your business better. So even after we’ve gone through the assessment and given our recommendations, the decision as to what IT tool should be pursued will still be up to you. The difference now is, you’ll be making a decision based on expertly gathered information put forward in an insightful proposal.

Request and Evaluation of Vendor Proposals

With so many IT solutions companies mushrooming, it is becoming more difficult to keep track of them, their specialities, strengths, and weaknesses.

Companies selling best-of-breed products may be relatively easy to spot. But there are also other attributes that are equally important but not as well publicised. For instance, which companies offer better quality management philosophies? Which companies have strategic visions running parallel to yours? Which of them possess implementation capabilities that can cater to your rapidly growing IT requirements?

Vendors who answer positively to these queries need to be given the appropriate importance in the selection process. We see to it that these and other relevant attributes are factored into our scorecards and evaluation processes.

These are the things you can look forward to when you grant us the opportunity to serve you.

  • Experience is a vital item in our vendor selection criteria. Our vast knowledge of the reliable players in the industry will lead you to experienced vendors who can hit the ground running from day one and continue with the same vigour onward.
  • We can help you draw positive response for each of your Request For Proposals (RFPs) or Request For Information (RFIs). Did you expect these vendors to be enthusiastic in sending out proposals each time you asked them to? Think again. You’ll have to persuade them first of your sincerity to become a potential customer. With our help, your RFPs will make preferred vendors see “opportunity” written all over.
  • No need to go “Eany, meeny, miny, moe”. Deciding which vendors should move up in the selection process can take up a lot of time if you don’t know which criterion should be given more weight. Our scorecards are designed to collect the most relevant information and to generate results that will help you decide on these matters at a glance.

Interview, Negotiation, and Monitoring

As soon as you start getting positive response to your Request For Proposals, the interview process should be next. It’s at this point that vendors can present and highlight their strengths while we try to glean as much information of their true capabilities as well as their dedication to the project.

Some companies can provide proof-of-concepts and we may require them as part of the interview process. This will not only give us a better idea as with regards to their product’s capabilities, but also to their level of expertise on the solution in question.

  • We’ll help you set up the interview process and organise the evaluation committee. Members of the committee will typically include representatives from each department that will be affected by the new technology, which we would have already identified during our Evaluation of Business Needs.
  • Since our scorecards are designed to expedite the filtering and selection process, you may eventually be able to choose the finalists yourself. However, in the event that two or more vendors turn out evenly matched, we’ll help you identify the better company.
  • We’re very familiar with the price ranges of various IT solutions, including the effects on price of certain variables. As such, we can tell you whether a product’s price tag is justified or not.
  • Our exceptional familiarity on both the IT industry and the entire negotiation processes itself will give you the edge when it’s time for us to haggle for the best bang for the buck.
  • After the contract is awarded, we’ll even be on hand to monitor whether deliverables are handed over and milestones are achieved as promised.

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