Rockwell Collins / ARINC provides IT managed services to more than 40 airports across five continents. When critical equipment fails in the airlines’ passenger processing systems — ticketing kiosks, printers, monitors, computers, network connectivity issues — airline agents submit support requests to Rockwell Collins / ARINC’s field service technicians onsite.

The company’s previous email-based incident ticketing process often caused delays in receiving, processing, and resolving tickets. This resulted in delayed repairs and sometimes costly consequences.

Due to a compounding effect, a two-minute delay in processing airplane passengers at check-in can result in delays in boarding which can then result in delays in departure. The end result can be millions of dollars in wasted fuel as aircraft sit idle on the tarmac, not to mention missed connections for passengers. Therefore, time-sensitive problems like printer jams, broken ticketing kiosks, or network outages can have wide-reaching effects.

To improve service levels, response times, and mean-time-to-repair on equipment, Rockwell Collins / ARINC armed field techs with a customized smartphone app directly connected to the back-end BMC Helix ITSM incident management system. The mobile app, powered by the award-winning Mobile Reach platform, connects directly and securely to BMC Helix ITSM and allows field techs to respond to issues and repair critical IT equipment much quicker and more efficiently than before.

Rockwell Collins / ARINC chose Mobile Reach as its mobility solution provider due to its strict requirements around scalability and need for a direct connection into BMC Helix ITSM. The new Mobile Reach solution currently runs on the iPhones of all field technicians and has provided improvements well beyond expectations.

“In the past, everything we have done as far as ticketing was done through email,” said Cecelia von Tiesenhausen-Hush, Lead Analyst at Rockwell Collins / ARINC. “At some sites, we have around 90 employees who have to process thousands of tickets per month. Their in-boxes were frightening with long threads of emails for each ticket. We actually did a study on how much faster and more efficient we are, and so far the results are beyond anything we could’ve imagined.”

According to the Rockwell Collins / ARINC study, the highly efficient mobile workflow will save more than 2,200 man-hours per year.

These savings include:

• 83.33 hours per month saved due to a more efficient method of inputting corrective actions/updates and information in each ticket
• 22 hours per month for hardware swaps due to the ability to track location and status changes in the field, eliminating the need to return to the office
• 85.5 hours per month for Preventative Maintenance scheduling as PMIs can now be assigned directly from the Mobile Reach app

“We are contractually bound to certain SLAs, usually just based on whatever the customer deems necessary and good enough,” said von Tiesenhausen-Hush. “Even though our customer is the airport, it’s really the airline agents we are dealing with, they are the ones that call us. So, if we are getting and acknowledging tickets faster, we can get there faster and fix their issues faster. It is setting a higher standard and showing what makes us different from our competitors. We are now using this tool that makes us more efficient and gives us the ability to do everything through our phones.”

This incredible improvement in efficiency is a direct result of field technicians using the mobile application to receive and update support tickets on the fly. Field techs receive a push notification on their iPhones when a new incident has been assigned to their group. The mobile app is equipped with custom sound notifications to indicate the urgency of the situation, which allows field techs to immediately adjust their work priorities if necessary. The notification contains information on the caller, the problem, and the location of the issue.

With one click, the on-site field tech closest to the problem accepts the ticket and proceeds to the incident location. Using the mobile app, field techs have the capability to send notes back and forth to each other in real-time or send an email to their team if they need help.

They also can send an email directly to the service desk if they need further assistance. This empowers the field techs to maintain complete control of the incident they are working on while tapping into the experience of others whenever necessary.

“One of our sites in Africa wanted to have a couple of hours to test everything out,” said von Tiesenhausen-Hush. “And we actually compared their data with the mobile app compared to their previous data. Before, the average acknowledgment time was about eight minutes. Then with the app it went down to two minutes. The old email system was creating quite a time lag where now the response times are almost instantaneous.”

According to von Tiesenhausen-Hush, when looking for a mobility provider, one of the main requirements was the capability to grow and expand as Rockwell Collins / ARINC expanded its lines of business. “With Mobile Reach, we have that kind of flexibility, and that’s one of the main reasons we went with them,” she said. “And the fact that we could connect the app directly into Remedy. It wasn’t like we had to make any drastic changes to the system we currently have, the Mobile Reach solution just snapped right into place.”

Rockwell Collins / ARINC is excited about its new mobile solution for BMC Helix ITSM and is in the planning stages of rolling it out to other business units within the company. The airport IT managed services group foresees compounded time (and money) savings going forward which will significantly improve operations and assist ongoing efforts to reduce traveler delays for their airline clients. Mobile Reach is thrilled to play a part in improving efficiencies in air travel across the globe. Smartly designed mobile applications can really make a big difference for your business!