News
ORTEC is first off the mark with its real-time planning interface 
27 January 2010
Customers can now schedule precise appointments via the Internet
'Give the customer more control'. This has been ORTEC's motto for many years, and our customers often use it as the basis for organizing their scheduling activities. By transferring more control to the customer, scheduling is made more efficient and less time consuming and customer satisfaction is increased. With results like these, it was only a matter of time before ‘Scheduling via the Internet’ was made available to the service industry.
ORTEC is the first company in the industry to adapt its scheduling software for field staff. The enhancements enable customers to go online via the Internet and indicate the most convenient time for an engineer to call. "Through a real-time interface (via an ERP-system), customer requests are directly incorporated into the planning schedules. The automation of this process will then provide optimized schedules for the service engineers. Martijn Sol, Director of Industry says: "The interface dispenses with the need for double data entry. The planner can refocus their attention on producing optimal planning schedules, in which the human aspect of planning is combined with data solutions."
"The development of the interface is very innovative. Although Internet scheduling is currently being used by some customers, we noticed that the usage is not extensive," Martijn Sol. "It is quite common that planners have to switch between two systems, receiving the customer data into one system and then manually inputting this information into the planning system. There is often no direct interface. The scheduling department has to spend both a lot of time analyzing planning wall charts and inputting data in order to determine the most efficient schedule for their engineers. Furthermore, using the old planning system, time slots were often not very precise, such as a.m. or p.m., which is inconvenient to customers because it requires them to remain at home for sometimes up to a whole day."
As a result, ORTEC has developed an interface with the Internet, which allows customers to indicate their preferred, specific time slots, for example, from 13:00 to 14:00. The requested appointments are instantly calculated in ORTEC Service Planning, ORTEC’s scheduling solution for field staff, in order to establish the most efficient schedule, after which the customers receive a confirmation through the website-interface. This solution is suitable for any business or organization, ranging from engineering to home care, which provides its services on location," Martijn Sol proudly states.
Complete solution
"We are able to offer businesses a complete solution through our collaboration with partners such as Sigmax and TomTom WORK, who both specialize in mobile solutions. The customer benefits from the service being conducted at their requested time, whilst businesses spend less time on scheduling and their employee satisfaction is improved because ORTEC Service Planning makes their job easier."