WebEclipse - a better FM service for less cost
Eclipse-fm® has a wealth of management reports available, and one that has caught our eye is Task Hourly Call Analysis.
Using this report report we noticed that all the Trusts running Eclipse-fm show a common pattern of a significant peak in the creation of maintenance tasks early in the day, and then a drop to the "base load" for the rest of the day.
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That is of course, no surprise, as the morning peak represents all those tasks saved up since the previous end of normal working hours. But what, in turn, does that mean?
- Tasks someone has had to write down and remember to phone up about "tomorrow"
- Tasks someone has had to pass on to the day team to phone up about "tomorrow".
- Tasks someone is going to have to wait in the start of business telephone queue to tell the Helpdesk about.
- Perhaps - Tasks someone has e-mailed to "helpdesk@Trust-X" overnight.
- Tasks the helpdesk staff are going to have to respond to and create from incoming phone calls and voice mail
- Tasks the helpdesk staff are going to have to respond to and create from stacked up emails.
That is a lot of time, and maybe some aggravation, spread around busy people who would welcome a better way of doing things.
Anecdotally we are also aware of a Friday afternoon peak in enquiries into existing tasks as everyone clears their desk at the end of the week. Eclipse-fm® does not have a report that shows that!
There is a better way
In day to day life self service has become a welcome feature. We don’t wait for an operator to connect our telephone calls, we dial them ourselves. Few would want to go back to those days! We besiege the supermarkets in preference to "old fashioned" shops with serving staff.
We have also become used to the Internet. Data entry over the Internet for shopping and other purposes has become common place, for all the reasons of convenience and immediacy that we have become used to - and because you get more control thereafter. Questions like "Where is my parcel" "Change my booking" without needing to wait in a queue on the telephone. And the automation implied has kept costs down of course.
WebEclipse - is the better way!
You can bring the benefits of self service to your Help Desk. Your Help Desk "Customers" can very easily create ad hoc Help Desk tasks at any point day or night in the time it would take them to write themselves a reminder to do it "tomorrow". Then they don’t have to think about it again "tomorrow", or, worse, brief someone else to do it, thereby occupying two people in non productive labour.
Helpdesk task Ticket Entry in WebEclipse
Most of this is automatically created
e.g. WebEclipse knows your location
Help desk staff will spend less time on creating tasks, instead doing productive work on tasks already created. That may just be scheduling them for execution, but if it involves finding out more about a particular task, then this becomes a useful contact initiated from the Helpdesk, and will still add up to less time spent overall than is the case when helpdesk staff have to create all tasks.
WebEclipse also reduces the Friday afternoon pressure, as customers can check up on tasks for themselves. This brings the FM service up to the levels we have become used to in other walks of life, such as tracking parcels!
Ward Enquiry - Current Task Status
Includes links to each task
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Ward Enquiry - Individual Task History
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 Ward Enquiry - Ward Task History
Includes links to each task
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Time and Cost Saving - Not just out of hours?
Self service will not just be for out of hours defect reporting. For many, the simplicity and immediacy of a quick web page entry will be preferred to a phone call to an overloaded Help Desk. But of course that does depend on an available PC, and the response times of the Help Desk staff to incoming calls.
Save costs
Creating a helpdesk task probably takes a minimum of 3 minutes. 12,000 calls in a quarter needing to be created as tasks (not untypical) represents 600 hours. That’s over 3 staff weeks per quarter, or in cash terms around £5,500 per year - at a conservative estimate and leaving aside the Friday afternoon "What’s happened to my task?" calls.
Even if only 25% of those calls went through WebEclipse the potential saving would more than pay for it!
Or a better service?
Of course you will not immediately release £5,500 or even £1,300 for other uses, but the benefits/savings accrue in other ways.
- Is the FM department under pressure in handling Help Desk calls? Does it really need another person? WebEclipse would reduce that pressure, allowing for a better working environment and a better service at minimal additional cost - much less than that of another person.
- Do you have a staffing problem looming? People do change jobs or retire, and that can make the difference between a supportable workload and unsustainable pressure on the service. £750 for Web Eclipse could be a low cost contribution to avoiding that.
- Are there things you would like to take on or improve, but day to day work demands somehow mean you can never get the time to innovate? Web Eclipse could well reduce that pressure and free up time to make those improvements, take on those extra commitments.
- Finally, in these stretched times, are you under pressure to do more with less staff? Maybe WebEclipse could let you do just that.
Asset Management - WebEclipse is not just about Helpdesk tasks
WebEclipse also provides valuable asset information to ward etc staff, including location and if on loan.
Summary
Eclipse-fm® is a highly effective management system for the facilities function of an NHS trust. WebEclipse offers many opportunities for providing a better service to FM "customers" and a better working environment for FM Staff, at a very low cost.
