Brand and MDSI Deliver Workforce Management and Mobile Data Solution to Telenor Engineers

Brand Communications Limited and MDSI Inc. have teamed up to provide a full workforce management and GSM mobile data solution to Telenor's engineering workforce.

Brand supplies fast, reliable and seamless access from the Telenor engineer's PC into the Telenor internal LAN environment, using Telenor's GSM network. The engineer has a copy of the Apollo Emulator loaded on the PC, and an Apollo Access Server at the host end manages all of the data calls to and from the engineers. The engineers use Telenor Mobil's 9600bps circuit-switched data service to log on to the LAN and access job details in real time.

That's where MDSI comes in because it provides the solution that processes the job data and delivers it to an application resident on the engineer's PC. MDSI's leading scheduling solution (known as Advantex) coupled with Brand's award-winning Apollo GSM connectivity solution are perfect partners in extending vital data out to remote engineers.

Telenor chose Brand because of its 100% compatibility with MDSI, and because of the unique benefits of using Apollo via GSM. Spoofing will save them a significant sum of money, call recovery keeps the application alive even when GSM calls drop, compression results in faster downloads, and the simple-to-use client software means the engineer can be productive so much more quickly. Above all else, Telenor wanted a proven low-risk solution which delivered tangible benefits very quickly.

The strong partnership between Brand and MDSI, and implementations such as Belgacom (Belgium) and Yorkshire Water (UK) convinced them that their decision was right.

Now that the core platform is installed, it is being extended to the thousands of Telenor engineers across Norway during 2000. It will be one of the largest rollouts of its kind, and it is further testimony to the fact that GSM data can really work for field service organisations. In addition, now that Telenor has merged its field service company with that of Sweden's Telia to form a new company called Bravida, the solution may be extended to the Swedish engineers too.