AN ARTICLE BY SPECIALIST

WHEN THE WORK IS DONE BY A PARTNER

Case: Our company does installation, maintenance, fault correction, and delivery work. When all this is done by own personnel, and all data is in one system, it is fairly simple and straightforward to manage the work and information flow. All information remains within own company and is easily manageable.

However, when the work is done by a partner, it means many challenges and problems we need to solve.

CHALLENGES WITH PARTNERED WORK

All partners have their own systems. How do we make the information flow in such a way that the partners receive all information they need, and on the other hand, the orderer gets all information they need to keep up-to-date of the work status? In addition to that, we need to consider the following topics also:

  • How do we communicate with them fluently and in a solid way?
  • How do we deliver the instructions to all partners timely?
  • What if the partner changes in in the middle of the process? There is a lot of work to match the systems again.
  • How do we ensure the partner’s labour capacity?
  • Brand is in danger if the partnered work is not managed well:
    • Does the end customer have a visibility to the brand?
    • Do we know the level of the external labour competence, quality assurance, processes, customer experience, reclamation handlind etc? If not, we take a big reputation risk!
  • Security point of view needs to be taken into account as well: how do we insure that the partner workforce is reliable and secure?

QUALITY REQUIREMENTS AND INFORMATION FLOW PLAY A KEY ROLE

When selecting partners to the partner network, it is important to select a partner who operates the way the work orderer wants it to operate. To fulfill the quality requirements, the tools and help the orderer offers it’s partners, play a key role. There are various kinds of order-related things the technician needs to know prior to the installation work, during it, and after it.

 Things to be taken into account prior to the installation work

  • we know the best route to the installation site
  • we know possible credentials and are sure we have the access rights to the site (also: we know where possible keys are etc.)

Things to be taken into account during and after the installation work

  • status- and actualized data input, including time consumption and invoicing details
  • photos taken before and after the installation
  • making the installation- and fault documents
  • reporting possible deviations and reclamation

The fact that the partners use, for the most part, each their own systems, brings challenges to the information flow between the orderer and it’s partners. However, there are functional solutions to these challenges.

In case of multiple orders, it makes sense to plan for a 2-way interface between the orderer’s and the partner’s software. That is an efficient and secure way to get the information flow seamlessly.

Another solution is to offer the partner a portal, from which they are able to pick their own works. In this case the partner logs in to the orderer’s system and does the reporting in there.

Whichever solution is used, it is important to ensure that the installation partner has the needed instructions, knows the process, and that the information is centrally stored for later use.

What makes it easy, is a personalized link, which the orderer is able to deliver to the installation partner in previously mentioned ways. The link may also be sent by e-mail or using other communication channels. In this case, the partner is able to copy and send the link to their own system, which they then use for work reporting. This  enables bringing the tools required by the orderer, into the partner processes.

Challenges include also knowing the partner capacities available for the orderer’s use. Common case is, as we know, that a certain partner often serves several orderers simultaneously. Knowing the capacity assigned for our company’s needs is important.

There are, nowadays, functional solutions to this also. The orderer can, for excample, allow the partner an access to the portal, in which the partner is able to add their capacity for the desired days. This makes it easier to schedule and assign the tasks within the partner network.

TECHNICIANS ARE THE ORDERERS BUSINESS CARDS

Technicians doing the installation work are the orderer’s business cards. They always leave an imprint at the site they visit. Although it’s the technician who leaves an imprint, it’s the company the technician represents that the customer remembers, not an individual technician. This fact highlights the importance of security and trustworthiness of each employee working under a certain brand umbrella.

Before an employee is granted an access to a desired site, an automated check for his/her security and trustworthiness may be done. Topics to be checked could include:

  • Society-related checks (tax code, valtti-card, residence permit, work permit in Finland etc)
  • Ordering company’s own requirements (local induction, general courses including tunnel, work safety etc)
  • Professional courses (hot work qualification, first aid etc)
  • Access rights management

Wouldn’t it be good to have these topics handled effortlessly and fast already prior to the work starts? You may read more about the topic Security in the article written by our specialist Mikko Hurskainen.

Challenges and problems are made to be solved. Rossum has been solving these challenges for soon 25 years.

Tommi Kantoluoto
Specialist in work- and subcontracting chain area