Case Study: Miller Pipeline Corporation

Miller is responsible for installing and servicing numerous pipelines for their customers. As with many contracting companies, Miller relied on paper-based processes to collect data about their jobs completed in the field. Less than a year ago the idea of the foremen submitting their daily paperwork electronically seemed far away and idealistic, although management knew that access to real-time information would greatly increase the productivity of Miller's field operations. Their goal was to increase timeliness, efficiency and accuracy of their field-to-office communications.

One of the first projects Miller wanted to implement was to collect labor hours electronically on Panasonic Toughbooks instead of on paper time cards. Miller's manual process meant that at the end of each day foremen would record the number of hours worked, the names of crew members and the services performed. Superintendents then collected the paperwork, reviewed it for accuracy and submitted it to the corporate office. This process generated an excess of 7,000 sheets of paper on a weekly basis! In addition, Miller Pipeline needed an enterprise mobility software platform to automate their work orders. Because each customer required Miller to collect different sets of data using different forms, they needed a flexible mobility solution that allowed them to modify work orders quickly and deploy them to remote work sites on-the-fly. Due to the sophistication of their work order applications and the scale of their operations, Miller Pipeline's IT staff determined that they required a full-featured yet easy-to-use platform.