Chamber Link magazine

With 40 years of experience in industry, Vimto Out of Home (OoH) offers a unique and refreshing range of dispense, frozen and packaged soft drinks, including the world’s biggest soft drinks brands - Coca Cola and Pepsi. Supporting the product range, its team delivers outstanding customer service; with same day technical support, preventative maintenance, and nationwide distribution.
Headquartered in Warrington, the company employs 65+ field engineers and its customers include pub chains, amusement arcades and cinemas across the UK.
As its business thrived, the operations team had already identified the need to move from a paper-based system, where drivers were visiting one of three main depots twice a day to collect and drop off completed job sheets.
In 2015, Vimto owner Nichols PLC acquired an equity stake in The Noisy Drinks Co, a national frozen drinks supplier. Noisy Drinks had a business model based on monthly visits and multiple local depots, supported by a field service management system, called Field Service Executive (FSE). Wireless and mobile computer solutions provider Portech has worked for Noisy Drinks for over 10 years providing software development and support, and was selected to port and enhance the successful Noisy Drinks FSE for Vimto OoH.
REQUIREMENTS
The company wanted to integrate two separate processes covering service engineering and sales via the FSE system.
With a growing workforce and client base, Vimto OoH wanted to improve customer service by moving from a paper-based system to ensure:
 Ability to handle up to 900 jobs per week
 Accurate records of stock and assets
 Scheduled maintenance calls were made
 Improved visibility over mobile workforce
 Maximised active time for field engineers
 Better information available to field based team
Vimto OoH wanted to work with a company that had experience in mobile workforce management software, provided excellent ongoing support, and the ability to support Vimto OoH’s needs as the company grew and as its customers’ requirements changed.
SOLUTION
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The Portech software solution - FSE - is a centrally configured data collection application for handheld PCs. Its primary role is as a workflow management tool to organise and handle job tasks.
The existing Noisy Drinks FSE system provided much of the functionality that Vimto OoH required, but as it was originally developed for monthly frozen drinks deliveries, Portech enhanced it through:
 Ability to cover frozen and dispensed drinks business models from one handheld system
 Integration with Sage accounting package
 Integration with legacy IT systems
 Access for multiple users
 Compatibility with existing and new handheld devices
Portech installed the software on Vimto OoH’s fleet of mobiles