“Bridging your Gap”

Case Study: NIENorthern Ireland Electricity (NIE) were undergoing a major, two year, information systems (IS) upgrade programme to support the open market in Ireland.

NIE had been operating their mobile worker system since the late 90s and required an urgent renewal of the system hardware, as well as an update to the system interfaces and field device operation that would support the new back office systems and updated business processes for the open market

As a result of the procurement process for the information systems upgrade the incumbent mobile worker solution supplier, Airclic Inc., was awarded a new five year service contract for the 200 field engineers as well as the project to design

and deploy the upgrade to their ServiceNet product.

A requirement was identified for an organisation with the capability to provide a solid governance structure, project management,

design and integration services as well as being able to provide high-quality, flexible, test and configuration resources. Hillwalk Ltd

was recommended for this role and took ownership of the project at that stage.

Hillwalk phased the deliveries in order to provide early replacement of the end of life hardware. This incremental delivery approach mitigated the

impact of change faced by the field engineers by spreading the delivery of devices, enhanced user interface and process model whilst aligning test and

Enterprise Mobility

Delivery Design Build Operate

Specialists in enterprise mobility since the 1990s Hillwalk has been responsible for the design, build and delivery of mobile solutions to over 10,000 field users in the field service and logistics markets.

go-live deliverables with the main NIE IS upgrade programme. In addition, the NIE governance, test and acceptance processes typical of a major programme had to be followed.

Hillwalk delivered the field work design workshops scheduling them into the IS programme work stream. Using wireframe techniques the captured requirements were played back to the stakeholders and approved by the programme. Meanwhile Hillwalk defined the data schema and progressed this to interface definition with the SAP back-end being delivered by the systems integrator, Wipro.

Moving into the configuration and build phase Hillwalk identified a potential for impact from un-finalised business rules and the withdrawal from the programme of an uneconomic upgrade to one of the systems integrating with ServiceNet. Hillwalk’s effective response to the changing requirements enabled the potential impact of these issues to be completely mitigated.

Having built and unit tested the enhanced system modules a formal system test was executed to the IS programme’s standards (ISEB) under a Hillwalk Test Manager. The test collateral was delivered to the programme as part of the acceptance of the enhanced system into the IS programme. Hillwalk maintained a support role throughout the acceptance test cycles and implementation dry-runs before being directly involved in the go-live weekend with on-site presence and management of the remote over-the-air (OTA) field device upgrades.

During Hillwalk’s post implementation review NIE expressed great satisfaction with the way that both phases had been delivered without impacting the IS programme and the way that issues had been fully owned and solidly managed to conclusion. When asked if he would change anything the NIE Programme Manager responded “No, Nothing!”

ABOUT NIE

Northern Ireland Electricity, own and maintain the wires and meters for everyone in Northern Ireland, no matter who bills for the energy usage. Their 1,300 employees work around the clock to plan, build, repair and develop Northern Ireland’s electricity network.

To learn more visit: www.nie.co.uk

ABOUT HILLWALK LTD

Hillwalk Ltd is an independent, end-to-end systems integrator specialising in mobile worker solutions; with a reputation for responding effectively to changing customer requirements.

We can demonstrate over twenty years experience in successfully delivering ground breaking solutions for: utilities, mobile operators and large public and private sector workforces.

To learn more about this and other ground breaking solutions from Hillwalk please contact a member of our sales team.Tel: +44 (0) 1823 240090Email: contact@hillwalk.co.ukWeb: hillwalk.co.uk