The AA uses Solarvista Software to manage their home emergency field service operations

The Automobile Association (“The AA”) is one of the UK’s most trusted brands and the undisputed leader in Roadside Assistance.  Another key part of the business provides cover for home and heating emergencies & maintenance, as part of AA Insurance Services.

Both business areas (roadside and home) had been operating on a single platform. It became apparent that the two operations had conflicting needs and as such a decision was made to separate operational systems and to seek a third-party provider for the Home Services operation.

The organisation had always sought to constantly improve its efficiency at the same time as increasing customer satisfaction. In seeking an independent, third-party solution, it was also an opportunity to engage with a focussed software vendor and gain other benefits.

“Solarvista was selected because they had experience in our field previously, were able to provide a highly configurable system and were able to deploy the solution in a very short space of time, at a reasonable cost.”  

Steve Borg, Managing Director of AA Home Services, The AA plc.

Why Solarvista was selected

The AA evaluated proposals based upon the following criteria:

• Understanding of the required services.
• Ability to provide and manage the solution and services specified.
• Proposals for the transitions and start-up of the service.
• Scalability of the solution and related pricing model.
• Adaptability and flexibility to meet changing circumstances.
• Quality standards and assurance methods.
• Commercial and financial viability.
• Price for the service and cost of associated equipment and ancillaries.
• Completeness of response and compliance with the RFP

The Solution

Solarvista provided their field service software and mobile applications as ‘software-as-a-service’, operating in the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. All-inclusive pricing models ensured operational costs within budget and customer IT management time was reduced.

Not untypically, the scope of the solution was large and complex. Solarvista believed that the optimum way to deliver value within the defined (and short) timeframe, was to use an Agile Project Approach.

“Agile proved to be the best approach for this fast-paced project with a critical delivery date and a planned Go-Live date in the peak of the heating industry winter surge period.  Prioritised requirements evolved as we realised the potential of the project whilst quickly gaining access to new technology, features and functionality.”  

Ash Cripps, Home Services Business Systems Manager, The AA plc

The Results

The solution delivered an overall productivity improvement of 15% (and this is continually rising; as are all figures quoted within this case study) and therefore a quick return-on-investment. 

Part of the results also involved integration to an online parts lookup product (Infomill PartsArena) facilitating a speedy and accurate parts search and automated ordering. Thus, reducing engineer and back office effort, and improving 'Second Time Fix' rate.

“Solarvista provides an efficient and scalable operational platform. Its industry leading field operations and mapping visibility has been instrumental in delivering business improvement. Combining this with the ability for straight-forward local business configuration ensures operational performance is optimised.”  

Colin MacDonald, Independent Consultant, Kylemor Consulting Ltd

Together, AA and Solarvista continue to collaborate to deliver continuous gains in business efficiency, customer experience and user experience.  At the time of writing, Solarvista and AA are working on a number of custom enhancements and integrations including;

• Integration with a new customer self-serve mobile app (self-built by the AA).
• Customer facing automated appointment offering and booking AI/BOT via SMS.

Download The AA's full case study for FREE