Telent refines its customer service and operations

Effective management of critical infrastructure
Don’t be distracted by faster trains or four-lane motorways; a nation’s transport infrastructure depends on the smaller details: traffic lights, railway points, effective signage. Telent manages and maintains these assets across the UK. They’re the people that keep the country moving.

Telent is a specialist in the design, build, and management of the UK’s critical infrastructure. It works with some of the country’s major public service providers—from transport to network providers. Its transport business manages more than 300,000 assets, from traffic lights to CCTV.

These assets are critical to the smooth running of the UK transport network. As the country’s infrastructure becomes increasingly ‘smart’, with new 5G-enabled industrial IoT, this requires Telent to scale and provide real-time insight.

“There is an expectation among clients that assets can be tracked in real time,” says Reg Cook, Director – Asset Management at Telent. “Our work has helped raise industry expectations.”

This vast estate was managed via the TRAMMS (Transport Maintenance Management System) platform, an in-house solution for the road and rail sector, developed in 2003 and maintained by Telent over several years.

“TRAMMS enables us to manage all customer contracts, service provisioning, and oversee service and performance management from a single system,” says Steve Dalton, Managing Director - Transport at Telent. “This includes incident reporting, field services, and sharing real-time information with our customers. It plays a key role in our service provision.”

Steve describes TRAMMS as a “brilliant software product”, but one that was coming under increasing strain. It was proving expensive and cumbersome to upgrade, and Telent struggled to add new functionality quickly. In particular, Telent wanted to improve mobile access and refine the management of specific customer SLAs.

“We’re very proactive as a business to see value and seek opportunities, and believe in having the right tools and features. As the software development technologies evolve and the requirements change on a continuous basis, I encourage my team to explore the best solutions,” explains Steve.

Retaining control of the platform
ServiceNow Customer Service Management (CSM) and ServiceNow Field Service Management (FSM) enable Telent to redevelop its entire TRAMMS solution. The look, feel, and name remain unchanged, but under the hood the system is now significantly more flexible, powerful, and scalable. The design and implementation were carried out alongside ServiceNow partner, Highmetric, and migration was complete in less than four months, with minimal disruption.

This is not a managed service but one that enables Telent to retain the ability to manage the platform and add new features as required.

“This is not so we can retain control,” says Steve. “Rather, we have the in-house operational knowledge as well as platform expertise. TRAMMS is self-sustaining with minimum input, so it did not make any commercial sense to hand it over to someone.”

Consistent data drives operational excellence
The adoption supports Telent’s move to proactive asset management. More customer assets are now monitored remotely through ServiceNow FSM, there are fewer wasted service trips, and field engineers arrive on site prepared and with a current status update.

The improved asset management capability links with monitoring systems, refining the end-to-end Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) approach. This has enabled Telent to increase asset availability for its customers.

The platform gives the flexibility and capability to easily capture and hold desired information, not just to achieve operational transactions by ensuring all transactional ambiguities are removed for Telent to resolve issues and find root causes effectively. It enables Telent to manage the asset life cycle, including obsolescence management and asset depreciation.

Steve says it is now easier to view operational requirements, there is a greater sense of individual responsibility for field engineers, and there is also greater certainty around each customer.

“Our customers vary in size and service offerings. Each product or service we offer is unique to them to meet their operational requirements,” says Steve. “All these must be measured, met, and delivered at the right time and within budget. So, it is very important that there are clear SLAs agreed between parties which can be provisioned.”

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