JD Heating is a successful, Birmingham based, heating engineering company that has been established for nearly 30 years. They provide heating installation and maintenance services to clients such as Birmingham City Council.

"The new system has improved productivity within the business substantially and we look forward to working with Antika on further developments of the system."

JD Heating had a need for a database system to manage their Planned Maintenance division. The system needed to organise servicing, manage call outs, produce orders, issue invoices and provide reports.

The main objectives were to improve the speed and cost effectiveness of the day to day handling and management of contracts, data analysis and reporting, invoicing and maintenance. It was also essential that the engineers could access and share relevant information remotely and more quickly.

Antika initially analysed JD Heating’s existing data, processes and work flow systems before planning the most efficient solution for a database and management system. Antika worked very closely with the client to ensure the design of the system would fit in with their preferred style of working and existing processes.

Antika designed and developed a fully integrated, flexible and easy to maintain intranet as a front end to the new database system. It was essential to design an interface that required virtually no training to use, so that new staff could get up and running on the system straight away. As the system was Internet based it meant that information could be accessed remotely as well as over the local network.

The system included the integration and deployment of PDA devices to all engineers. These are constantly updated with new call outs and allow the engineers to access all of the job history and property details available at the head office. Once an engineer has completed a job, the PDA is used to update the system in real time, allowing the office staff to monitor progress and re-assign jobs if required.