Applus+ RTD is a global leader in non-destructive testing, inspection and certification for the energy and power industries. Applus+ RTD works extensively with oil and gas producers, refineries, pipeline operators and power utilities ensuring that its customers’ mission-critical infrastructure meets quality, safety and environmental standards and regulations. With 4,000 highly qualified experts around the world, Applus+ RTD is committed to innovation and technical excellence, backed by a code of ethics built on impartiality, independence and integrity.

For Applus+ RTD, field services are the core of its business. Its field technicians and engineers carry out hundreds of different types of tests and inspections — often in remote environments such as oil fields and offshore drilling platforms with no Internet service. Collecting test data is a major challenge — particularly when every customer has thousands of pieces of equipment, along with unique testing and reporting requirements.

UNIFIED PLATFORM

Applus+ RTD initially developed customer-specific applications, each with custom inspection forms and workflows. According to Neal Ratner, Business Innovation Systems Manager at Applus+ RTD, “We needed a single platform for all of our applications — one that made it easy to build forms and workflows, and to share common data between departments.”

GOING PAPERLESS

Many companies still rely on paper to document inspection outputs today. Applus+ RTD felt going paperless would enhance its services and improve its ability to work more closely with their customers. Inspections are now available for review as soon as reports are uploaded to the system. Applus+ RTD has seen a reduction in report time and an increase in accuracy. “Our technicians can now focus on the work and not have to worry about transcribing paper report forms into digital templates,” Ratner said.

FLEXIBLE, SCALABLE FIELD SERVICE MANAGEMENT
To transform its field service operations, Applus+ RTD chose ServiceNow and Mobile Reach, the field service app platform that works seamlessly with the ServiceNow platform.

“ServiceNow gave us the flexibility, scalability and security we needed,” Ratner said. “The platform is designed to handle thousands of customer-specific forms and workflows — something we could not get from a traditional field service or work management application.”

INCREASED EFFICIENCY IN REPORTING
“With Mobile Reach, field technicians can capture test results on site, often in places where there’s no network connectivity, and then upload these to ServiceNow when they are back on the network,” Ratner said. “Applus+ RTD now has better transparency with our customers and the opportunity to make decisions based on quantitative analytics. In addition, we saw a reduction in data entry time, improving our ability to provide reports in a timely manner. Our customers are excited about the solutions we can now offer in our services. Working with a unified Software as a Service (SaaS) platform gave us these capabilities for less than what it would have cost the company to build our own mobile applications.”

DRIVING INNOVATION AND COMPETITIVE DIFFERENTIATION
The Applus+ RTD field service platform is a vehicle for innovation. Applus+ RTD looks to the future with data analytics and working closely with customers to make decisions based on quantitative data analysis.

“ServiceNow is designed to manage networks — and that’s exactly what our customers have,” Ratner said. “Refineries are networks, electrical utilities are networks, and so are pipelines. Customers want visibility of their network assets. With ServiceNow and Mobile Reach helping us collect field data, we can provide this information faster than ever before.”

Learn more about extending back-end ServiceNow applications to the field.