Ritter Communications chooses TOA Technologies and its ETAdirect Professional, ETAworkforce solutions to power its field service organization

CLEVELAND, Nov. 6, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Large and small, telecommunications providers know their field workforce is the key to positive customer perception and efficient operations. So when Ritter Communications, a triple play service provider with 80 mobile employees, began executing on a strategy to create a more efficient field workforce connected to customer relationship and billing processes, it decided to replace its legacy mobile workforce application. The new field service management partner they chose: TOA Technologies, and its ETAdirect Professional and ETAworkforce solutions.

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"We have the advantage of being small enough that we can develop close customer relationships, but we are growing," said Carla Bloodworth, director of operational systems at Ritter Communications. "Our business reached a point where our IT applications, especially those supporting the field workforce, couldn't scale to help us maintain those critical relationships. And, just as importantly, our old systems didn't have the sophistication to optimize our mobile employees' travel routes and help us communicate directly with customers. ETAdirect Professional will be the centerpiece solution for how we empower our field teams to make these improvements, and by integrating with Salesforce through TOA's ETAworkforce, it will create a more holistic view of our customer relationships.

"We chose ETAdirect Professional because of how precisely it manages field work. It learns how individuals do work in the field, creates patterns based on this real-time data and then processes it against the workload of the day to find the best match – considering the multitude of variables of all appointments, customers, technicians and our business requirements. It is this precision that gave us the confidence that regardless of our size, we have the opportunity to make improvements such as completing 40 percent more jobs each day and reducing the expensive 'where's my tech?' calls by 50 percent."

Ritter has the opportunity to save $5.40 for every $1 spent on ETAdirect Professional. The telecommunications provider will find this savings in areas such as:

• Increased technician productivity, with more jobs completed per day
• Reduced technician overtime
• Reduced spend on travel, with less fuel and vehicle maintenance costs

"Companies of all sizes are seeing that with the power and flexibility of a configurable cloud-based field service management solution designed for the mobile world, now is the time to move beyond legacy installed applications," said Yuval Brisker, co-founder and CEO of TOA Technologies. "We are committed to helping companies of all sizes everywhere take advantage of the convergence of cloud, social and mobile technology to energize their field workforces, their customer relationships and, ultimately, their businesses' bottom line.

"I'm excited that Ritter Communications found the field service management solution it needed in ETAdirect Professional, which was uniquely designed to serve the specific needs of the mid-market. With a value proposition that includes deployment in less than six weeks, low cost of entry and a robust feature set without the need for any customizations, I think we cracked the code on how to answer the mid-market's call for better field service management solutions," said Brisker.

TOA Technologies is the leading field service management solution provider for the global telecommunications industry. Worldwide, the company's telecommunications community extends from Telefónica, with operations in 24 countries across Latin America and Europe, to Service Stream in Australia, which provides contracted field technicians to complete a variety of telecommunications jobs in both fixed and mobile communications.

To learn more about TOA Technologies and its field service management solutions for telecommunications providers of all sizes, visit http://www.toatech.com.

About Ritter Communications

Ritter Communications, founded in Marked Tree, Arkansas and headquartered in Jonesboro, began providing local phone service in 1906. Today, Ritter serves 57 communities and more than 45,000 customers in northeast and north central Arkansas and west Tennessee with advanced voice and data services typically found only in major metropolitan areas. Ritter invests heavily in the communities it serves by deploying proven, best in class infrastructure and technology while coupling it with a world class customer focused experience.

Residential consumer services include local and long distance phone service, cable television and high speed Internet. Business services include customized communications systems and services, including, broadband Internet services, Managed Voice, data center services, Ethernet connectivity, customized networking and hosted applications. For more information, visit rittercommunications.com or facebook.com/rittercommunications.

About TOA Technologies
TOA Technologies is a leading provider of field service and mobile workforce management software solutions. ETAdirect, TOA's complete cloud-based field service management application suite, holistically manages the entire service delivery process from start to finish: from the moment an appointment or service is requested, through planning, routing and scheduling, to real-time customer communications and field management. ETAdirect measures everything that happens in the field, from travel times to appointment length, and creates unique performance pattern profiles for each and every person in the field. TOA's patented statistical analysis engine then uses these personalized profiles to predict when things will happen and how long they will take. With the most accurate schedules and ETAdirect's browser-based and device-agnostic field service mobile app, mobile employees are empowered to get the job done right, on-time and the first time. ETAdirect is quickly deployed, highly configurable and easily integrated with existing CRM, ERP and other systems.

Across four continents, TOA Technologies and its ETAdirect solution suite manage diverse mobile workforces in the satellite/cable/broadband, telecom, utilities, insurance, home services and retail industries, helping them achieve their goals of reducing operational costs while dramatically enhancing the customer experience. A Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management, 2013, TOA Technologies is headquartered in the United States and has offices throughout Europe, Latin America, Australia and New Zealand.

Available Topic Expert(s): For information on the listed expert(s), click appropriate link.
Yuval Brisker | https://profnet.prnewswire.com/Subscriber/ExpertProfile.aspx?ei=107743

Media contact
Kayleigh Fitch
216.902.8547
[email protected]

SOURCE TOA Technologies