Managing a large fleet of 6000 APX radios spread out over 3 states and 50,000 square miles is like trying to paint the Pentagon starting at one end. By the time you get all the way around the building you have to start again. That’s how our radio management program was operating. Imagine going through the whole territory to touch every radio to do a simple update. At one point it took literally a year to do a single update. And then we would have to start over again. There was no downtime. There was no real management. So we asked ourselves. “How can we do this simpler, more strategically?”
Improved Radio Visibility
In September, we began a Premier Device Management Services contract with Motorola Solutions. They now manage and maintain our fleet of radios. There have been so many benefits from this new program, but the biggest thing that has changed is our ability to remotely configure, operate and cut off subscribers. To have direct visibility to each radio is important. These assets are spread over 50,000 square miles, so knowing where they are, are they functioning, what rev they’re at is critical. Now the full lifecycle of a radio is efficiently managed from purchase, warehousing, configuration, and deployment, to end of life.
The Value of Managed Services
Before having a contract, I was consumed with managing my technician’s time, physically going out to where the radios were located to understand any issues. Now all of that is taken care of for us. So what do I get to do now? I get to focus on more strategic initiatives. I get to go out and talk with service centers and personnel in the field. I talk about their usage, how we can improve, what are some of the things that we’re missing. Freeing up resources to focus on strategic business initiatives; that is the real value of efficient device management.
Making the Decision to Change
As a leader, you need to ask yourself: What is the value that I am providing the organization? Is it inventory and maintenance? Or is it helping the organization grow? How does that piece of gear play an important part? What is the value? I invite you to understand some of the services Southern California Edison has deployed by visiting the Motorola Solutions Case Study web page.
When it comes to device management, the value of Motorola Solutions was obvious to us. They will take care of radio management. They will fix it. They will inventory and asset manage the radios so we can go do the job that provides the most value. And in our case, that’s delivering safe, reliable power to the citizens and businesses of Southern California. It’s a pretty simple proposition.
Southern California Edison (SCE) is an investor-owned utility that provides electrical distribution services across 50,000 square miles in California with transmission responsibilities covering 62,000 square miles including central Arizona and Southwestern Nevada. They have a fleet of 6000 APX radios and a Motorola Solutions Premier Device Management service to manage radio operations.
