Customer Success Story:

TasNetworks increases efficiency of their mobile work management software by 25% using NetMotion’s platform company-wide

TasNetworks delivers power across Tasmania – the southernmost state of Australia. As the owner and operator of the utility, TasNetworks provides the electricity transmission and distribution network that delivers a safe, cost-effective and reliable electricity supply to more than 285,000 residential, commercial, and industrial customers. With more than 50 depots dotted over an area roughly the size of Switzerland, the company’s 700 field workers pride themselves on rapidly investigating and restoring power after service outages anywhere across the state.

The Challenges

Keeping a workforce connected and productive across a variety of terrains is a challenge for any company. In the case of TasNetworks, field workers were often frustrated by devices that looked connected but weren’t and dropped connections in poor coverage areas. Compounding these issues, the IT team had limited visibility into what was really going on throughout the remote network. Plus, end users found themselves wasting critical time due to disruptions caused whenever Windows timed out while roaming between Wi-Fi and cellular networks, especially if it occurred during a mobile work manager sync. Their workaround was to connect their devices via Ethernet at each depot, and wait for the sync to complete, often wasting several hours each day.

After learning about NetMotion from another Australian utility, TasNetworks started a PoC to solve the field workers’ connectivity issues. Once COVID-19 restrictions started taking effect and all employees suddenly found themselves working remotely from home, their existing SSL VPN couldn’t scale to accommodate the 1100+ workforce, so the decision was made to go with NetMotion company-wide, including office workers using desktops and laptops from their new home offices.

The Solution

TasNetworks uses the NetMotion platform to provide a reliable connection for all remote users as well as the troubleshooting tools, policies, geolocation features, coverage mapping capabilities, and advanced analytics dashboards so IT can see what is happening in their mobile deployment.

The power of applying policies to different groups of devices is impressive because it makes it really easy to test, evaluate, deploy, and then scale it out.
Tristan Roberts, team leader, Infrastructure

The flexibility of NetMotion is amazing. I was able to quickly set up DNS-based split tunneling using granular policies for a group using Teams hosted in the cloud when they suddenly had to work from home. It just worked, which was awesome. There’s no way we could have done that with our old VPN.
Tristan Roberts, team leader, Infrastructure
TasNetworks

We use a mobile work management app, which relies on a time-consuming sync process that breaks if the connection is dropped. Now with NetMotion, users can be more productive by syncing on the move, and we’ve reduced data usage by 25% thanks to NetMotion’s data compression.
Tristan Roberts, team leader, Infrastructure
TasNetworks

The Results

In addition to secure, reliable remote access and positive user experience for end users, NetMotion provides the IT team with the visibility, management and troubleshooting tools needed to keep the workforce productive and the business running smoothly. NetMotion dashboards provide IT with information about their mobile devices and user behavior including lost device identification, service coverage mapping as well as data usage.

Reduced data usage by 25% with data compression
Quickly transitioned field and office workforce to ‘work from home’ during pandemic office closure
Provided secure and reliable access to applications and data from anywhere
Increased efficiency of their mobile work management app by 25% due to uninterrupted sync process and more productive time in the field for workers

Download as PDF