Cloud-based services are giving organizations with a large mobile workforce the opportunity to improve operational efficiencies and reduce costs associated with managing a large service delivery business.

Satellite TV giant Dish Network and TOA Technologies (News - Alert) are staking claim on completing the largest rollout of a cloud-based mobile workforce management service through the deployment of TOA’s platform, ETAdirect, to Dish’s nationwide fleet of 16,000 field technicians.

The single, central cloud-based platform has allowed the satellite operator to consolidate its technical field service operations and its field service activities into one system, according to Erik Carlson, executive vice president of Dish Network Service.

“TOA’s ETAdirect enables us to predictably and instantly manage our large fleet of field technicians to accurately alert customers of arrival times and to limit the length of their in-home appointment,” Carlson said in a company statement. “Through our partnership with TOA Technologies, we’re bridging the gap between field service and customer service.”

Dish deployed ETAdirect in less than four months, according to Carlson.

ETAdirect is integrated with 35 other systems at Dish, including billing and CRM. The platform has decreased technician overtime by over two hours per week and has already provided 24 updates to the system without a major upgrade.

Dish employees and third-party users, including field technicians, dispatchers, service representatives and managers, use ETAdirect to manage customer appointments from precise appointment booking to completion of service.

Using time-based predictive analytics technology and a routing and scheduling optimization engine, ETAdirect can route more than 10,000 jobs in four minutes. ETAdirect now serves as the central appointment management engine for Dish, giving the company the largest ever deployment of tablet-based mobility to a field workforce, according to TOA officials.  

TOA’s HTML5-based ETAdirect Mobility App is device, carrier and operator agnostic, which allows it to power the latest generation of iPads, tablets, smartphones and other devices used by mobile workers.

Dish officials said its customers will benefit because ETAdirect predicts when an in-home appointment will happen within a significantly reduced wait window and then communicates estimated arrival times to customers by a convenient choice of text, phone or email.

By using its cloud-based mobile workforce management platform, TOA’s clients see customer satisfaction scores rise as much as 98 percent, according to Yuval Brisker, co-founder and CEO of TOA Technologies.  

Dish serves 13.967 million satellite TV customers, as of Dec. 31, 2011, including HD Free for Life.

Earlier this month, Dish purchased two satellite operators in an aggressive attempt to compete with rivals such as cable TV operators and telecom carriers, TMCnet reported. Dish invested $3 billion and has acquired all the assets of DBSD North America, Inc. and TerreStar (News - Alert) Networks Inc., including their wireless spectrum, which Dish plans to make use of by offering cellular service.