Securus Technologies - Achievement in Management

Company: Securus Technologies, Dallas, TX
Company Description: Securus is a diversified, government services, high-tech, high software content business focused on providing technology based solutions to the US corrections market. Our customers are inmates, their friends, their families, correctional officers, and law enforcement officers.
Nomination Category: Management Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Achievement in Management - Diversified Services

Nomination Title: Securus Technologies Field Service Management Team

Tell the story about what this nominated management team, group of managers, or individual executive has achieved since January 1 2018 (up to 650 words). Describe the impact they had on your organization. Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms:

Managing a Field Service organization of over 220 associates spread across the country is very challenging, but Securus’ Field Service Management Team led by Aaron Bacher Director Field Operations, Pat Robertson Sr. Regional Service Manager, Johnny Hagins Regional Service Manager, and Brian Owens Regional Service Manager excelled in 2018. With teams spread across five (5) different time zones, and all 50 states; they are installing, repairing and servicing equipment, products, and services for and for law enforcement and in corrections facilities (jails / prisons). Operating in this environment requires superior planning and preparation. The teams are restricted to facilities and areas that they are cleared and authorized to work in to ensure their safety, inmate safety, and stop contraband materials from falling into inmate’s hands. The technicians can only bring the tools and parts that are needed to accomplish the task and since cell phones aren’t authorized in most locations, our Management team loses communication with their staff during the majority of the day. When you take in these factors into account, the difficulty of coordination for our Field Management is multiplied compared to other Field Service organizations.

In addition to the standard challenges we face, 2018 proved to be the most difficult year that we have ever had. Securus had purchased a company named JPay and merged the two companies together in 2018. This meant creating and implementing a training program to cross-train both company’s technicians to support the growing customer and product base for 2 products sets while identifying and implementing best of breed standard processes. The team had to manage the training effort and geographically realign the technician’s service areas to ensure that the customers would receive the best service (response & resolve times), while maintaining efficiency for the company. A field team can’t operate without parts so the management team had to analyze everyone’s currently inventories compared to what is installed in each area to create a standard inventory by service technician, and then order the needed parts. Even the ticketing systems were different, and management had to create and implement plans to address this major challenge and combine them into one. Many processes, procedures and job descriptions were reviewed, updated or rewritten all together by the team as the two organizations and companies became one.

While they were integrating JPay into Securus multiple large installation projects also had to be accomplished. This growth was mostly due to an increase in inmate phones, video visitation units and tablets. In 2018, the Securus Field Service Management team led their teams through installation projects that resulted in a 9% growth, with 7,646 devices installed in 2018 growing from 81,693 to 89,339 devices installed and supported. This 9% growth in equipment led to more equipment to service and support. This would put any organization at a high risk for response time problems, inventory accuracy challenges, and customer satisfaction issues. Due to the leadership and planning of the Field Service Management team we were 99% accurate in our inventory counts with 117k parts with an average of $1.5M per quarterly inventory count and 3.7% under budget in 2018. The Securus Field Service Team also resolved customer issues while onsite the first time 95% of the time. This resulted in the Field Service Team receiving an average score of 4.7 out of 5.0 on all of their Customer Satisfaction Survey results (Transactional/Dispatch, Relationship/Value & Install), which is probably the most important score for any Field Service organization. All of this was done while still having time to implement a solution to make prisons safer in California that interdicts contraband from being delivered to inmates via drones.

Securus had a banner year in 2018 with the integration of JPay and outstanding customer satisfaction results, in large part because of the efforts of the Field Service Management team.

In bullet-list form, briefly summarize up to ten (10) of the chief accomplishments of the nominee(s) since the beginning of 2018 (up to 150 words):

-Integrated JPay service operations which included 20 technicians, 2 managers supporting 7500 kiosks.
-Part Inventory Dollar Accuracy of 99% with an average of $1.5M in inventory.
-Part Inventory Count Accuracy of 99% with an average of 117K parts in inventory.
-Successfully installed 6,565 inmate phones, 1,505 SPhone XL’s, 551 SPhones and over 30 wireless networks to support inmate tablets.
-Delivered benchmark levels of CSAT results with average score of 4.7 out of 5.0 over all surveys.
-Completed a beta drone project for California Dept. of Corrections to interdict contraband flown into prisons via drones.