Why Not Everyone Can “Just Do” 811 Ticket Management
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With Shane Mattix, Irth's Technical Sales Leader
“It’s just 811 ticket management software; anyone can do it!”
I’ve heard this statement a lot. But if anyone could do it, why isn’t every software company doing it?
Since we work in damage prevention daily, it’s easy to forget just how hard it is to manage 811 tickets and the processes that software handles seamlessly.
Behind the scenes of great damage prevention software are many complex processes that ensure our daily lives continue uninterrupted. Great software makes it look easy, but talented software developers are constantly working to ensure the software built for 811 ticket management is reliable and robust.
Essential capabilities of 811 ticket management software
When one missed step could mean the difference between a good day and a bad day, there’s no room for subpar solutions. A high-quality 811 ticket management system must have these capabilities:
- Receive an 811 ticket: Our 811 ticket management software receives approximately 350,000 811 tickets every day.
- Integrate with One Call Centers across North America: Coming from a world of ERP integrations and network administration, I understand how challenging it is for one platform to integrate with 70 different systems.
- “Parse” an 811 ticket: When I first learned about “parsing” a ticket, it was a bit overwhelming. An effective 811 ticket management system must be able to scan elements of a ticket no matter where it comes from to assess risk.
- Assess risk: While an 811 ticket provides information about the activity around your critical network infrastructure, you also need to understand its risk level.
- Automatically respond with the next best action: Based on the risk of the ticket, a robust platform can prescribe the next best action. This saves time and enables an appropriate response to reduce damage.
811 ticket management software must constantly evolve
Irth has a team of software developers who help make sure that 811 tickets are properly received, and responses are tended to, without fail.
Our developers realize that what they’re doing helps support our way of life across the spectrum.
They always treat receiving a ticket with the utmost care. While they truly care about their role in the damage prevention ecosystem, operating in such a dynamic environment is not easy.
For the past few years, our developers have had their hands full with all the changes in 811 One Call Center exchanges. With so many One Call Centers changing their operating platforms across the board and others just changing their ticket types, the pace of change has only accelerated in the past couple years.
In my first 6 months at Irth, we made about 20 changes. At the time, I thought that was a TON! From April 2020 through today, we’ve made no fewer than 501 parsing changes and 378 positive response changes. These figures reflect our development team’s changes to the receipt and response to 811 tickets.
These numbers don’t account for innovating and changing the platform to support all these new ticket types and workflows! There are LOTS of changes going on no matter what time of year.
Damage prevention takes a team effort
There’s so much more than meets the eye when it comes to damage prevention. It takes an entire team to ensure all the services we’ve come to depend on are delivered reliably. From excavators calling in tickets to field operators doing their job and excavators digging safely, it takes a concerted effort to reduce damage.
Fortunately, knowing how much my development team cares about their role in damage prevention and ensuring our platform’s 99.95% uptime, I can sleep at night knowing that all my customers can depend upon Irth to ensure they can meet their goals – regardless of how many changes are thrown our way!