From Manual Bottlenecks to 3 Hours Saved Daily: How MBLink Scaled Municipal Broadband with Praxedo

Can you describe MBLink and why you began looking for a solution like Praxedo?

I am Stevenson McHenry, Outside Plant Supervisor for MBLink—a department with the City of Mont Belvieu and the first municipal broadband service provider in Texas.

We needed a platform to establish standardized processes and procedures as our organization expanded. MBLink started as a localized network, but rapid city growth required a scalable solution to keep operations organized and deliver key performance metrics. After evaluating several options, Praxedo stood out during the demonstration as the ideal fit for our operational goals.

What platform were you using prior to Praxedo, and why was it no longer working?

Our previous field service platform just wasn’t working for our unique niche. The biggest problem was that for one, our previous software was designed for a smaller ISP and lacked essential capabilities. It couldn’t track real-time technician locations, identify field staff needing support, or deliver comprehensive metrics on daily and monthly job completions.

We simply outgrew the platform’s capacity. As our subscriber base expanded alongside the city, we needed a scalable system that provided clear visibility into where to focus our resources.

How were these operational challenges impacting you and your team before Praxedo?

The lack of scalability created significant operational friction during a period of relentless growth. Tasks were slipping through the cracks, particularly regarding priority focus areas, material allocation, and technician support.

My daily schedule typically ran from 7:00 AM to nearly 8:00 PM, largely consumed by manual dispatch and schedule management. Implementing Praxedo provided immediate operational relief.

What stood out about Praxedo during selection, and how was the implementation process?

Praxedo’s advanced reporting capabilities were the primary differentiator, allowing us to leverage data from field technicians and resident feedback. Additionally, swift deployment was critical to support our rapid scaling.

The implementation process was seamless. The Praxedo team conducted structured bi-weekly check-ins, tailoring the platform specifically to our operational requirements and providing high-touch support throughout onboarding.

In a sentence or two, what does Praxedo do for you as a supervisor?

Praxedo streamlined our scheduling and job workflows, saving me several hours of daily administrative overhead and eliminating manual inventory tracking across trucks and warehouses. It also automated customer notifications, keeping residents informed throughout the service process and reducing unnecessary communication loops.

Which features in Praxedo are most valuable to your operations?

The dynamic scheduling interface is easily our most valuable operational tool, giving us complete real-time visibility across our entire field workforce from a single screen. When unexpected outages or service emergencies occur, dispatch no longer relies on phone calls or static schedules. We simply pull up the live GPS mapping tool, locate the nearest technician with the right availability and skill set, and instantly re-route the priority work order directly to their mobile device. This real-time dispatching has dramatically improved our emergency response times, reduced vehicle travel miles, and minimized overall network downtime for our subscribers.

Beyond dispatch, Praxedo transformed how our technicians and customers interact with our operations. Technicians now have structured digital workflows to record job details, log materials, and attach site photos upon completion, giving them ownership over their work and ensuring accurate historical record-keeping. Simultaneously, capturing digital customer sign-offs and instant satisfaction feedback directly through the app gives our residents a clear voice. This closed-loop feedback gives management immediate visibility into service quality—highlighting exactly where our team excels and pin-pointing operational bottlenecks to continuously improve our service delivery.

What are the main results and time savings you’ve experienced since switching to Praxedo?

Praxedo directly resolved our core workflow bottlenecks, giving us the operational capacity to manage high-volume job queues as Mont Belvieu quadrupled in size rather than doubling as originally anticipated.

Key operational results include:

• Prevented Truck Roll Tracking: Previously, we had no visibility into how many service calls were resolved over the phone. By implementing standardized digital forms and work orders, our Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) can now troubleshoot and resolve trouble calls before dispatching a field technician. Monthly reporting now quantifies these prevented truck rolls, which has provided a major confidence boost to our CSR team and generated measurable operational savings.
• Direct Administrative Time Savings: Automating dispatch and scheduling eliminated the need to manually plot out work orders item-by-item on map applications. This saves at least three hours per day in administrative overhead, reducing my typical workday from a 7:00 AM–8:00 PM shift down to standard hours (4:30 PM–5:00 PM).

• Automated Monthly Reporting: End-of-month reporting—which previously required manually counting through paper calendars and compiling disparate spreadsheets—is now completed and submitted to executive leadership in just a few clicks.

How did your technicians respond to Praxedo, and would you recommend it to others?

The biggest surprise was seeing how quickly the technicians fell in love with it. During implementation, technicians initially worried the platform was intended for micromanagement. However, they quickly embraced it once they experienced the operational benefits. The mobile app gives technicians ownership over their work, providing an easy way to complete mandatory job questionnaires, log notes, and instantly review historical work order data for any location.

I would recommend Praxedo to any organization. It functions as an all-in-one platform for dispatching, technician management, asset tracking, and overall operational workflow. It modernized our operations from legacy, manual processes into a streamlined system, making daily management significantly easier across every department.