Roll the trucks...or not
A residential security company in Dallas Texas made a mistake - a very big mistake. When programming security systems prior to installation a key feature was left disabled, meaning that thousands of alarm systems had a critical security vulnerability. The company began planning to send technicians to each and every installed system for re-programming, making the error painfully visible to their customers.
Upon receiving the request to review this problem, all documentation for the security systems were evaluated and it was discovered that there was a way to trigger the system into initiating a remote programming session. This little known feature turned into a solution that saved time, fuel and reputation. An automated process was built to retrieve the current configuration, make modifications and push those new configs to the system - and the entire process took only a minute or so per system.
Once completed, several thousand systems had been re-programmed and technicians only needed to visit a precious few customer locations. The rest of the clients were informed after the repairs had already been made - instilling confidence instead of angst. This phrase seems appropriate - "Snatching victory from the jaws of defeat."
