Increased Productivity

With paper–tickets and telephone calls it is almost impossible to maintain a fully utilised work force. When you add to this wasted capacity the time spent returning to the depot to get a new stack of job sheets, or receiving calls from admin teams chasing progress reports, the savings on wasted time on average all add up to a 10% boost to productivity.

Home starts, reduced queuing in stores and improved supervision all add to this benefit.

Reduced Administration Costs

No more need for paper work to be collated. No more need for frequent calls to check on progress. No more waiting for paperwork to eventually return from engineers. No more scribbling down quick instructions to engineers. No more illegible job sheets returning. This all combines to give a massive boost to the number of engineers the same admin team can manage, whilst also improving the reliability of data captured so all costs can be correctly charged for.

Increased Control

Fully auditable visit times immediately impact an engineers work load. This allows supervisors and management to better review each engineer's work as it is completed.

Typically a large part of your supervisors' time is spent dealing with administration queries and chasing down information on jobs. Once this is removed your senior staff are released to more effectively supervise their teams.

Increased Visibility

Real–time information flowing back from your engineers means workload problems can be dealt with long before they become an issue with your clients. Auditable times, better cost recording and customer signatures all combine to give a much clearer and truer picture of the jobs as they are completed.

Better Utilised Workforce

Real–time status updates returning from your engineers directly impact your ability to respond to emergency jobs and to reschedule less urgent work to more efficiently balance work loads.

Reduction in Delay Between Completion and Charging

Immediate completion information is transferred straight form the engineer without any need for them to return to the office. This allows invoices to be raised the same day as the work is completed dramatically affecting the time to get paid.

With an almost instantaneous charging mechanism, clients are typically more likely to accept the completed work and have the ability to rapidly confirm that the claimed work has been completed.

Durable and Reliable Data Storage

The first requirement of any mobile working solution is that the data recorded on the device is stored securely and that the device can work even with no network connection. Without these two elements your engineers will never be able to fully trust that the information they are entering will make it back to the office.

Added to that we implemented lightning fast and optimised comms to exchange data with your engineers so that even at times of high load both your office users and mobile users receive an un–compromised experience.

Tailored Screens

Almost any company can produce a quick form filling application for mobile engineers. We didn't follow this route, but instead tailored our application to guide an engineer through the stages of a job. This benefits the engineer as they only need to worry about doing their job and the device will do it's job. This benefits you by meaning that you can be sure that all information is correctly entered and all processes are correctly followed.

Cross–Platform

Initially developed for Palm OS devices the product has been re–written from scratch for JavaME and Android devices including Windows Mobile 5, Windows Mobile 6 and versions of Android 1.6 and greater.

Real–Time Status Updates

Key information is automatically transferred as the operative updates their PDA. This allows you to answer customer enquiries accurately, avoids jobs being missed and allows you to make informed decisions based on the current position of your engineers. This improves workforce utilisation whilst also providing an element of lone worker protection.

Time–Stamped Data

Key times are automatically recorded by the PDA rather than rely on the engineer to manually enter them. This provides a full audit trail against jobs and removes the need for engineers to complete separate time sheets.

Support for open book working is enhanced, allowing your clients to be confident in the data you are providing.

Non–Work Time Recording

The PDA captures the full details of an engineer's day including duties not directly relating to jobs and feeds them into the electronic time sheet. This improves costing of non–productive time and gives a realistic view of an engineers availability and completed visits.

Electronic Surveys & Certificates

Fully configurable surveys are completed on site and turned into read only electronic documents. Values from the previous surveys are passed to engineers where possible to improve speed and accuracy. Pick lists are used where appropriate to further speed up the capture of information.

The PDA fully supports Gas Safe certificates and NICEIC forms, along with customisable risk assessments, PAT testing, resident selection questionnaires and stock condition surveys.

Survey details recorded are tied to the engineer, the visit details and customer signatures to ensure correctly completed documents can be permanently stored with the job.

Detailed Costs Recording

Automatic capture of all times spent on a job marries with the ability to record parts used on jobs to give an accurate and detailed breakdown of all costs on a job.

Integration with van stocks and stock control systems allows cost information to be shared across your organisation in real time to allow restocking.

Sales Recording

The PDA displays all ordered sales items on a job, items delivered by other engineers and allows engineers to add variations.

The system supports Schedule of Rates Codes, internal closing codes and manual descriptions depending on how you charge for work.

Customer Satisfaction

At the end of each visit a customisable customer satisfaction survey can be offered to your customer. This includes gathering the signature of the site contact and allows for detailed KPI reporting back in the office.

Start of Day Checks

Start of day check lists can be used to enforce adherence to health and safety requirements. They can also be used to monitor day-to-day processes and remind engineers to do the routine tasks that help maintain efficiency.