The Azura Group is an IT consultancy based in Beaumont near Clacton and has been a successful business for the last fifteen years. We work in a number of very diverse fields and our clients range in size from one man bands to multi national corporations.

As an example of some of the things we do; We build websites, starting with a static five page basic site right through to fully integrated web based systems that help people to run their businesses, we provide CRM technology, integrate that technology with other pieces of software and also support other CRM companies by offering our technical assistance to their customers. We develop office systems and we show people how they can make the best use of what they already have.

I've worked at the customer facing end of the IT industry for a few years now and one of the hardest aspects of the job is keeping up with new technology and software applications as they become available to market.

One of the more interesting applications for technology currently is the Mobile Work Force application. Now this can be a very in-depth subject, what I'm going to do today is a bit of a whistle stop tour of mobile work forcing which I hope will give you some insight into what mobile work forcing is and what the benefits of it can be to someone's business.

What is mobile workforcing?

Before I go into detail about what Mobile Work-Forcing does it's probably worth going over what Mobile Workforcing is.

The most common form of mobile work forcing is for the workers to have a PDA — that's a personal digital assistant — communicating with a system back at the office by GPRS, which is a form of mobile internet connection. I'm not going to go into the technology too much as that's what you are going to be hearing about from our next speaker. Suffice to say that with a PDA you can perform many of the functions of a laptop computer such as surfing the internet, managing your email, making and viewing documents and it also works as a mobile phone.

The only downside to having a PDA is that if you have one then you have no excuse for not reading your email, answering your phone or receiving your messages.

In a small way I am a mobile workforcer: I've had my PDA about six months now and I find it invaluable. I spend quite a lot of time out and about at events like this or with clients at their premises and having access to all my email and perhaps more importantly all the information that my company has about a client via my PDA is incredibly useful.

Mobile workforcing is a technology solution for increasing the profitability of companies that have people out working in the field.

That can be any type of field work, whether it's engineers and technicians who work on their clients sites, a sales team that travels out to visit clients and potential clients, a fleet of delivery drivers making multiple or long haul drops; essentially it's any members of staff that work outside of the office on a regular basis that constitute field workers.

What mobile workforcing does for businesses that have field workers is allow a greater level of organisation for the field staff, reducing paperwork and lost time, which of course improves profits.

With mobile workforcing you have immediate, up-to-date information telling you who is doing what and where. Not only is this information valuable when answering customer enquiries or — even worse — complaints, but the way that a mobile workforce system works requires less paperwork, less reporting and less delays in sending out the bill.

Mobile work forcing is becoming increasingly more popular amongst many of the larger organisations as a way of reducing overheads and having a greater level of accountability over their operations.

In this next section I am going to go through a case study that we carried out for a client, where we highlighted what the problems were with his current system and what we put in place for him and most importantly what benefits these particular clients have had from using this system.

I've been asked not to mention the specific company or what they do as they don't want all their competitors jumping on the mobile workforce bandwagon just yet. I have respected this request and changed the name and area of business of the company for my case study.

So this is Mr Field of Field Engineering — you can see what I did there. Field Engineering has been a going concern for about 20 years now and over those years has expanded considerably from a small local company to cover most of East Anglia, some of London and a few places beyond.

Mr Field contacted us to say that he was looking for a solution to a specific problem that he had. First question we had was “What's the problem?�

Mr Field went on to paint a very dark picture of a company that had become a slave to its own business processes.

Mr Field has a core mobile workforce of 20 engineers who are on the road most of the day and who travel to clients premises to carry out their work. On an average attendance each of Mr Field's engineers go to five different sites a day and complete the allocated work on each site.

Due to the nature of their work each job requires a certain amount of paperwork to be completed. Engineers must complete a job sheet that shows what time they started and finished on the site and what they did while there.

They must complete a list of consumable items that they use while at the clients premises so that they can be sure and bill the clients as well as help with stock control by highlighting those items that need to be replaced.

And depending on the type of job they are calling to carry out they must also complete a risk assessment and a checklist of any special requirements that the client or the site requires such as contact details for gaining access to the site, and a checklist of specialised or non-standard equipment that may be needed to carry out work on that site.

So there is potential there for four separate pieces of paper that need to be completed after every job and returned to the office. Once the paperwork is back in the office then the details from all the pieces of paperwork have to be copied on to various databases and into the accounts system so that invoices can be raised, the stock of consumable items can be replenished and any special requirements are recorded so that next time Mr Field's engineers go out to a site they have the right equipment or knock on the right door.

Now this may surprise some of you, but this system was starting to prove inefficient.

Initially a lot of the paperwork just wasn't coming back from the field, or the paperwork that did come back wasn't completed properly or in some cases at all. Some of the paperwork disappeared into the foot-wells and glove compartments of company vans, some of the paperwork had coffee or tea or muddy boot prints over it, some of the paperwork was ripped and torn and on a couple of occasions the paperwork came back so late that the ink had faded beyond the point where anyone could read what had been written on it.

This had a downside: it affected Mr Field's profits. He noticed that as the quantity of work the company carried out increased the profit margin per job decreased — in some cases by up to half.

Because the paperwork wasn't coming back in time and when it did eventually appear it was often illegible or out of date Mr Field's clients were being billed erratically: some months they would receive no bills at all, then they would get two or three months together which of course they weren't happy about.

Stock levels for the business consumables were a fairly hit and miss affair and Mr Field found himself letting his clients down or delay the work they wanted completed until the stock was available.

Because the records of who did what where and when were often sketchy audits and customer complaints and enquiries were harder to deal with.

And worst of all unhappy and fed up customers, being the fickle people that they are, were going elsewhere with their custom.

In an effort to halt this decline in his business Mr Field granted his engineers the equivalent of half a day a month to come into the office and complete all their paperwork properly.

This method had mixed results. The flow of paperwork coming back from the field improved a bit, but not enough to make a significant change to the loss in profits. On top of that Mr Field noticed that he was in fact now making another substantial loss on his profits from somewhere.

So these were Mr Fields problems, and almost all if them stem from an inefficient paperwork system.

We took a look at Mr Field's problem in a bit more depth. We spent a day out in the field with his engineers to see what they have to do in the course of a day, and we analysed the paperwork flow and the manner in which it was handled and identified a number of very weak points that were allowing the money to leak out of the business.

What I'm going to do now is identify some of those points and then I'll show you how a mobile workforce solution stops the gaps and even offers an improvement. Take a look at this example because I have found this to be a good indicator of exactly how much money something as simple as an inefficient paperwork system can lose a business.

First of all lets look at Mr Field's solution of allowing his engineers a half day a month to sit in the office and complete their paperwork.

Mr Field has 20 field staff, each one costs Mr Field £100 per day in wages. Each one has half a day where they aren't working in the field, but are instead sat in the office filling out paperwork for work they have already done. In effect every month each of these engineers has lost half a day

So that's 20 guys at £50 per half day which equals £1000 per month.

Mr Fields engineers make an average profit for the company of £300 per day of work. So the half day they take out where they aren't doing any new work for clients equates to more lost time.

20 guys with an average loss of £150 per half day per month equates to another £3000 per month.

Of course, engineers need equipment. They need a vehicle, they need tools and very importantly they need insurance cover for eventualities that may arise while they are out at work such as breakdowns, accidents and damage to client property.

Mr Field's engineers cost on average an extra £50 a day in overheads.

So every month Field Engineering loses £4,500 pounds on guys taking time out to fill in paperwork. Now multiply that over 12 months and suddenly Mr Field's solution to getting his paperwork back in on time has a cost of £54,000 per year. {£4,500 x 12 = £54,000}

That's a lot of money and that's even before you take into account the revenue lost from customers leaving and the damage caused by having a reputation for being very hit and miss with your bills.

After completing that exercise Mr Field could already see the benefits of a system that bypassed the need for paperwork entirely. But there is of course more to it than that.

We then looked at the other end of the equation: what happens to the completed paperwork that does come in?

All the paperwork is entered by hand at the other end by a small team of admin assistants, who also have other duties within the company that they have to try and fit in around their paperwork flow. As we have already established the paperwork flow is very erratic, this means that these admin assistants really have their work cut out for them juggling their workload as they never know when an engineer is going to appear with a weeks worth of completed paperwork that must be entered on to the system as soon as possible.

And different pieces of paper go on to different systems. Some even go on to several different systems. So all Mr Field's admin staff felt that they worked under constant pressure from all sides and that they spend all their time fighting problems rather than contributing towards the business.

You've already heard that one of the effects of all the late billing is unhappy customers. One of the other effects of Mr Field's paperwork system was unhappy workers. I'll leave it to you to decide which of those has a worse impact on a business.

Mr Field's final problem is one of storage space. Field Engineering is an ISO-accredited company, which means that all the paperwork generated by his business has to be stored for six years. Mr Field has one office in his building that is full from corner to corner in every direction with boxes of paperwork, he also pays another company to store boxes of paperwork for him, and year on year since his ISO accreditation he has been paying for more and more space, just to keep boxes of paperwork in.

Those are most of Mr Field's problems, and as you have seen he has quite a few problems. This is where mobile workforcing comes in.

We have a mobile workforce solution at the Azura Group which we call Az-One. Az-One is designed to be quickly and simply customised to fit the individual requirements of the business that it is going into. We like to say that Az-One is a bit like snowflakes: no two are ever the same.

So we completed our study of Mr Field's business. I have to say that this is vitally important. You can't buy a mobile workforce solution that will do exactly what you want straight out of the box: It needs to be fitted to your business to ensure that you get the most out of it. We highlighted all of the problems that we have just gone through. Mr Field now has Az-One running in his business. Here's how his business works now:

Mobile work forcing works on two principles: integration and innovation. The integration part is the simple part; Take all of the business processes that occur from taking an order from a client right through to issuing a receipt for payment of that order once the work is done and tie all those processes together into one coherent system.

The innovation part is working out how to do that in the best manner.

So here's how Mr Field's business runs today using Az-One.

All of Mr Field's engineers have a PDA. The PDA links to the office system using GPRS internet. When the engineer starts his working day he logs on to the main system at the office and it downloads his entire work schedule for the day.

The schedule includes all the paperwork that will need to be completed for each job that day. It also includes a history of work already completed at the site, special instructions such as former risk assessments and how to gain access to remote or secured sites, as well as contact details for the client just in case there's a problem.

This information is downloaded to the PDA just in case there is no GPRS signal at the site. Az One works on an either/or system: it collects all the information per job and then transfers it back the next time the PDA is connected. If there is a good enough signal at the work place then this will be done as soon as the job is completed, or not it will wait until the next time it is connected. This might be at the next job or at the end of the day. The movement of the engineers lends itself well to finding an area with good GPRS service.

As the engineer completes his work he completes the paperwork on his PDA. The paperwork has been simplified to make this quicker; a lot of the sections have set responses to them which are picked from a drop down menu, which is considerably quicker than filling it all in by hand.

There is a separate section of each job sheet to fill in for risk assessments and notes and for special details which are recorded at head office.

At the end of the job the engineer, having completed his paperwork as he goes along, logs the job as complete. Az One won't allow the engineer to sign off until all the paperwork is finished properly, meaning the end of incomplete paperwork. Either at this point or sometime later in the day the engineer will then use his PDA to transmit the completed job sheet back to the office.

The office system now automatically receives completed job sheets. At the end of every day it completes a report showing what paperwork went out and what came back complete. If any job sheets are missing it will automatically send a message to the relevant engineer's PDA requesting that the job sheets be returned as soon as possible.

Mr Field gets a report every Friday showing not only what the predicted workload for the week was but how much of that workload was completed. If any work wasn't completed, the reasons for this are also included.

From the job sheets that come back the system knows all the information that it needs to for raising an invoice: it knows how much time was spent on the job and what consumables were used. It can then raise an invoice automatically.

Because all the systems are talking to each other the invoicing system also knows which customers are on which contracts and automatically determines the rates that they pay as well as any discounts they might be entitled to.

The system also tracks what consumables are used on each job, takes the used items off the stock list and prompts someone to re-order when the stock levels get low.

So as a result of Az-One Mr Field is no longer losing over £50,000 a year on a shoddy paperwork system.

All his paperwork now comes in on time and in full. No-one has to sit and enter it all on three or four different systems as Az-One does all that for them. His customers get accurate bills at the end of every month without fail and he never runs out of stock.

His field engineers can get on with their work, with a lot wasted time: they always know where they are going, what they have to do when they get there and what potential problems they may face. They always have the right equipment and consumable items with them.

Mr Field's unhappy administration assistants are now happier, with no more interruptions or working late to try to get huge piles of paperwork entered into various computer systems. They are free to concentrate on other areas of the business which has had the effect of improving their efficiency further.

There is no more storing paper in boxes; Once the records they already have in storage reaches its keep date it can be destroyed, because Az-One is now storing all the information electronically and can print out the required paperwork whenever it might be needed.

Customers are happier. The bills are correct and on time. The engineers are turning up properly equipped and with all the information they need to get on with the job so there are far fewer incidences of jobs not getting done or engineers unable to gain access to the site.

Customer retention is back up, and just as importantly Mr Field is finding it easier to get more customers. His sales people when they visit clients now demonstrate Az-One and can visibly prove how efficient the company is, which goes a long way towards securing the confidence of other businesses.

And there are further plans for expansion: Mr Field also wants Az-One to have extra features and more integration for his business. He wants it to help manage his vehicle fleet, keeping track of licenses, insurance, MOTs, road tax, parking fines, maintenance and accidents.

Mr Field wants to tie it in with his health and safety features so that risk assessments and accident reporting can all be carried out through the PDA while the engineer is on site and so things like COSHH certificates and other forms of Health and Safety information can be accessible to the engineers via a download to their PDA.

So there we have a simple case study where a mobile workforce solution has not only solved a raft of problems but has helped re-vitalise a business and put a huge chunk or profits straight back into the company.

Conclusion

So to sum up: Including the PDAs, training and getting used to using it, Mr Field's system required an investment of about £30,000. That's one and a half thousand pounds per engineer in the company. According to the reports that Mr Field now has available to him as a result of using Az-One the system will have paid for itself within six months. Within a year it will have improved the company's profit margins quite considerably over the previous years.

Future growth of the company is predicted to be good and he is already investing in further expansion.

I'm not an expert on economics but I would be willing to bet that there aren't many investments a business can make towards its future that will see a return on investment within twelve months and a whole raft of other business benefits.

Mobile workforce is a superb example of intelligently applied, well thought out IT bringing a real benefit to a business. The office integration side of a mobile workforce solution alone will benefit your business tremendously once you factor in the immediacy of using a PDA in tandem with a powerful office system you have a winning combination for all sorts of business.