Small Mobile Service Businesses Using Rugged Handheld Computers and Smart Phones

Over the past few years I have spoken to many small service companies about mobilizing their business processes including field services, work orders, asset tracking, inspections, etc. These service companies were most often looking for a way to reduce administration, accounting and dispatch costs and to make their operations simpler.

Wirelessly dispatching service tickets to service technicians with Smart phones or rugged handheld computers is one obvious and relatively simple way to make things more efficient. You remove the need for a person to call the service technician and read the service ticket information while the service technician takes notes.

If you have 20 service technicians in the field, the average service company would have a full time dispatcher just calling service technicians all day. Each service technician could easily spend 30 minutes a day just on the phone with the dispatcher. That is easily 600 wasted minutes per day. That equates to a lot of unnecessary expenses and lost opportunity costs (lost opportunity to complete more work orders). This should be an electronic work order that is wirelessly dispatched and just vibrates your Smart phone.

Many small companies are run by an owner/operator. The mobile owner/manager is able to take customer calls while on the road and enter work orders and job assignments on his handheld computer, dispatch the job to his team and keep working in the field. All the work is electronically documented on handhelds and synchronized back to his office accounting and work order software without human intervention. Read this article for related information.

These above capabilities are very compelling to a small business. You have full business visibility on the Smart phone or rugged handheld. You don't have the high admin cost for the office. You can run very small operations very efficiently and with built in quality assurance.

If you are here in Australia and would like to discuss your needs for mobile applications please contact us.