August 2, 2008

Managing A Remote Field Force: No PC Needed

Imagine that you have a remote support staff who travel all over the city or suburbs of Chicago (or any other place). Imagine that to give them their next job or to know when they have completed a job they have to email you or call into a dispatcher. Imagine at the end of the day, they have to come back to the office and submit job reports to the office for entry into the computer system for custom profile updates and etc.

For some of you this is not a dream, but a stark reality. You have to support copiers or computers or maybe you make deliveries. You know that your current way of doing things is not quite right, but you're not sure what to do about it.

There are dozens of solutions on the market which can enhance your mobile workforce and one of them is Verizon's Field Force Manager which was recently released for the BlackBerry Curve 8330.

I wrote about Field Force Manager in 2006 here.

I would highly suggest you check out the demo here and read more about it overall here.

The combination web application and device application has a range of features which will well serve the mobile manager/supervisor and the end users.

For example end users can input data via easy to fill in forms. Managers have a range of features such as viewing a dynamic map of all workers. Field Force Manager, and competing products are perfect examples of how technology can be used to boost productivity, reduce costs and better serve customers. UPS and Federal Express spend millions of dollars on technology to help them deliver packages faster and more efficiently. You might not have the millions to spend, but if you want your business to grow, investing some money in technology can help you gain money in the near term.

tags: mobile , verizon wireless | 0 comments