The findings of the report also claims that it is not solely the drivers that are guilty of not maximising fuel efficiency, as many van fleet operators also admitted to taking only limited measures to improve efficiency and reduce monthly fuel spend.

According to the report only 42% of the van fleet operators that took part in the research considered route planning for their drivers and only 18% of van drivers surveyed have received training to help them drive more efficiently.

Volkswagen’s report clearly shows that many van operators may be significantly overspending on fuel and could greatly benefit from taking measures to improve their drivers’ fuel efficiency. This is where solutions like fuel cards and fleet vehicle tracking systems come into their own as they offer the insight businesses need to monitor the fuel usage and fuel efficiency performance of each driver/vehicle. The information provided by these solutions allows managers to understand where inefficiencies are occurring and identify what action needs to be taken to quickly address the situation. Both fuel cards and vehicle tracking solutions have proven themselves to be an effective way of managing and monitoring an employee’s driving performance.

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Every day the service departments of many companies across the UK receive phone calls or other communications from customers chasing where their assignment is, or from customers wishing to book a service. Allocating the work and responding to queries can be very time consuming for the office team. Mobile worker applications can help them to make this process quicker by allowing them to make a record of the job request against a particular customer and start the process of distributing the workload amongst the mobile employees in a more efficient way.

The benefits of this, in addition to the time saved, are having visibility over the progress of the job in real time and being able to provide greater accuracy in your responses to customers regarding estimated arrival times and queries of that nature.

Capturing Signatures for Proof of Deliveries

Mobile worker applications allow the mobile worker to get the customer’s signature when their job is complete. This signature can be used as an electronic proof of delivery and to formulate invoices/clear up invoice queries at a quicker pace. This, therefore, improves your efficiency and your cash flow situation.

Customised Forms

Operating systems vary vastly between companies and it is essential that mobile workers and office staff are utilising the same systems effectively. You can create and customise electronic data input forms to meet your company’s requirements and match existing stationary.

Management of Parts

Mobile worker applications often allow you to make sure that customer invoices accurately reflect the work done because it allows you to control the pricing of the parts. It also allows you to perform your stock control so that you never run short of an item and have to refuse a job on this basis. Efficiency is key to surviving in a service based industry in a recession.

Reporting

The reporting function on a mobile worker application allows you to analyse your business in great detail. You can look at many things such as invoicing, parts, stock control, how productive your employees are and how many hours they are working. Looking at your business in close focus allows you to see where the areas in need of improvement are, and also where your strengths are so you can work on the weaknesses and build on the strengths.

Device Monitor

Using a mobile worker application solution, your can monitor how well each employees handheld device is working, even down to the battery power and memory performance that is has. It is important that these functions can be easily reviewed because, in the event that the machine does show a fault, it is much better for your company that the fault is identified and rectified before the employee is out on the road rather than when they are with a customer.

Managing Mobile Worker Schedules

This is an essential tool for many businesses as managing schedules can be labour intensive and good planning is essential for mobile worker productivity and efficiency. Many mobile worker apps allow your service department to create jobs and then drag and drop these jobs into a mobile worker’s schedule which is then automatically sent to the designated employee.  It also provides a simple overview of the mobile workers calendar of work, so that the workload can be distributed as evenly as possible between the employees. Some mobile worker system also include a powerful scheduling and job management tool which can automatically allocate jobs based on the mobile workers area, status and expertise.

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Mobile worker solutions have been used by larger organisations for some time now and normally the applications they use would have been developed specifically for their requirements and to integrate with their existing systems. There are still many business that are seeking a bespoke mobile worker application but for many small & medium sized businesses, who can greatly benefit from these systems, they may have refrained from purchasing a mobile worker application due to the costs that can be incurred for bespoke development. The good news is that there is a greater range of mobile worker applications available on today’s market that offer an ‘off the shelf’ solution which is ideal for small and medium sized businesses as they provide a wide range of features that are commonly required by their industry sectors but without the price tag of a fully bespoke system. These ‘off the shelf’ solutions can often still be integrated with existing systems if required and normally for a fixed cost but if this is not  a requirement then they can still be accessed via a web based application.

Applications for specific industry sectors include:

General Mobile Workers

A comprehensive solution for scheduling, managing and communicating with your mobile employees. These mobile worker applications provide office teams with the means to create, allocate and instantly dispatch jobs to mobile workers compatible handheld devices from an application that can normally be accessed via a web based application. Different providers of these solutions are able to offer systems that can automatically assign jobs to employees taking into consideration their location, availability and skills. Mobile workers are then able to keep the office up to date on their progress in real time as well as complete paperless forms, and capture and instantly feedback customer confirmation signatures and photos for rapid invoicing. These systems are also able to integrate with existing stock systems for automatically managing in-van stock. When combined with a tracking system these systems can provide complete visibility over mobile workers.

Delivery & Courier

These mobile worker applications are specifically designed for the logistics, distributions and courier industry. Using a ‘paperless’ workflow system allows drivers to receive and view their route manifests electronically via their handsets and capture customer proof of delivery signatures and instantly transmit this data back to the office. Streamlining administration, increasing driver productivity and the ability to provide a better service to customers are just a few of the benefits of these applications.

Gas & Electric Engineers

There are mobile worker applications that provide features catered for companies that have engineers working in the Gas & Electricity industry. As well as providing scheduling and management solutions these mobile worker apps also help engineers complete their jobs more efficiently. Using the handheld device engineers are able to capture information required for Gas Safe or NICEIC certificates and can even guide them trough the necessary steps and checks that are required.

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Businesses that are looking to implement a mobile workforce system into their organisation need to not only consider what is required of the software but also what is required of the device itself and in what environment it will be operated in. It is likely that your employees have already been provided with a mobile phone, smart phone or PDA and there is often an eagerness to utilise these handsets for a mobile worker solution rather than paying out for new handsets and increasing your costs. However, choosing the right device from the outset will ensure that employees have all the tools they need to do their job and ensure that they are not having problems using the device because it is not designed to be able to operate in their working conditions.

The majority of mobile worker applications are compatible with a wide range of different devices offering the customer total flexibility. This is important as these devices vary in the features that they offer and some may be essential to you such as a bar code scanner, in-built camera or GOS receiver for navigation and tracking to name just a few.

Just some of the devices available include:

Mobile Phones & PDAs

These devices are often ideal for mobile workers including sales reps, health visitors and home call engineers. In fact, they are most likely already furnished with these devices to make and receive calls and have access to their emails. These types of devices often include inbuilt GPS antennas which add to their versatility as many mobile worker solutions can be combined to form an all in one navigation, lone worker tracking and job management solution. In addition, many mobile worker application providers are able to provide customised forms, where required, which allow your employee or customer complete an electronic form (such as a job sheet, survey or signature for completion) on their PDA handset and instantly send it back to the office.

Ruggedised Devices

Ruggedised devices have been especially designed to cope with hardwearing use and environments. These types of devices are ideal for employees that work outdoors where the device may be prone to being dropped or getting wet. As well as being dustproof and shock proof these device can offer many of the features, including inbuilt GPS Antenna (for tracking & navigation, camera and bar code scanner, that are provided by other data capture and mobile phone/PDA handsets.

Signature/Barcode Capture Devices

These devices are widely used by couriers to scan the barcodes of goods and obtain signatures from recipients and instantly feedback that data to central location where the proof of delivery signature can be stored. These devices are designed to last in the environments that they work in and can easily handle capturing the signatures of heavy handed customers.

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Smartphones have the added benefit that they can interact with the driver putting the office in their palm, they can run Sat Nav, use electronic forms and even take pictures. They go with the employee and don’t stay in the vehicle which is an important feature where the employee is working in a hazardous situation. For many companies where vehicle tracking isn’t practical making sure that the devices are kept switched on is simply a management task but for others this is a show stopper, preventing them from adopting a smartphone based solution.

For certain businesses vehicle tracking does offer benefits that a smartphone device can’t, vehicle tracking monitors the vehicles ignition status and can tell the employer when the engine is running or fuel is being wasted through unnecessary idling, they can also monitor hard breaking and acceleration events and the usage of doors and tail lifts.

Although many companies already use electronic forms on smartphones to collect signatures and information, some of these companies also run vehicle tracking solutions side by side. There is no doubt that the potential cost and business benefits of tracking smartphones are massive however until they make a device that can’t be switched off by the user they will always be second choice for most fleets.

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Most new smartphones include GPS technology to enable the use of Sat Nav and location based services, would it be such a big step to turn this in to a security feature? Of course the problem is that handsets can be easily turned off which disables the GPS and radio antennas from working and reporting the handsets position. However with collaboration between manufacturers, mobile networks and the police these technical difficulties could be overcome without infringing data protection rights of owners and users.

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Vehicle tracking systems are however inherantly limited by the very fact they are fixed to the vehicle and whilst they provide crucial business information they cannot be used to interact with customers or improve processes outside of the vehicle.

Mobile Worker Applications are different, they go with the driver, are not limited to the vehicle and we have all come in to contact with them at some point. Whether it’s the courier company asking for your signature or the customer survey in the high st they are everywhere and they are predicted grow exponentially over the coming years.

In a recent survey by TrackCompare industry experts predict market penetration of Mobile Worker Applications of 4% compared to the predicted penetration of vehicle tracking of only 2%. There have been many false starts with Mobile Worker Applications which have been held back for years whilst the devices are made more user friendly, reliable and robust and the data networks coverage and speed improved.

Whereas previously most Mobile Worker Applications were tailored specifically for the company they were going in to, now they are available off the shelf with minimum work required to integrate them in to the companies own back end system and to replicate the paper forms and processes the company uses in to an electronic format.

Mobile Worker Application developers have been working hard on getting the commercial proposition right and the software and hardware working together to offer business a real opportunity to get rid of their paperwork and streamline their business. TrackCompare launched its mobile worker comparison service in June 2010.

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