Conquering Mobile Geographic Challenges

Castlehill Housing Association, a provider of affordable homes, has signed an enterprise license agreement for mobile workforce management software. The software, from 1st Touch, manages, supports and controls all aspects of mobile operatives’ activities and is said to cope well with remote working as it can send data back to base in short encrypted bursts.

The Association, which has almost 2,000 homes spread across an area encompassing Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire and Moray, will utilise the technology across a number of areas of its operations. This will include housing officers and maintenance officers who need to access information, on their i-Pads and phones whilst visiting clients.   1st Touch claims that its mobile applications can bring significant efficiencies and productivity increases to any application where field based operatives equipped with PDAs, smartphones or tablets provide services. The system enables programming-free, user-customisable PDA based solutions to be created through its easy-to-use graphical interface and is specifically designed to simplify handheld form design and data capture. Any type of electronic form can be generated without the need for Business Process Mapping.   1st Touch mobile was chosen as it had an existing integration with the Aareon QL Housing Management system used by Castlehill. Another key driver was the system’s Smart Airtime feature which allows data to be sent to and from the operative’s PDAs in short compressed bursts when a signal is available. This will prove to be invaluable to Castlehill, as with the difficult terrain in the area it is often hard to find a good signal by which to communicate with head office.   Castlehill’s Financial Director Geoff Helme says: “Mobile workforce software enables us to automate and reduce response times in areas such as maintenance. It is quite a shift away from how we have worked previously and will undoubtedly improve our productivity and deliver efficiencies.   “With an area stretching from Fettercairn in the south to Portknockie in the north, people tend to forget how big an area we cover and how sparsely populated some regions are. It is often not an easy environment and the reception here is often extremely patchy. Naturally, this was very important to us and was a major consideration in our choice.”