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By Edward Belgeonne, CEO and founder of destiny wireless
At a time of severe economic downturn and uncertainty about the future, organisations employing mobile workforces have an additional need to ensure that their skilled and valuable human resources are being deployed in the most effective way. Quality time spent with clients is often mission critical. Admin time and cost need to be kept in check to ensure the right return on investment. Data recorded in the field needs to be transmitted back to base in a fast, secure and accurate way.
Ignoring salary and other employment costs, it’s estimated that the average operational cost of keeping a mobile employee on the road, with vehicle, fuel and other running expenses is in the region of £11,230 per year. So the last thing anyone wants is for key people like this to be bogged down by slow, outdated ways of collecting critical data and transmitting it back to base.
Yet many organisations continue to rely on conventional paper forms which can take hours, days or even weeks to be returned via fax, post or personal delivery. The average company makes nineteen copies of each document, loses one out of every twenty, and spends four hundred hours each year searching for lost files.
So if conventional paper systems are no longer the answer, what is? Laptops? PDAs? Handheld or tablet computers? Well, all of these may have their place. But they all have their drawbacks too, for people working in the field. And they add up to a common set of issues for organisations who employ mobile workforces.
The first of these is simplicity, and the simple need to keep costs down. The last thing most businesses need at the moment is hefty training programmes, or any major disturbance to working practices.
Then there’s the need for security. Not only data security, but also the personal security implications of carrying a visible and high-value piece of equipment, especially for health workers and other care professionals. Portability is another concern for people who need to move quickly and travel light from one job to the next.
So the question remains, if not conventional paper systems, then what? The answer, strangely, is pen and paper. But a pen with a difference; one with a tiny infra-red camera in the nib that can take a hundred pictures per second of pen strokes, and convert them into digital data. And paper with a difference too; a form that’s pre-digitised with a unique dot matrix pattern, and an ability to recognise the handwriting of the individual that’s filling it in.
Destiny Wireless is a global provider of digital pen and paper technology using Anoto Functionality. http://www.destinywireless.com/