Mobile apps are everywhere and are coming more integral to every-day business and home life. Something that is becoming ever more apparent, especially with emerging Digital Transformation technologies accelerating at a rapid rate, is that business chiefs and innovation specialists across every vertical are now looking at how they can digitise their business processes and improve efficiency across their entire organisation with the addition of mobile workforce management.
Developing a mobile workforce management application app in-house
Developing a mobile workforce management application is an incredibly complex process and as a business, it can be a constant drain on valuable resources such as time and money. First of all, there will be a requirement to hire experienced mobile application developers, buy them the costly equipment they need, while also paying for and implementing the appropriate IT Infrastructure which can add a significant amount of time to the initial app release date. Following this, they’ll need even more time to write specifications, research the best mobile technologies and set up all their coding resources.
On average, nearly half of all business apps take longer than six months to develop a mobile workforce management solution which means that the needs of your business and employees can change significantly during that time. Further to that, the challenge of staff retention plus technical challenges often mean that it can take even longer than this. As deadlines creep up, adding budget and adding people late in the software development process means there are more potential challenges to face.
Releasing your mobile workforce management application to your users in a fragile state means that the app is likely to have multiple issues. This includes insufficient testing, realising that the application soaks up too many resources on users’ devices, and even too much code than you really need can result in the application crashing and ultimately, the loss of important work.
If the user experience isn’t intuitive and crashes are a constant occurrence, productivity within your business will start to decline, leading to frustration and, ultimately, time wasted.
Once your app is up and running there are still costs for support and software updates – most mobile applications need to be updated once a month or more. These bumps in the road cost more time and yes, more money. The Enterprise Mobility Exchange surveyed 300 mobile practitioners and found total app development in-house can cost upwards of £200,000.
Using a large software development company for a mobile workforce management app
Another option is contracting a software house to build a custom mobile workforce management application from scratch. While bigger software houses have built hundreds of apps before, and therefore have more experience, these companies often come with a hefty price tag and can charge anywhere upwards of £400,000 for a custom build. Getting approval and committing such a large amount of money up-front costs time and effort as well as posing as a massive financial risk to your business.
You’ll spend a significant amount of time with your contractor specifying your requirements before any code is written and the value you will get in return will take months and months to realise. Even when your app is finally delivered, you can be saddled with hidden and irregular costs throughout the lifetime of the app for the changes you desperately need to make in order to keep your business running as usual. It’s also often the case that there’s no aftercare or support included which means you’ll still spend time and money researching an outsourced application support company or hiring your own Service Desk team.
What is mpro5?
mpro5 is a mobile workforce management platform that uses Software-as-a-Service and harnesses the power of the Microsoft Azure Cloud. The platform consists of a mobile app configured to your requirements, a management portal and reporting, alerting and dashboards. mpro5 is a full-service solution on a monthly subscription which allows scalable, flexible and sustainable digital transformation journeys for businesses regardless of their size. mpro5 is trusted globally in over 260,000 sites across industries such as transport, retail, logistics and facilities management.
Digitise Your Paperwork
Mpro5 digitises your paperwork using just two key features – mobile workflows and job schedules.
Workflows are a dynamic, intelligent, digitised adaptation of your spreadsheets and/or paper forms and let you graduate from relying on users to complete a linear sequence of questions, to something much more powerful, on the mpro5 app. Workflows can enforce questions, automatically calculate scoring, capture photos/signatures, log timestamps and GPS location… and so much more. Importantly, workflows can direct users down different question paths based on their responses, in an if-this-then-that fashion.
Users have a more tailored and efficient experience of filling out information, and managers can ensure that mandatory questions are answered, and evidence by the user is provided. Workflows are saved automatically on the go, even when your users are working where there’s no signal or Wi-Fi. When connected again, mpro5 will upload the information seamlessly to the Cloud.
Jobs and Flows in our mobile workforce management application are scheduled tasks which can have workflows attached. Jobs allow for time-boxing, Service Level Agreements, attaching documents, collecting signatures and so much more. They can be set as a one-off or on a recurring schedule, or as a patrol with specific checkpoints using tags that can be scanned within the app for proof of presence. Mpro5 can also automatically trigger jobs to be send out when a certain event occurs – for example, someone raises a maintenance request, so send the maintenance person to perform a fix. Reactive jobs let businesses respond quickly and automatically to an issue.
We understand that your business will have different needs and processes even compared to other organisations in your industry, and no matter the vertical our Jobs and Flows are built with your guidance to be bespoke to your requirements.
Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities
While the term Internet of Things, or IoT, has become a new buzzword within technology sector it does hold a wide range of benefits to improve the way you do day to day business. We make IoT simple to understand, by explaining everything in a way that is relevant to you.
Combined with mpro5 and utilising Machine Learning our specialist IoT Consultants are able to set up custom sensor rules that reactively send Jobs to the appropriate member of staff when a sensor reports certain conditions. You’ll unlock mpro5’s advanced automatic job scheduling with flexible and comprehensive workflows. For example, every 30 times a toilet cubicle door is opened, mpro5 will automatically schedule a job to a cleaner with a cleaning workflow attached for them to complete.
Your mpro5 mobile workforce management application shows sensor readings on a real-time dashboard within Power BI which are fully customisable to your requirements – whether that’s your branding or colour coding to suit your needs. Dashboards include clever filtering which can be presented in a way that’s clear, smart and with a multitude of different widgets and graphs.
Continual Support
Unlike many business mobile development companies, we have our own Customer Excellence Team who are dedicated to making any changes to your system upon request. You’ll get to know your support team members by their first name for any day to day troubleshooting any issues or providing training where required.
Always available and secure
By harnessing the power of the Microsoft Azure Cloud, mpro5 is always available and has an uptime of 99.9%. Microsoft are the first organisation in the world to be awarded ISO 27018, which is the new international standard of Cloud Computing security. In accordance with GDPR compliance, your sensitive business data is stored at the Azure datacentres in London, Durham and Cardiff. As well as being Microsoft Gold Partners, mpro5 are also independently audited each year by the British Assessment Bureau for ISO 27001, meaning that all of your business data is local, safe and secure.
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