Manage Your Mobile Employees with Apps
It’s a good idea to keep track of your employees whether they stay in the office the whole day or they do field work. But, the question of privacy comes into play with all the technology available to use to keep track of them. Business owners can install cameras in the workplace. GPS enables delivery services to keep track of their delivery personnel. When it comes to managing your mobile employees, it can be quite tricky to determine where to draw the line.
There are now apps available to help even small businesses manage their mobile employees. These are available on BlackBerry, Motorola, AT&T, HTC and Samsung smartphones. These apps are location-based services that run as apps in your employee’s smartphone. It is controlled by a manager through a browser-based Web tool. It features fleet logistics and time tracking. These apps can tell you where your employees are, where they have been and where they should be going next. How can you benefit from these apps? Aside from managing your employees better and smarter, your processes can be more efficient by better personnel dispatching and you can get faster driving routes resulting to better customer service and fuel savings. You can also measure your employee’s productivity.
It’s very easy to understand how this process works. The app sends data to the manager. Your manager will then be able to monitor and record the activities of your employee through an online browser page. Data includes location, speed and routes. These data can be used to generate different reports that analyze those data. These reports are especially useful for regulatory and insurance compliance. Your employee’s phone can also be used as a high-tech timecard. It can receive instructions or directions for the next job. They will also be able to access business forms. Reporting expenses and getting client signatures are also possible.
Small businesses need only go to their cell phone provider to avail of these apps. The process is less complicated. You get billed through your provider but the app is administered by the developer company.
As with any service, this type of service also has cons. It can be hard to fit this technology into your existing IT infrastructure if your system is not flexible. It can be time consuming and expensive if you need to make major changes. It can be quite complicated too.
Another area that may pose a problem is the employees themselves. They might feel that you are invading too much of their privacy by knowing what they are doing every single minute. You need to have a detailed privacy policy to know each party’s boundaries.
You may also experience problems in areas that have unstable cell network coverage. You might get the wrong data.
There are always pros and cons to installing a new service or technology but if you do them right, you can be sure to solve a lot of your logistics problems.
About the Author: This article was brought to you by businesstelephonesystem.org. Visit the website to compare business phones.
Image by @Saigon
