Mobility Solution for a heavy vehicle distributor network

The challenge was to “mobile” enable the entire service chain, digitize the workflow, remove the paper chain in use, increase productivity and enhance customer service. The solution simplifies & standardizes the inspection / workflow management process, allowing customer’s access to information as soon as it is collected onsite and in one central place as well as significantly streamlining the back office processes.

Business Challenge:

With a multitude of paper based safety and service inspection forms the requirement was to digitize and “mobile” enable the inspection process, standardize working practices across the business in real time on a handheld device in a centralized environment to all authorized users. This meant creating mobile enabled relationships with customers and suppliers, mobile enabling the inspection and servicing workflows in a secure manner using hand held devices and custom built software.

Technically this translated to building a Windows .NET and Windows Mobile based solution that would

• Centralize Inspection activities.

• Provide a role based access to all parties involved.

• Link inspection workflows to invoicing and billing though mobile software.

• Enhance mobile based inspections to include defect/vehicle damage via photograph capture and storage via mobile device.

• Provide a secure data transmission / sync mechanism using Wi-Fi and GPRS.

• Provide adequate data recovery-backup for mobile device battery loss/failure.

Software Solution:

A .NET based solution on the Mobile (.NET CF), desktop side (VB.NET) and a web based solution for remote users (ASP.NET). The digitized forms are enabled on Pocket PC hand held devices, removing the traditional requirement for pen and paper. Using real time communications such as Wi-Fi and GPRS inspectors are able to access vehicle history immediately and send completed inspections and defect forms for approval real time to a central web enabled platform.

• Use of Mobile devices to replace an existing commercial paper chain.

• Removal of redundancy and errors in data capture and transmission.

• Making the mobile workforce truly mobile, in this case the inspection agents.

• Data collection on Windows Mobile devices.

• Data sync via GPRS / Wi-Fi.

• Photo capture and their indexed storage, in this case damaged vehicle parts Centralized view of data aggregated from Mobile Devices.

• Day in – Day out sync in both cases.

• The solution can use the advanced data recovery strategy (for device failure) as in this case.

Benefits:

System simplifies & standardises the inspection / workflow management process, allowing customer’s access to information as soon as it is collected onsite and in one central place as well as significantly streamlining the back office processes.

In addition an impressive increase in the speed at which inspections could be done was recorded.