5 Ways Better Mobility Boosts Business Performance

By February 29, 2016NHS, Technology

Here are 5 ways Isosec’s mobile app MIA has proven that better business mobility will make your business more efficient and productive.

Savings In Time

Everybody is busy. Perhaps you think that improving the mobility of your workforce is something you just don’t have time for. We’ve heard before that there just aren’t enough hours in the day, someone will get the work done by next week at the earliest or they forgot to reply to your email because they’ve been rushed off their feet.

What if all the time you spend going through arduous paper processes, copying bits of information down, addresses, notes etc. could suddenly be freed up to do more important things?

For example, instead of someone going out on appointments and collecting information on paper, then travelling back to the office in lunchtime traffic (we’ll get to that bit), then typing it all into the computer, or possibly even someone else typing it in- duplicating the already wasteful efforts, THEN filing it away in a cabinet and kept to gather dust for years to come… The alternative is that you could take a mobile device and input the data securely straight into the system.

A lot of people say that can’t work for them because it’s a specific program they use on the computer and it doesn’t integrate with other apps or systems. That’s not true. It doesn’t matter whether it’s an iPhone or a Win10 tablet- Apple, Android or Windows there is mobility software out there that can change the way your organisation works. That time spent writing on paper can be better spent having a cup of tea, or, you know, more important things if you’re a doctor perhaps, like seeing another patient.

Savings In Expenses

All of that unproductive time is pricey, too. Duplication of admin means someone else gets paid to do what you’ve already done once and a successful mobile solution can feed your info straight back into the back end system in seconds.

Then there’s all the time spent travelling back and forth from appointments, which you don’t have with a smart GPS feature in your mobility software that can calculate the most efficient routes and order your appointments for the day based on travel economy. In turn this will save petrol money, and possibly even more time that you might have spent in a traffic jam you were previously unaware of. Not to mention the huge savings for the environment when a business can go paperless.

More Staff Available/Less Agency Staff Needed

With time and money saved on a day-to-day basis it all adds up. According to our latest MIA information a team of 100 full-time staff are currently saving at least 5 hours a week… each. Yes, each. That’s 500 hours to be spent improving productivity and performance. The time saved also means less need for temporary staff. This gives more job security to the full time employees and saves businesses from having to pay for added staff on a last minute basis without the resources for thorough training.

Boosts Staff Morale

With an extra 5 hours on their hands staff can not only be more productive but they can relax a little. Some organisations are pushed to cut corners on staff health and wellbeing, which is equally damaging to employee and employer and certainly doesn’t boost business performance.

If an employee feels guilty for taking time off when they are under the weather it’s much more damaging in the long run when they’re even more worn down and they’ve spread their cold across the whole team. That is a basic example, but it’s commonly accepted now that staff perform better when they are happy in their job, and especially when they’re not pushed to breaking point because of staff shortages.

Increased Data Quality

When someone is capturing information at the point of contact, rather than sending it through a longwinded process where it’s subject to change, it takes less time to get where it needs to go- so the quality of that data will be much more accurate with a mobility app.

With a process redesign, which is often needed to transform these inefficient paper processes into fresh mobile solutions, the most necessary and accurate data capture points can be codified into the system. This means everyone will be answering on the same scale from a drop down menu or toggle selection, rather than handwriting 10 lines of vague text that isn’t the same as the next person’s idea because they’ve interpreted the question differently. So that Doctor we mentioned earlier has to select that Jimmy’s temperature is exactly 38.2 degrees Celsius, rather than ‘a bit warm’, because his version of a bit warm is not the same as the next doctor who goes to visit and thinks Jimmy’s temperature is just fine.

Staff are held more accountable for their work this way, so it’s easy to see where non-compliance may be occurring or where they may be an issue. There is also the ability to collect rich metadata of management information on performance, which can in turn be used to inform decisions and boost business performance on an on-going basis.

Harry Robinson

Author Harry Robinson

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