Why mobilising your workforce makes sense, whatever the weather

If you are reading this in April or even May, we should, hopefully, have waved goodbye to the coldest winter weather for at least three decades. However, the recent headlines about weather-related disruption to transport, communication and power lines will remain painfully fresh to many.

Estimates of what the winter weather cost the economy vary between some £600m and £900m a day. Those are hefty figures but they will come as no surprise to businesses which struggled to get staff into the office or products to their customers.

 Perhaps these businesses could learn from utility companies. The utilities can be hit particularly hard by adverse weather and have sophisticated emergency response plans in place to counter weather-related disruption, keep supplies going and avoid potential regulatory sanctions.

When responding to exceptional events, the potential benefits to the utilities of using a mobile work and data management platform, such as Sigma Seven’s GeoField suite, are clear and well known. By equipping every level of the emergency response team with all the mapping information and workflow tools they need to get on with the job, the task can be completed safely, quickly and efficiently.
However, those benefits can be realised not just by the utilities. Any other sector or organisation that employs a field force, such as environmental monitoring, local government or engineering firms, could become more efficient by using technology to fully mobilise their workers. Only by giving them all the mapping information, work and data management tools they need to complete their tasks at the point of action will they be a truly mobilised workforce. The benefits of mobile location-based work management platforms could even be extended to workers whose tasks are mainly office-based.

If unable to get to the office or their point of work because of weather disruption, then some workers, for example, those in council planning offices, could do their jobs without having to get to the office. But only if they were properly equipped with the information they need to do their job in their hands. Emergency response crews and council planners may not think their jobs are very similar but GeoField can help both when bad weather or other unforeseen circumstances strike.

Ultra Mobile PCs (UMPCs) first appeared in the market back in 2006, but it is fair to say that the earliest of these devices were let down by poor battery life and a somewhat bloated form factor. As we have commented recently, the mobile device market has improved dramatically over the past 12 months, with the latest kit capable of eight or more hours of mains-free use, improved performance and reliability through the use of solid state disks (SSD), built-in cameras, 3G and GPS, sleeker design and robust build.

The Viliv X70EX is an excellent example of a high-performance and well-built UMPC that you can simply lift from your jacket pocket and power up for instant access to your everyday office, web and media apps. This device demonstrates that UMPCs are no longer just a gimmick and that they can now be classed as highly functional, reliable and flexible tools for mobile workers.

After installing GeoField onto the device we received for initial testing, we were immediately impressed by the running speed and lightweight form factor. The build quality is excellent and the built-in GPS makes this a great choice for light-to-moderate use field workers whose jobs would be made easier by having a map book in their pocket.

Having successfully deployed GeoField within their Lake and River Assessment and, more recently, Waste Water Auditing teams, Ireland’s Environmental Protection Agency have purchased a number of Viliv X70EX devices which will run GeoField in place of the more traditional tablet PC-style devices that they have been using to date.

If you are interested in seeing how well GeoField performs on the X70EX UMPC, please visit us on our stand at either the Ordnance Survey Local Government & Emergency Services Conference at Barceló Hinckley Island Hotel on 27th/28th April or the ESRI (UK) Annual Conference in London on 10th/11th May.

Andy Gosney joined Sigma Seven last summer as a Sales Consultant after previously working with the Ordnance Survey, 1-Spatial and GGP. Along with Sales and Marketing Director Mark Ketteman, Andy’s role is to expand the business into new areas.

‘The business started out by servicing utility and quickly grew its presence in that market,’ says Andy. ‘My focus now is to show what GeoField can do for businesses in other sectors including data providers, local and central government.

‘It’s a very varied role in that the GeoField software can be applied to a wide range of work undertaken by government or private sector companies where those tasks have an element of location to them. For example, a local council could take a device with GeoField on it and, from the one licence, apply it to dozens of different uses such as waste management one day and monitoring children at risk the next.

‘A challenge at the moment is that public sector spending is under a lot of pressure. My job is about working with our customers to demonstrate how purchasing our software will quickly save them money. We know from our ROI studies that it delivers instant efficiencies, not ones you have to wait two or three years for. The data and operational managers within organisations can see the value of it but the difficulty is in getting that information in front of the management holding the purse strings’

Having completed a degree in local government politics, Andy started his GI career with Ordnance Survey where he rapidly rose through the ranks to become a Data Production Manager. His particular areas of interest are large scale data capture; addressing data capture, land use data and change intelligence.

When he is not travelling the UK explaining to different companies how GeoField can help them, Andy lives in his hometown of Southampton and is a keen follower of the town’s football club. As well as being a Saints fan, he enjoys watching American football. A New York Jets supporter, he used to play the game while at university in Leicester. He also lists darts, pool and poker among his hobbies.

Paul Reid explains how GeoField can generate instant on-site reports

‘Give me a couple of days to write up the report and I’ll email you a copy once it’s done’. Surely a common scenario as field workers leave a customer or job site to get on with their office-based follow-up work? How much of an advantage would it be to your business to instead be able to say ‘Give me your email address and this report (or proposal/contract etc) will be in your inbox within seconds’?

By making use of GeoField’s instant on-site report generation, some of our customers already appreciate the advantages they have over more traditional approaches to delivering follow-up reports. Aside from the obvious benefit of time and effort saved by not having to return to the office to write up site reports, additional advantages can be gained in terms of customer service and satisfaction from such an efficient and professional approach to follow-up actions.

‘Right first time’ is a message we communicate to potential users of GeoField. Having the ability to visit the site, do the required work, and then deliver the follow-up report with associated sign-off in one single site visit is a great example of this in action.

With on-site report generation, any information captured in GeoField during the site visit can be automatically placed into an associated report template. Location maps, photos, form data, sketches and digital signatures can all be inserted at the appropriate place in the report template, and then saved to PDF or other document formats.

Once generated, the reports can be sent back to the server for processing in GeoField Exchange. Based on job type, or some other configurable attribute, they can either be automatically emailed to a specified recipient or distribution list, imported into an appropriate corporate database, or fed into your document management system.

Improving the efficiency of field operations is a goal for most organisations, and the deployment of GeoField’s instant on-site report generation facilities can cut several office-hours from the typical working week of each field worker. Less time in the office equals more value from your field operations.

Instant on-site reports are easy with GeoField

This month sees the biggest shakeup in the Ordnance Survey’s 260-year history. Under the new OS OpenData™ programme, OS will provide free and unrestricted online access to many of its maps and datasets

For years Britain’s national mapping agency has charted this country with unmatched precision, consistency and artistry. Such workmanship doesn’t come cheap and until recently the OS was required to charge for most of its products. Now, as a result of recent Government consultation, you can download maps as detailed as 1:10,000 scale, lists of locations, or conversions from postcodes to grid references – free for personal or commercial use.

Not only is this great news for our UK customers, but also perfect timing for Sigma Seven. The last six months have seen a substantial strengthening of the partnership between Sigma Seven and Ordnance Survey with an increased focus on Return On Investment for our customers. One of the results of this partnership is our recently published joint case study brochure explaining how Sigma Seven and OS have helped other organisations get even greater value from their corporate data and OS products through workforce mobilisation.

By automating mobile business processes with GeoField and OS MasterMap®, organisations have significantly improved the efficiency and effectiveness of their field workers. By giving them the electronic tools and specialist data they need to support their daily tasks, front-line staff are fully empowered. The result is a streamlined process: the elimination of wasteful paper trails, an increase in data quality, a reduction in operational costs and an improvement in customer service and satisfaction. ‘Investment in mobile mapping and work management allows organisations to extract even greater value from their investments in Ordnance Survey products and enterprise databases,’ says Mark Ketteman, Sigma Seven Sales Director. ‘We are delighted by the launch of OS OpenData. Together with GeoField this will dramatically extend the reach, usage and effectiveness of UK digital mapping and location data.’

Such is the potential of OS OpenData™ to transform the way you think about maps in your organisation, we thought you’d like more detail on what is available. The OS has made available 13 data sets which include maps, data on postcode locations, a gazetteer of road names, and other valuable land-use and national public transport network data. There are six map products now available:

•    Miniscale®.  A 1:1,000,000 representation of the whole of Great Britain
•    1:250K Scale Colour Raster.  Featuring cities, towns, many villages, motorways, A and B class roads,railways, rivers and woodlands.
•    Strategi®.  Contains a range of geographical features including railways, airports, ferries, cities, towns and villages, woods, land use and geographic names.
•    Meridian™ 2.  This is a customisable mid-scale vector map of Great Britain.
•    Land-Form PANORAMA®.  Provides contours, spot heights and information on coastlines and lakes, among other features.
•    OS Street View®.  A 1:10,000 bitmap designed to emphasize road names, Department forTransport identifiers, generalised buildings and areas of vegetation.

Perhaps the most exciting new development for GeoField will be the inclusion in OS OpenData™ from May 2010 of OS Vector Map™ District. Available in a very useful 1:25K scale and derived from OS MasterMap™ data, it provides a great combination of high-quality data including 35 different types of feature. This map will allow many more organisations to benefit from GeoField and Ordnance Survey and we’re working hard to bring this to you as soon as it is ready.

In addition OS has released the much sought-after Boundary-Line™, which contains the boundaries for local authority administrative areas, wards, civil parish, parliamentary, assembly and European constituencies. The other free datasets are:

•    Code-Point® Open.  Converts postcodes to map reference points.
•    OS Locator®.  A national gazetteer of road names.
•    DEFRA Generalised Land Use Database.  Categorises land use.
•    Department for Transport National Public Transport Access Nodes and Gazetteer.  Important datasets which contain every station, bus stop, ferry terminal and airport in Great Britain.
•    1:50 000 Scale Gazetteer. Contains entries for airports, farms, hills, woodlands, commons and other places. It has a resolution down to 1km and contains over 42,000 towns.

‘It is clear that Sigma Seven’s mobile solutions can really transport Ordnance Survey data out of the office and into many field-based applications.  This means more business processes can benefit from the power of having precise location data delivered where and when it is needed.’
Marc Hobell, Head of Public Sector and Utilities, Ordnance Survey

LINKS
•    www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/opendata
•    http://data.gov.uk
•    www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/products/vectormap/district/index.html

Download the brochure from our website

GeoField is helping SEPA maintain water quality

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) has selected Sigma Seven’s GeoField for use in a trial which will help protect Scotland’s water against diffuse pollution. Diffuse pollution results in water contaminated with soil, nutrients, bacteria and chemicals running off land into the local water environment and is the most significant pollution pressure causing water bodies to fail objectives under the Water Framework Directive. It is a major contributor to poor water quality, which in turn affects the ecology of the river.

Starting in April, Priority Catchment Officers from SEPA will be walking fourteen Scottish water catchments to assess diffuse pollution. In one catchment they will use GeoField’s electronic field data collection and mapping tools to streamline and enhance this important work and help ensure that Scotland’s water quality continues to improve and meets quality targets set for 2015.

Above: Paul Reid hands over GeoField to Dr Jonathan Bowes and colleagues of SEPA

A warm(er) welcome to this Spring edition of Field Views — hopefully we’ve now seen the end of the extended winter snow and associated havoc that it brought! It’s great to see the lighter nights coming in, and also the more pleasant outdoor working conditions which I know signal the start of this year’s field work projects for many of you...

In this edition, we open with a feature on our partner Ordnance Survey, and a look at how the combination of GeoField and OS digital maps has enabled a number of mobile solutions to deliver on their promised benefits. We also feature a powerful new ultra mobile device from Viliv and, while this year’s problems are still fresh in your mind, we have some thoughts on how you could better prepare for the operational difficulties that next winter could bring.

If you are out and about over the coming months, we look forward to meeting you alongside our partners at both the forthcoming Ordnance Survey Local Government & Emergency Services Event and ESRI (UK) Annual Conference. Pop by our stand to say hello and to see how you could benefit from our most recent GeoField developments.

I’d like to finish by saying thanks for all the positive feedback that we’ve received following our most recent edition of Field Views, which now reaches over 450 of our friends and partners in the UK and beyond. Please use this blog to join in the conversation with us and comment on any of our articles, or suggest topics that you’d like us to cover.

Best wishes,
Paul Reid, Managing Director