If you would have asked business owners a decade ago if they were advocates for employees spending their work hours away from the office, the answer would probably have been no. Today, that is changing. Currently, more than 50% of the workforce is mobile on any given day, and analysts predict that number to reach 72% by 2011.
That’s why the team at Leaders Homes, a remodeling company based in Northern Virginia, has made mobile technology one of their top priorities from the very beginning. Technology and mobility has offered us tremendous cost savings, improved organizational agility, and excellent customer service due to response time. Strategically it has enabled an anytime, anywhere workforce.
We typically refer to it as our mobile offices; company vehicles, which are equipped with everything a standard office would have, keeps everything readily available at our fingertips which accounts for faster turn over time on our production. It enables our staff to communicate whenever and where ever we want throughout our day. Our systems allow us to maintain accurate and ever-changing updates on spreadsheets, inventory, bids, presentations, and contracts. The collaboration of our internal operation allows us the advantage of having several projects running simultaneously in different states. It has become apparent our company simply can’t live without mobile technology.
GPS technology is another great way for our field team to plan their routes and get familiar with new geographic areas more quickly. Since we are a service oriented company with employees in the field, a GPS program helps provide better customer service, as employees can adapt to appointment time changes quickly and give customers a more accurate idea of arrival time. Most importantly, they make a tedious task like reporting on expense submissions easier, and provides us with more accurate data for business reimbursements.
It is imperative for our team at least to grasp innovation and change and realize there’s such a vast array of business solutions to make our workflow easier. Having real-time data capturing and information management readily available has made sitting in an office all day a thing of the past.