A Comparison of Walkie Talkie and Smart Walkie Talkie
Often there is no reason to re-consider your already smooth running ways of operations. The old saying of not fixing what is not broken is always good advice. Why rock the boat by introducing a new way to work?
Adopting new ways will mean that you would have to re-train your staff and buy new equipment. Therefore the costs of undertaking such an upgrade should always be justified by the benefits and returns.
"Because those who used to be cheap (China) are now getting better, and those that used to be good (United States) are now getting cheaper as well. Hence, Singaporean companies have to be cheaper and better than them, and yet turnaround faster.” - Singapore’s Manpower Minister
Businesses have to increase their productivity via technology due to limited manpower and faster pace of business operations
As mentioned by the Minister, companies need to do more to be faster, better and cheaper to remain competitive.
Top 5 Reasons other companies upgrade to Smart Walkie
- 99% Nationwide + Indoor Coverage: Our coverage is 99% outdoor and worldwide. Exclusive to our data connection with Singtel on 900Mhz LTE, we can offer you excellent coverage even when you are indoors.
- Worker Location: Track staff on the go and view their live location or movement history on your computer.
- Run Business Apps: Other than your Walkie Talkie Apps, the Android OS allows you to run other business applications that increases your productivity.
- All-in-One Device for Talkie, Call & SMS: Buy, carry and maintain just one device for work.
- Send Pictures for record keeping: Use the integrated camera to take pictures of PoD, equipment for record keeping and reduce mis-understandings with customers.
To reinvent the way field workers work, smartphones provide a great platform to mobilize your business. There are a great variety of business apps that can help to increase productivity.
Top 5 Mobile Apps Mobile Field workers use :
- Communication apps
- Workforce/Asset Trackers
- File Sharing
- Time & Expense Management
- Project Management/Task Tracking
With some many possibilities, how then does a company take the first step? Firstly, let’s start with upgrading what workers are currently using which is probably a walkie talkie if you are into fieldwork.
VoicePing has invented the smart walkie talkie. It upgrades the conventional walkie talkie to a smart walkie talkie to make your communication more efficient, safer and at a lower cost.
We do so in 4 ways
- Hear less, Do more: Get more work done by reducing needless communication
- All-in-One Business Tool: Maintain and carry 1 device instead of a walkie talkie and a phone
- Save More, Worry Less: Predictable billing with no need to worry about infrastructure.
- Get Home Safely: Reduce accidents and reach home safely by using work appropriate devices
Let’s get into the details of each point.
1. Hear less, Do more: Get more work done by reducing needless communication
Conventional walkie talkies require two people to be paying attention at the same time to talk. More time is spent trying to get someone’s attention than conveying the message. With smart walkie-talkies, less time is spent on communication by reducing the time spent saying a message repeatedly.
With online indicators and delivery receipts, you know if your colleague is there and if he has heard your message. No more guessing if he is there. With recorded messages, you know that the recipient can replay the message later. Just leave your message and know that he will hear it.
Conventional walkie talkies also require you to use a channel. A channel has many people on it and most of the time, not everyone needs to be notified of what is being said. Irrelevant information causes mental fatigue as the worker has to tune in constantly to verify if the incoming message is important to him.
Cut the noise with smart walkie talkies which makes one-to-one communication easier. You can easily have many individual conversations going at the same time because we make it easy for you to change channels. For the really busy supervisors, we also have a desktop version that you can use to handle tens of conversations. To make the voice clearer and improve the sound quality, you can use walkie talkies headset.
Of course like conventional walkie talkies, you also have the group function and we even allow up to 100 users in a group. You also enjoy the no-typing, instant voice communication that makes it so easy to send a message on-the-go.
2. All-in-One Business Tool: Maintain and carry 1 device instead of a walkie-talkie and a phone
Who wants to carry multiple devices? The more you bring with you, the higher the probability of one device getting damaged or lost. It also takes away mental bandwidth from your work at hand. Smartphones are the digital equivalent of a Swiss army knife. Cameras, Compass, Phone, Pagers, MP3 Players and full computers have been merged as another feature or app on your smartphone.
And it is not just replacing devices but adding functional software such as Employee Trackers, Delivery Order Systems, Fleet Management Apps. All these run on smartphones and gives your mobile workers the tools they need to be more productive and plugged into your business.
3. Save More, Worry Less: Predictable billing with no need to worry about infrastructure.
With iDEN based walkie talkies and Tetra based walkie talkies, you have to worry about either variable cost due to minute-based billing or installing and maintaining physical infrastructure like base stations, uninterruptible power stations, fans and etc.
With smart walkie talkies, you pay a fixed fee a month for the software. There is mobile data usage but most walkie talkie apps do not use more than 200 megabytes of data a month. A 1GB plan which cost $10 SGD in Singapore will more than suffice. You get a predictable fixed cost which is easier to budget for and you don’t have to “hound” employees for excess usage.
Did we mention that because this is internet based, you can talk to any of your colleague without costly roaming concerns?
4. Get Home Safely: Reduce accidents and reach home safely by using work appropriate devices
The most important of all is that you and your workers get home safely. If you are constantly driving around, use a Bluetooth headset or Wired Earpieces to listen and send messages.
Smart Walkie Talkie also allows certain earpieces to change channels so you can speak to the correct person without having to touch the smartphone walkie talkie.
With the Replay function, your workers do not need to worry about missing a message and grab for the walkie talkie and potentially causing a dangerous accident. With peace of mind, they know they can replay the message and respond to you at a safe time. Reduce your insurance and company liability with a simple earpiece costing $20. Isn’t that worth a lot more?
Summary
As the comparison shows, in terms of smarter walkie talkies features- it’s replay value where users can replay recent messages, offline recording (messages recorded offline, to be sent when a connection is available), where VoicePing definitely excels over the average iDEN PTT service.
The simplicity of predictable cost is something that IT Managers will appreciate. VoicePing also can leverage on existing property Wi-Fi and BYOD data plans which means you can exclude the cost of payments to telecommunications operators and not have to sign expensive contracts with a high total cost of ownership.
With smartphone based PTT applications gaining traction not only in the business world, it is wise to consider which among the available providers can give you the most comprehensive service while maintaining the most reasonable price. Also, keep in mind that you need to have a walkie talkie headset to hear your walkie talkie or two-way radio perfectly. It improves the audio quality. VoicePing should be on top of every Singaporean’s list