Smart Forms on Smart Walkie Talkies

Smart Walkie's CEO, Zhou Wenhan, was invited by IMDA to OneService-Industry eXchange (OSIX). OSIX is jointly organised by MSO (Municipal Services Organization) and IMDA (Infocomm Media Development Agency). The attendees were from various government agencies and the talks covered technology and procurement processes.

Wenhan did a presentation on Smart Forms. As part of the presentation, a hypothetical scenario where a government agency worked with their vendor to use smart forms to record work done. This aided in reduction of time to report the work and also provide real life cases to discuss and improve.

Smart Walkie also showed how improvements in business process can cascade to the individual field workers so changes in Business SOP are reflected in the smart forms and reinforce worker actions.

Below are the slides, transcripts and video demos of iAuditor. (Please switch to a Desktop Browser if the slides and video are not showing)

Slides

Videos

Transcript

[00:00:00] So hello. Thank you for inviting me. My name is Wenhan from Smart Walkie. And what Smart Walkie does is that we enable companies with a lot of field workers on their enterprise mobility journey. How we do this is that we sell a combination of hardware, our field communication that allow walkie talkie and communication and of course some of the software which helps in their workflow.

[00:00:35] So what I want to talk about today is one of the more common requirements from our customers where they want to digitize their workflow. And what this means is that they want a defined business book flow or SOPs into a software that everybody uses so that everyone as a group is able to know what is happening, what should be happening. And they are able to do this without being in constant communication.

[00:01:09] So typically these companies are established, so they have people excel forms are and they want to move these forms into a digital format. And the thinking is that if you move to digital, there are benefits like,.

[00:01:26] For example, the first one is re-inforcing these standard operating procedures. So having a formal check list ensures people in the field actually follow the SOP. Because the S&P is set on paper. And of course, as a as a collector, you have to fill it in. And as they run through the form, the question and answer form helps to guide the process that must be followed. Another way that this can be useful is that even with turnover. A newcomer will be able to use the form and still have some idea of what needs to be done.

[00:02:04] So this helps ensure consistent quality even with personnel change. So these forms and workflow actually form a organization knowledge because they guide the user to written SOP,.

[00:02:29] It also helps in result collection. So for example, if there's one form and there multiple parties have a digital allows the phone to be digitally the sent between each party. In an example where there is a need for flow of approval, the form can be passed faster to the next person.

[00:02:45] Or in the case of One form that is filled up many times by different parties. The results collation could be faster and also more organized.

[00:02:53] The other thing is around exception tracking. So if there's a problem, other than writing on the form that can, the system also gives you and the ability to see what their exception have been raised. And if there's a follow up down and if the issue has been closed. So kind of like a backwards. But for the real world.

[00:03:12] And of course, moving the moving from paper or excel, the multimedia data collection abilitiy of the smart devices like photos or videos can greatly enhance the information that the user can collect and communicate. So if possible, with a phone, i think it is very clear, everybody knows they can tell a great story, but also it also reduces the more user input. And writing as a lot of users are not really well suited to enter a lot of data. So having photos or some drawings using a touchscreen can really help.

[00:03:53] So at the end, basically the digitization of such information from traditional paper by itself forms will allow as a team a higher visibility, a higher visibly into the an actual situation on the ground.

[00:04:07] And of course, a closer working relationship. So this collected data becomes a source of truth, which can be discussed among different management layers. You can actually quickly be able to look at high level statistics or even individual cases. So with that, hopefully pretty that brings about higher visibility and a closer working relationship.

[00:04:34] So today we're going to go through iAuditor, which is our preferred application, but actually there are lot of available apps that you can really start to build and distribute your forms on. And we typically recommend customers to do this instead of building a whole new application. So all these applications remove the barrier for you to start trying. And it places the importance of having the business workflow being tried in real life. And of course, it can be written or changed or enhanced when you actually learn in the real world what that what other information needs to be collected. So hopefully with real experience by using this forms that it gives you a good idea, in the end, what type of system information is really useful?

[00:05:26] What is common among these applications is that they're easy to use. You can quickly build a form, distribute them. Your users, can fill in the form submit it to you you electronically and you will have it nicely Collected. They can create almost any all people a funnel or something bubble through. And of course the resource is more structured and can be exported to other IT systems that you have.

[00:05:49] So now we look at our preferred application, which is iAuditor. So this is a user would see. In this case is a hotel guest room inspection form.

[00:06:02] So the words are a bit smalll, I will read it for you. The first one is are the doors working properly, so this is a very simple yes. No, not like that. Not at the combo check checkers. Right. So fast food is up, but. Yes. And for the next one is good. The doors open easily and quietly. For days, the user actually put no end.

[00:06:22] In this case, you can attach an additional photo to show the problem and other than that they can put in action and dissections can then be tracked to for correction later. This is a very easy to fill form. It doesn't prove it gives too much information to the user. It is structed and linear. And the military does, you know, from the top, the bottom. And if there are no exceptions, it takes than a minute to fill up.

[00:06:49] And as the user fills up this form, you or a supervisor would have confidence that inspections are done and that of course if problems are spotted, there is a place to is a place to follow all of his problems.

[00:07:04] Let's take a look at a live demo. So in this case, you're going to take a simple scenario like cutting grass. So Derek is going to fill up the form. He has finished cutting some grass, so he's going to pick up the form. And it's submitted. That is great.

[00:07:23] So we're going to do it again. But this time you're going to have an exception and this time is, as I said, because it is raining. So there is no way to cut the grass. And he needs to let a supervisor know. SO he puts a follow up action. And as a supervisor, can I see it in my in my in my console that there is a problem and we need to address it. And I see it in real time as well.

[00:07:50] So let's say after cutting grass was form some time. The contractor or Derek is frequently not able to cut the grass because the field is wet. Of course as an agency you want to resolve this. So we all sit down and discuss about it. And the conclusion is that because it was raining before and that water is not exiting the field quick enough. So there's a suggestion to ensure that the grass around the drain inlet are cut so that water can leave the field faster and therefore the contractor is more likely to be able to cut the grass.

[00:08:21] So how do we add this new SOP into the form? Right. We have decided something that is something that needs to be done. We want it. We want a field workers to know how to do it. So doing this very easy there is going to add a new field. And because it is a new field, we want the workers to pay attention to it? You're going to ask them to take a photo as well. Yep. And it's that easy. We just have to clear it up.

[00:08:51] So with this, you can see that actually the forms can be part of an SOP. And then it cascades down to the individual field worker and it forms a reinforcement for them as well.

[00:09:10] So beyond forms, creation, distribution, iAuditor can do a lot more. I have listed some for your reference.

[00:09:15] If you are in a manager led team, the manager can schedule inspections to specific workers and specific time. The work can then see their pending task and do them in order. So something like a work order or a list of work orders and calendar for the individual workers.,.

[00:09:32] There is also corrective action which I have shown you in just now when it rained.

[00:09:36] And of course they are doing analytics that can tell you which ones are. Well, how many competitions and how many. Well, we said we find the most common exceptions to be analyzed.

[00:10:06] And I think this is just the first step. So having a flexible toolm like iauditor would help you be able to quickly create forms. You could then graduate to industries specific apps. For example, in the guarding industry. There are really a lot of guarding apps that have industry specific workflows land these could be compliance is Police licensing requirements and integration with Payroll systems.

[00:10:46] You can also integrate into your existing I.T. systems. You can. So what is required is, of course, the fuel, because they have a smart device. And that is where I think Smart Walkie Talkie comes in. And where we help, our customers really manage their smart devices.

[00:11:05] So a lot of times there are concerns from service when you've been in the smartphone. So this is equivalent to buying a new computer. So we like to say that office workers all get laptops on the first day of work and with field workers, they will also get a smart device because they need the apps as well.

[00:11:12] The top 3 concerns usually from the book buyers out of managers just around reliability, keeping apps updated and controlling these smartphone costs and all this, we actually solve. But my time is a bit short, so I don't want to get into that today. And beyond the workflow application, we have our field worker specific communication app for the quick communication reuqired to resolve exceptions.

[00:11:38] It gives the field because a complete solution for the communication and workflow needs between them and their supervisors.

[00:12:17] So in conclusion, the phones help to push down and reinforce the be decided by management. There are plenty of apps. There are a few apps which I have which I've shown earlier that can easily have you do and distribute forms.

[00:12:31] And they allow you to iterate as an organization to do to improve your SOP and then use the phone to reinforce the improved SOP at the worker level. Of course, this requires smart devices. And when you do that, there some management issues which we can have to solve and of course with imprvoed communication for exception cases.

[00:13:01] All right. So thank you. That is my presentation for the day. And the information is there. And I hope that your you are thinking about how to digitize your workflow so that the organization improves constantly.