Go mobile and save £30,000 a year

The average service business could save up to £30,000 a year by using mobile handheld technology, research by Clik Ltd, the business management software company has revealed.

The study, among Clik’s customers, is based on a business with a turnover of £1 million employing four full-time engineers. It calculates savings on office administration, reduced stationery costs, productivity and improved cash flow.

The greatest saving was found to be engineers’ productivity, accounting for around 50% of the overall figure. Using handheld devices to complete and send job sheets electronically while on site means engineers cut the amount of time spent on administration by half a day a week. This frees them up to complete more jobs.

Productivity was closely followed by office administration, with a firm this size employing clerical staff for up to 2.5 days a week to manually input job sheets. The increased speed of the process, which means invoices can be sent to customers within minutes of the work being completed, as well as a reduction in stationery costs amounted to a further saving of around £1,500 a year.

“These figures should really be a wake up call to any business that is still using a paper-based business management system,” says Clik’s Managing Director Geoff Adams.

“In fact these initial savings may be the tip of the iceberg. We found that businesses could be saving even more through increased accuracy – by using handheld devices engineers would have all the parts and prices available, so none would be missed - and another very common, and expensive, problem - lost job sheets.”

The study also found major benefits from increased efficiency from using handheld devices. Examples of time-consuming issues with paper-based systems included checking details because of illegible handwriting, and delays passing on jobs that need to be completed by a second engineer.

Stock management can also be greatly improved as mobile systems eliminate the need for stock requisition sheets and delays while vans are restocked. Engineers simply order new parts via their handheld device and the information is recorded on a central system.

“There are a lot of intangible benefits from using a mobile system too,” adds Geoff. “A business appears more professional, is better managed and, in turn, customers have greater confidence in them.”

Clik has just launched a new mobile addition for its successful business management software Clik Service. Clik Mobile enables field engineers to synchronise outstanding work with Clik Service, download details about customers, sites, equipment, and specific jobs directly onto their PDA's. They can then record the time spent on each job, materials used and work carried out, which is sent directly with a customer’s signature to the office for invoicing.