C-IQ: Give us a little bit of background about your company and how you’re using Near Field Communications (NFC).

DG: StaffPlan Enterprise is now part of the Advanced Computer Software group. The group also includes Adastra Software, which services out of-hours care for the UK’s National Health Service; BSG, which provides managed outsourcing and hosting; and StaffPlan, which provides rostering software to the care industry. StaffPlanEnterprise works closely with Adastra in general industry using the NFC Connect product.

C-IQ: Can you tell us a little more about this product?

DG: We have a back-end web-enabled system called Exchange, so that clients can set up remote workers. The remote workers are equipped with a Nokia cell phone – currently a 6212 – equipped with NFC. There are a number of different modules. The main one is a scheduled visit for a certain duration and our software allows an operative to touch a simple RFID/NFC tag at each location they visit. That could be an office, in the case of a cleaner, or the premises of an elderly person, in the case of a carer. They touch the tag with their phone when they go in, they’re issued with instructions, and when they’ve completed those instructions they can tick them off. They can only do this when they’re at the right premises, and at the end of their scheduled visit they touch the tag to say they’re leaving.

C-IQ: So it’s more than a simple clock-in and clock-out procedure – it also tells them what they need to do during the course of each visit?

DG: Yes, absolutely. And what I think is terrific is that different operatives can turn up at the same premises to do different tasks and they touch the same tag and get different instructions. We already operate a scheme whereby the operatives go and do their work and they either get standard instructions or they’re asked to do something more thoroughly and confirm that they’ve done it because the task has changed or there’s been a complaint about some aspect of their work. Most operatives have supervisory staff, who in the past have tended to turn up at work premises on an ad-hoc basis. Now they can schedule their visits. Supervisors also touch the tags, and they get a little report card that will typically have three or five tickable items so they can record that work has been carried out to a satisfactory standard. You get different information going back and forth live – taking a second or two to travel over the network.

C-IQ: Your promotional material mentions that you can make lone workers safer. How does this work?

DG: We have two simple ways of doing this:

• The first is by monitoring activity. There is normally a scheduled activity, or a regular activity even if it’s not scheduled. Typically, an operative touches a tag every half an hour or so. What you can do is make lack of activity trigger a reminder to them. If they’re no longer near one of the location tags, they can touch their own ID tag to turn off the reminder. Failure to do this could then cause an escalation through their management chain, at pre-defined intervals. It means that if a lone worker were incapacitated, even without them doing anything; a series of alarms would be triggered to alert their managers. The alarms stop as soon as a manager takes action.

• The other way involves an alarm on the operative’s phone. They simply press and hold down the number three on their phone and that triggers an alarm that is sent to our server center. This will then send out voice messages, emails and texts – whatever the client requests.

• There’s also a third option. It’s one we haven’t implemented yet but it’s certainly available. It allows operatives to activate an alarm simply by dropping their phone into a pocket which has tags sewn into it.

C-IQ: This all sounds very well thought out. These products aren’t the typical touch in, touch out applications you normally see.

DG: Having worked in the care industry for nearly 10 years, StaffPlan has a well-honed, refined and sophisticated package of services. When StaffPlan Enterprise was started, it aimed to take advantage of the maturity of this software. Often companies are put off using innovations like NFC because it feels too leading edge and they aren’t confident about running with it. We’re leading edge in the sense of the NFC element, but the back-end system is a mature system.

C-IQ: How easy is it for a company to actually implement a solution like yours?

DG: If you start small, and start simple, you could be up and running within a week. The operatives we train do basic everyday jobs – they’re not IT experts, they’re used to just filling in paper forms. We’re replacing those forms with something that’s actually simpler, so we can train them typically in 15 minutes if they’re regular phone users – which most people are – and maybe an hour if they’re not comfortable with cell phones. And that’s only the real delay. We host the back-end server and give full implementation support. So from when somebody signs a purchase order, it typically takes two weeks for them to have a system up and running.

C-IQ: Obviously you’re talking to companies, so what’s the feedback been like?

DG: It’s been extremely positive. All of our trial projects have led to full implementations, and the companies carrying them out are getting requests from their clients for the software as well now they’ve seen it in action. So it really has been very, very positive. Once people get over the idea of using leadingedge technology, they see how simple it is to implement, plus the technology is getting simpler. In addition, with this development there isn’t the normal financial risk that you associate with being at the leading edge, because our customers simply need to go to their phone provider, get the phones on their normal terms ensuring they’re Nokia NFC 6212 phones or the new 6216 models. We host the back-end system and people pay us monthly, so there’s no financial risk and there’s no big delay. This is not an SAP implementation.

C-IQ: What made you choose NFC as opposed to other access control or measurement technology?

DG: I’ve been working personally with Nokia for about 10 years, and it was Nokia that was so enthusiastic about NFC as the user experience is so good. There have been trials with items like barcode readers using some software and a camera on the phone, but the user experience has been a bit disappointing. But withNFC, once people touch a tag or touch anotherphone, the experience is fun. I mean, it really works. So that was the attraction for me and when I looked at the applications developed for the care industry, I realized there was a much wider market that could benefit from the technology. There was a whole list of people and organizations that could benefit from knowing where staff were for their safety and maybe the safety of customers, and to comply with regulations. It also meant that we didn’t have to wait for international standards to be agreed, which is the case with the financial sector and the telcos becoming banks; those are massive organizations that have to take a longterm approach. I felt this was something that was more immediate and it’s proving to be the case.

C-IQ: You’ve done a lot of trials and they’ve now been fully implemented. How long do you think it will be before your main customer base is up and running on this technology?

DG: We have some clients with tens of thousands of staff that are already adopting it as standard. We’ll be rolling it out across all the organizations from the last quarter of 2009 and into 2010. There’s no delay as such, it’s just that these are enormous organizations and it takes time to get the new technology in place.

C-IQ: What market do you plan to target next?

DG: I think NFC is the solution for any organization that has a responsibility – whether it’s contractual or regulatory – to prove that things have been done, and done to a good standard. It really is. A PDA is fantastic for well-trained middle management people used to using that sort of technology and doing high-value work. For most organizations with large workforces, most of them carry out quite basic tasks, and they simply need to prove something quickly or to communicate it concisely. NFC is perfect for this: it’s quick, robust and it works every time.

C-IQ: Obviously, there are a lot of positives and a lot of plus points for the companies that implement this technology. But if I’m the person that’s having to carry the phone and be checked, how am I going to feel? What’s the reaction from the people who actually have to carry these devices?

DG: The first reaction is: ‘Big Brother’s finally caught us’. But the second reaction is more positive and almost counterintuitive: they are delighted that they can prove that they have done things. We had a situation where a car park attendant was doing his patrols as required. It was a four-storey car park, and he was patrolling each floor and touching the tags when he noticed at the very back of the ground floor a Porsche with a laptop and a leather jacket on the front seat and inevitably it had been broken into. The chap said to me: “I would have expected to lose my job as you’ve got well-educated, wealthy individuals shouting at my manager and the police standing there going ‘yeah, yeah, well obviously the worker didn’t do his job’. But I was able to check the report, which proved I had been there five minutes before and was on the next floor up when the actual alarm went off.” All the other operatives were standing listening while he was explaining this to me, and they were absolutely delighted that decent people doing their jobs get the proof that they’ve actually done it. So, rather oddly, good guys really do like it.

C-IQ: It’s one of those things, isn’t it? We always assume that people are just trying to cover their backs. At least with something like this, it does prove what you’re doing at regular intervals.

DG: Most of the people I’m talking about are invariably regarded as ‘in the wrong’ – people doing a menial task, such as a cleaner or a car park operative – and it’s questioned whether they actually cleaned a premises or did a patrol properly. Well they did, but they seldom have proof.

However, this gives them instant proof as well as instant access. They can show it on their phone and their managers can show it on a report. You can go and search for that location and say: “yes, he always does his scheduled visit at that time”. So it really is one in the eye for doubters. As a manager, you want to be able to back your good people, to keep them. What my clients are telling me is that they’ve been forced to take people on from an agency and they weren’t convinced they were going to do the work correctly. But this new system meant that within a few hours they could see they weren’t doing the work correctly and they could prove this to the operatives.

In every instance, clients have been able to get their staff to behave. Normally it would be two weeks of chasing after them and then having to sack them. Now they can give operatives the option of leaving or behaving, and in every instance, they’ve behaved. One client said it’s made for a much better relationship with the end client, and it’s made for a much better relationship with the workers, in the sense that they now know if you just get on and do your work you’ll be left alone.

C-IQ: These days every company has to ‘think green’. What can contactless contribute in this area?

DG: I’m in discussions with a company to make the phones themselves carbon neutral. On a practical day-today level, the feedback I’m getting from my clients is they’re not having to drive around to check things are being done. They can be more office-based and they’re cutting their mileages dramatically. Some of these companies have large commercial vehicles and they’re able to cut out unnecessary journeys. If you’ve got a truck driver who’s meant to pick up something, you know that’s he’s picked it up. People aren’t having to be sent back to somewhere at the end of a working day and waste fuel; they are able to prove that they’re at locations and can prove to clients who often say the operative didn’t pick up while they were in and waiting, that they were in that street at that time. They can then tell clients they’ll go next week, instead of being forced into doing contractual trips, which are really damaging to the environment due to the sheer mileage they have to do. So this technology is cutting down unnecessary supervisory trips and it’s cutting down on the situations where people will ring and say the delivery driver didn’t turn up.

I’ve actually been out with these drivers and we’ve been driving away from places when people have come out and waved their arms to get them to come back. It’s really not fair and the customer’s always considered right. And this is able to prove that the customer maybe wasn’t so right in that situation, so the delivery driver can return on a scheduled visit as opposed to having to make a special trip.

Go to article:
1 |  2 |  3 |  4 |  5 |  6 |  7 |  8 |  9 |  10 |  11 |  12 |  13 |  14 |  15 |