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Last week the WorkMobile® website had a little revamp!
If you have visited the homepage recently, you will notice that there are now six rolling images across the top of the screen. These are to provide more information about what WorkMobile® can do for you and where you can use it within your business. Hopefully, first-time visitors will understand more quickly what WorkMobile® is.
There are a few new sections to the website including the Small Business Solutions and Large Business Solutions sections. By choosing the solution most suitable to your needs, you are able to find out about the best ways that WorkMobile® can fit into your business. You will also be advised of the benefits to your large or small business and the Return on Investment for either a 10 man team or a 50 man team.
Website visitors can now find out about the Partner Programme more easily, as there are clear links on the homepage to direct potential partners to find out why WorkMobile® is the ideal new revenue stream for them. Once a Partner signs up, they receive a partner code and are able to access the Partner Portal where useful documents are made available so that they can go and gain new business.
The Help & Resources section contains FAQs, various helpful documents, user guides and tutorial videos. Visit this section of the website if you need any help or support with creating forms on the www.esayworkmobile.co.uk website.
Part of our team has recently been working on a version of WorkMobile™ that specifically targets Apple’s iPad. In Apple’s terms, we’ve made WorkMobile™ “Universal”. This means that a single application can be downloaded from the App Store to your iPhone, iPod, or iPad and it will work on any of the platforms. More importantly perhaps, it means that we get to take advantage of the large screen size when we’re running on an iPad.
At the start of the development cycle, I’ll admit that I was somewhat sceptical about the ease, according to the documentation at least, in which iPhone targeted apps could be converted to Universal. The documentation always says it’s easy, but as a developer I know we’ll usually find 101 tiny little annoyances. All of those niggles need to be hunted down and given a stern talking to, and that’s a time consuming process.
After changing the relevant build settings, we set about building our new iPad sized screens and wiring them up to the code behind the scenes that makes things tick. That task in itself was far less laborious than it would have been in days of yore, largely thanks to the (long overdue, but most definitely welcome) ability to wire up the code to your user interface visually in the relatively new and completely re-vamped XCode 4 (the software used to build applications for Apple’s platforms).
After building and wiring up the new screens, the next step was to get our hands dirty with the actual code and inner workings of WorkMobile™ on the iPad, and see if things go horribly wrong when you flip WorkMobile™ sideways, or upside down. This is where I expected all the dreaded niggles to start appearing. In reality, there were relatively few. For the most part we had to just switch on the ability of the application to rotate when the user spins the iPad around, making sure that WorkMobile™ was always the right way up so we can live up to the “There is no right way or wrong way” of Apple’s marketing campaign. It just worked.
Sure we had to make some changes to the actual inner workings of WorkMobile™ for the iPad version, but far, far fewer than expected.
I guess I’m going to have to eat humble pie (or maybe humble apple pie), and admit that my scepticism was misplaced.
Simon (Senior Developer)
WorkMobile™ for iPad hit the App Store on Monday 19th September and should now be available for download.
Last Wednesday was the first WorkMobile™ WorkShop Wednesday sales training course, and the feedback has been tremendous.
The focus was really on the WorkShop, where participants could really get their hands on the product – with supervision! We also covered a myriad of sales issues that we have encountered at first hand, giving Partners the real benefit of our experience. Working closely with all our Business Partners helps us to understand what is needed to sell WorkMobile™, and the sales training aims to build these relationships as well as passing on useful tips and knowledge.
“I found the session to be very informative and was surprised at how much I’d not yet discovered about the features of this product.” Said Matt Atkinson from Cleardata.
The next WorkShop will take place on 24th August, but places are very limited – contact us ASAP if you would like to join the session.
For further details, please see attached flyer – WorkMobile™ WorkShop Wednesdays
Mel (Partner Relationship Manager)
When WorkMobile™ was originally envisaged, the drive was to harness the incredible power of mobile phones to replace that nasty, heavy laptop for high quality data capture. In the last year, we’ve seen a huge surge in tablets… lightweight, powerful devices, with large touch-screens, that can provide a whole new experience in mobile computing. Hot on the heels of the iPad, new devices from HP and BlackBerry are pushing the bounds in computing power and portability, along with a wide range of Android powered devices.
One of the great challenges for all companies delivering mobile solutions is to leverage their solution across this ever-increasing range of platforms. New operating systems create new technical challenges, and new device form-factors create new opportunities to improve the user experience.
In the WorkMobile™ development team, we’re excited about these changes in the market, and are working hard to take advantage of our existing cross-platform development strategy that already enables us to deliver our solution to more than 95% of smart phone users worldwide. We’re already working on tablet optimised versions for iPad and Android (users of which can already use the smart phone versions). Our device team are looking closely at the new BlackBerry PlayBook and it’s new Tablet OS operating system, and at HP’s new web OS-based TouchPad, both of which are due to hit the streets in June.
Getting WorkMobile™ to work on every device we can (currently, everything from an iPad down to a €30 Nokia) is what excites eSay’s device team, and is a big part of what makes WorkMobile™ such a unique product. We’re looking forward to delivering exciting new ways to use WorkMobile™ to you over the coming months!
Graham (Senior Developer)
Nearly half of UK organisations are already dabbling in some form of cloud computing, according to a new survey from the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF).
The research, part of a comprehensive review of the UK’s cloud computing landscape, revealed 48 per cent of organisations already had some form of cloud service, using business Apps like WorkMobile™, with larger private companies leading the charge towards the technology.
And, contrary to received wisdom, the survey revealed the main driver for change was not the need to keep costs low but the desire for greater flexibility within organisations. This was particularly true for smaller organisations, as 63 per cent of companies with fewer than 20 employees cited flexibility as the main driver.
Perhaps the starkest indication of the growing enthusiasm for cloud computing was the high rate of satisfaction with the technology. According to the survey, 94 per cent of cloud users were satisfied with the service and looking to expand the technology into other parts of the operations. By contrast, 52 per cent of the companies yet to invest in cloud nearly all had the intention of doing so – just two per cent of these companies had no plans to go down this route.
According to Andy Burton, chairman of CIF, the results of the survey were very encouraging to the cloud industry. “I’m very encouraged by these results,” he said. “The reality is that customers are trying the cloud, they’re doing it for a purpose and they’re very happy with it.”
He went on to say there was more caution in the public sector and in smaller businesses, but added there was interest from these sectors too. Burton also said he was encouraged by the fact it was IT departments leading the charge towards the cloud. He said it was widely held that much of the interest in cloud was being led by business leaders, but the survey revealed that 65 per cent of the companies moving to cloud had the decision taken by IT managers.
“It’s clear that cloud is on the increase and is part of a coherent IT strategy,” he concluded.
Mobile applications like WorkMobile™ and wireless technologies are no longer just a nicety for small businesses, according to a new report from AT&T: They’re a necessity.
Nearly three-fourths (72%) of small businesses said they use mobile apps in their business, with roughly four in ten (38%) reporting that they could not survive — or would face major challenges to survival — without mobile apps, according to the AT&T Small Business Technology Poll.
The national survey of business with two to 50 employees also showed how mobile the world is for small businesses. Ninety-six percent of them use wireless technologies. The driving forces behind this widespread adoption, researchers said, are time savings, increased productivity and reduction of costs.
Increasingly, the survey showed, small businesses are using wireless technologies to help keep employees connected with the business 24/7, even when they’re not in the office. Four in ten (40%) of small businesses reported that all of their employees use wireless devices or wireless technologies to work away from the office. This is up from 24 percent in 2007/8 and is expected to grow to 50 percent by 2012.
Since its launch in February, WorkMobile™ has been adopted by a growing number of small and medium sized businesses. The feedback has been overwhelmingly good, with increased productivity and data quality often cited as the immediate benefits. It would seem from this report that WorkMobile™ may be a necessary business App in the near future. . . .watch this space!
The hotly anticipated next version of WorkMobile™ will be out in the next week or two. Here’s a sneak peek of the exciting new features it will boast:
With all this extra functionality and lots more besides, the next version of WorkMobile™ will offer a truly enhanced user experience for existing users, whilst really coming into its own for new users who are looking for the ability to send and receive jobs in a business app.
We’ll keep you posted on the go live date!
It’s a simple question that not enough companies ask themselves seriously. But think about it. Can you lay your hands on up-to-date information, from wherever your staff may be as quickly as you’d like, or do you have to ask someone else to compile the information you need and then wait for them to get round to it?
When you get the figures are you sure they’re right or could they contain mistakes from being retyped or perhaps they were right two weeks ago when the basic data was collected (on a tatty piece of paper) but things have changed in the time it took for that data to be summarised and to reach your desk?
If you have to wait to get the information you need, what about your staff? Are they also being frustrated by not having accurate or timely information available to support their decisions? And, without accurate and timely information are you sure the decisions being made are the right ones or are you just not making decisions because you don’t have the right information to hand?
One way around this is to invest in a mobile data capture solution, but this is often an expensive purchase; as devices and software aren’t cheap. With WorkMobile™ you don’t have to invest in new devices, as it’s likely that your staff already own smartphones that this truly superb business app can be downloaded onto.
With WorkMobile™ you will get faster, more accurate information to help you and your staff make the right decisions at the right time – winning and retaining customers, reducing costs increasing turnover and profit. The best bit is the free trial – FREE software (100 Credits)! Give it a go and see how business-changing it could be for you.
WorkMobile™ has been built with simplicity in mind when it comes to viewing and using your data. With features such as export, shred and delete, WorkMobileTM makes managing the data that you capture a breeze.
When you select ‘completed records’ from the form dashboard, you will be able to see all of the data that your mobile users have captured using your form. From this view you will see an icon at the top right, ‘Download Data’.
When you click this link, your data will instantaneously download into a csv file, ready to be used or imported with any other back end systems.
When you have clicked the link, you will have a choice – ‘Download All’ and ‘Download New’. Each time your data is downloaded it is marked as ‘old’, and will not be downloaded if the ‘Download New’ option is chosen. This makes it easier to organise your data, and you can make sure you are not leaving more data online than is necessary.
The data that has already been downloaded (and therefore marked as ‘old’), will then be automatically moved to ‘Records to Shred’. When you select this icon your account will be cleansed of the data you have so far downloaded from this form.
The WorkMobile™ experience – simple and efficient data handling!
