When looking for ways to improve margins, it’s important to remember that even a very small change, when compounded enough times, can turn into big savings.

Blogger Eric Lai profiled Safeguard Properties, a company that inspects and maintains foreclosed homes mostly on behalf of large banks or Freddie Mac and Fannie May. Lai showed how the company was able to use technology to shave just a little time off each visit, and eliminate just a little human error, which adds up to lots of little bits of savings.

In August 2011, the privately-held company began piloting to its network of 8,000+ freelance inspectors a field service app called INSPI2 that runs on their personally-owned iPhones, iPads and Android devices.


The new app has several advantages over its predecessor, for both inspectors and Safeguard, said Bill Cook, a senior IT project manager at Safeguard. First, the app boosts the speed and accuracy of inspectors. One way is by pre-filling out the electronic forms based on existing data, as well as informing users when new, incorrect information they’ve entered in doesn’t reconcile with existing data.

“Even a 5 percent increase in accuracy can translate to significant speed and cost savings on back-end processing,” Lai quotes Safeguard IT manager Tim Cook saying. And by embracing and promoting a “bring-your-own-device” shift within the company, it tapped into these savings without a huge upfront equipment cost.

It’s certainly an interesting read for field service operations considering adopting new mobile technologies. Click here to read the article in full.

Click here to read the article in full.


Related
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ABOUT Ian Stewart

Avatar photoIan is a veteran journalist who has covered sports for various news outlets. Previously, he was managing editor for an electronic-book publishing company and a public relations writer.