Some solutions we develop fall into the category of ‘it just makes sense’.
In the case of Drummond & Etheridge, that’s exactly what we thought when they first explain what was required.
Being the John Deere (think big green tractors) dealership in Canterbury, they have staff spread far and wide throughout the South Island of New Zealand. This can cause real issues when it comes to how information is gathered and then dispersed to others amongst the team.
In the case of this solution, it came down to their consultants having to capture considerable detail on the condition of tractors for trade in’s, and then disseminating this around fifteen sales staff. Up until now it was a number of pieces of paper on a clipboard, and then faxing it back into HQ.
A new solution was needed that would consist of an electronic version of the current paper based form that can be used on iPads, then facilitate the distribution to the sales team and other interested parties.
The solution needed to be able to work offline due to limited 3G coverage through parts of the South Island. It then needed to have some way in which the consultant could get all the inputted details from the iPad to the sales team. In this case a ‘back office’ solution was not required, they had one already so there was no need to ‘recreate the wheel'
What we developed for Drummond & Etheridge is a well designed and highly functional FileMaker Go solution. The consultant uses this to input all the details, traditional captured on paper, using a large number of the iOS features built into the iPad. From being able to list how much tread depth is on the tyres, what the serial number of the tractor is, it’s all captured via FileMaker Go on the iPad.
And once all the details are captured and the consultant is back in 3G/Wifi coverage they are able to wrap this all up into a nice PDF and automatically email it off to the required people.
This solution is now being used out in the field and early results around increased productivity are really positive