A basement waterproofing company increased accuracy and efficiency by sychronizing information among office, mobile sales force and customers.
Problem: Time and energy was wasted as call center reps took information and made appointments with customers and entered information into a database. They printed out each appointment page and faxed it to salesmen working from their homes.
Salesmen met with customers and added information, calculated cost, gave a copy of the worksheet to the customer and mailed the original to the office. Office staff entered this additional information into the office database, from which billing and scheduling was initiated.
I designed a database program that automated the process. It had a desktop conduit for the office and a Palm Pilot for the salesmen. Each morning the salesmen synchronized their Palm with the office desktop. This updated their calendars with all customer information.
At the customer site, salesmen add information, used the built-in database and calculator, digital signature and credit card features, then printed the contract for the customer using a mobile printer. In the evening orders were automatically synced with the main database at the office.
