Solutions for Operative Use
Portalify products are used for solving a wide variety of needs our customers are facing. The following is a sample of the solutions Portalify products can be used for:
The Cast
Ken is a member of control room staff, responsible for distributing customer cases to field teams and coordinating the teams so that all
customers get the level of service they require.
Ken has a web browser based access to services that Portalify Data Messaging Server provides.
Bob is a field team leader, working from his car and leading a team of several field workers.
During the day, his team members change depending on the type of cases the team is solving.
Bob and his team are running Portalify Secure Client in their vehicle PCs and mobile handsets.
Matt is a field worker, solving issues at customer sites. Like Bob, he has Portalify Secure Client in his mobile handset as well as in his vehicle PC and/or PDA.
Mobile Information Access Increases Productivity
Working on the field, Matt needs more information regarding the issue he is resolving. He takes out his mobile handset and opens Portalify Secure Client. On the front page he has a list of services that he uses the most, ensuring that he gets to point immediately.
Selecting the multi-source information query, Matt types in the search term and hits "Go". In a few seconds, he receives the right and relevant information retrieved, combined and digested from multiple enterprise systems and databases. Happy with the results, Matt is ready to continue his work.
Before Matt had Portalify Secure Client, he needed to call a colleague in the office to search the information for him. Matt's colleague would manually search different databases and systems, speaking the results back to Matt.
This was a slow and error-prone process, occupying two persons.
Often important information was omitted because the search was not complete, or due to the fact that Matt could not get through to his colleague when he needed information.
- Time Savings – Information available immediately, compared to minutes of phone conversation
- Cost Savings – Office staff freed from supportive routine duties to high-value work
- Availability – Service always accessible; no waiting is required
- Service Quality – Exact information reduces errors raising from miscommunication or partial information. Portalify DMS prevents information overflow
Mobile Reporting Eliminates Unnecessary Office Work
Having completed his work, Matt reports the case details with his PDA or vehicle PC using Portalify Secure Client, and prints a receipt for the customer.
Portalify DMS updates all information immediately into the backend systems, providing Matt's manager real-time follow-up on the operations, while Matt is ready to go directly to the next customer.
In the old days Matt was required to take notes and drive to the office at the end of each day to complete reporting for all of his cases.
This time was away from his productive field work, and also increased travel costs unnecessarily, while Matt's manager never had an up-to-date view of the operations.
For Matt, the system completely eliminates the double reporting work he previously had to do at the office.
- Time Savings – Field personnel can complete more tasks per day
- Cost Savings – Unnecessary double work at the office and travel time removed
- Service Quality – Follow-up on work progress is in real-time
Group Messaging Frees Managers to Focus on the Essential
All communication to, from and between field workers flows through Portalify DMS messaging groups, which route the messages to the team members,
regardless of the network or the communication channel via which they are currently reachable.
Group messaging saves time and ensures that Ken, Bob and his team can communicate easily, without knowing if their team members are using TETRA, GSM, or office PC.
Ken and Bob can temporarily add customer personnel to the messaging groups, even if they only have standard GSM phones.
Sending routine information as group data messages instead of voice calms down the points of command on the field and in the office,
enabling the managers to direct their attention on the most important cases.
Before Portalify DMS, Ken, Bob, and the team used one to one and one to all voice calls and text messages.
They proved to be slow in conveying routine task information to and receiving acknowledement from the field.
People were not always reachable due to primary communication device breakdowns or to using different communication channels.
This meant that the points of command (Ken and Bob!) were exhausted with routine tasks when they should have been focusing on the few critical ones.
- Time Savings – Group messaging saves time compared to voice
- Availability – Information always delivered
- Service Quality – Staff can focus on the essential
Alerting Distributed Operations
Ken receives an urgent call from a customer, requiring immediate action.
He types a short alert into Portalify DMS, and sends it to multiple field and backup teams at a single click.
Portalify DMS routes the alert to the field team members, who receive it instantly on their TETRA handsets, GSM phones, and office PC desktops.
For each staff member, it takes less than one second to acknowledge the alert, confirming that they have read and understood the message.
Portalify DMS provides Ken with real-time information on who have received the message, and who have acknowdledged it.
Prior to Portalify DMS, Ken was required to make calls, send text messages, and use applications to alert the necessary staff members who were using different communication systems.
This required him to get trained on all the systems regularly.
Working through the alerting process one system at the time took Ken some time to complete, which limited the response time his organization could offer and increased the risk of errors.
- Time Savings – Fast way to deliver alerts and notifications and monitor acknowledgements
- Efficiency – Integrates all communication into a seamless matrix, reaching people with different communication systems
- Cost Savings – One system is enough, no need to train for and maintain several systems
Increase Situational Awareness for Better Field Force Management
As Ken assigns a new task to a field team, Portalify DMS automatically creates a messaging group for the task, adds team members to the group,
and sends the task assignment to the field team.
Automating routine dispatching calms down the points of command, freeing Ken to focus on high priority cases or to accept new cases.
On the field workers' mobile handsets Portalify Secure Client receives the task information and alarms the users, displaying the task details.
Both Bob and Matt accept the task by pressing a button, and Portalify DMS routes the acknowledgements back to Ken's workstation.
The entire process is completed in seconds, improving field force management.
Bob and his team use Portalify Secure Client to report their status to the control room.
Portalify DMS routes the status messages to different control room and backend systems and to specified field managers,
ensuring that everyone knows what the teams and the individual team members are up to currently.
Increased situational awareness allows management to better lead the operations, reducing response time and improving service quality.
Without Portalify DMS or Poralify Secure Client, Ken had to call Bob and Matt for assigning tasks and sending information to them.
This took time, and spelling mistakes were not rare in standard information like destination addresses.
Most laborous, however, was maintaining an overall picture of what is going on, as it required constant talking with the field operatives to gather information on the current situation, and then entering that information into control centre systems.
This formed a physical limitation to Ken's, Bob's, and their colleagues' capacity to handle new tasks, which directly added to the running costs of the operations.
- Productivity – A dispatcher can handle more cases
- Efficiency – High situation awareness allows field teams to operate intelligently
- Service Quality – Improved management reduces response time and improves service quality
Location Services Improve Service Quality and Response Time
The field team members and vehicles are equipped with GPS enabled mobile terminals.
Portalify DMS allows Ken and Bob to locate individual team members and patrols, enabling status reports from and communication to all units on a given geographical area.
With Portalify location services, Ken and Bob are able to assign tasks more intelligently to the persons who are best placed to take up the new tasks.
Further, Portalify DMS can notify Ken if response time on some areas would risk being too low due to assigning teams to other places,
so that he can direct more backup teams to these potentially vulnerable areas.
Prior to Portalify DMS, Ken and Bob were required to periodically call each team member to know where they were.
This was a slow process, and never provided accurate information in fast-moving situations.
However, it did require constant communication that overloaded Ken and Bob with routine tasks, distracting them from the most important issues.
- Cost Savings – Distribute tasks optimally
- Service Quality – Intelligent services help ensure service levels
- Productivity – Improve situation awareness for better decision making
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