Our Hands-On review series returns as we continue to evaluate the best mobile technology designed with the field service engineer in mind. In the first review of 2021, we’ve got our hands on Getac's ZX70

When it comes to rugged mobile computing, Getac is a brand name that is one of the first that comes to mind. They have a reputation for developing and producing devices that can meet the rigours of day-to-day use in field service environments while also packing the processing power needed to allow field service technicians and engineers to get through the increasing number of digital operations of the average field-based workflow.

In short, Getac devices have a strong reputation in the field service sector and it is one that is well deserved. 

With this in mind we were keen to get our hands on their compact yet powerful Android tablet the ZX70 and put it through its paces...

What the manufacturers say:

The ZX70 7” fully rugged Android™ tablet is just the right size with a thin and light, ergonomic design that’s easy to hold in one hand, making it the ideal solution for improved mobile productivity. The ZX70 provides the best battery run time performance in its class for mission-critical field operations. Rugged to the core, the ZX70’s design is optimised for a wide variety of configurable features and no-compromise ruggedness.

First impressions:

The days of rugged tablets being cumbersome devices that looked a million miles away from their consumer-focused cousins are long behind us. The modern rugged device while being reassuringly robust in the hand, has become a much more elegant form factor. When it comes to first impressions the ZX70 hits the mark comfortably. It has a sleek profile while instantly coming across as device that can survive the bumps and drops of a life on the road. 

While it is not the lightest of rugged tablets in smaller screen form factor weighing in at 780g, in the hand it doesn't feel too heavy at all and if anything the weight and general feel of the device instantly offers reassurance that this is a device that is fit for purpose and will be perfectly at home in a field service engineers toolkit. Indeed, the bold yellow trim just further adds to the sense that the ZX70 is exactly what it is supposed to be - a tool for use in the field. 

Having charged the device for the full rigours of a day's testing it booted up quickly with the familiar welcome screen any Android user will recognise and we were good to go with our hands on test. So how did it perform? 

Processing power & memory:

For a tablet of this size in the rugged world, the ZX70 boasts some seriously impressive power. With a Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 660, Octa-core 1.95 GHz, burst up to 2.2 GHz the ZX70 on paper at least offers a bit more bite under the bonnet than Panasonic's Toughbook L1 while sitting in a familiar territory to  Janam's impressive HT-1 - both of which are reasonable devices for comparison in terms of form factor and size. Sitting alongside the octa-core processor is a fairly mid-range but perfectly acceptable Qualcomm Adreno 506 GPU. 

It comes with a 4GB RAM which again is pretty much par for the course for a device in this category and it has a 64GB internal memory that can be expanded by microSD. 

In terms of actual performance, the ZX70 coped absolutely fine with all of our baseline test apps and which are designed to factor into account the most regular tasks a field service engineer is likely to undertake in their day-to-day work-flow. At no point during the testing did CPU usage get anywhere close to maxing out. In fact, we can go as far to say that the ZX70 would almost certainly be able to handle any software requirements that would be asked of a 7" Android tablet being used in the vast majority of field service operations. 

Operating system:

The ZX70 runs on Android 9 which offers a good compromise of bringing the benefits of well tested OS that means it is enterprise secure, while being modern enough to bring some of the advances of recent OS upgrades. In fact, there were a number of features in Android 9 that actually made it a very good option for field service operations. Perhaps the most important of these is the adaptive battery feature.

Devices that are fit-for-purpose in the field need to be able to last the often long hours of a field service engineer and Android 9's adaptive battery feature is an excellent introduction to push battery life further. This alongside the adaptive screen brightness also introduced in this version of the Google OS can have a big impact - particularly when we consider that the additional screen brightness of enterprise devices can be a major factor in battery life. 

Another benefit of Android 9 when it comes to a device that is designed for work is the App actions feature. Essentially the device can learn routines and surface apps easier according to what is needed when it is needed, e.g placing that mobile workforce management app to hand just when a field service engineer is starting their day. 

The other advantage of Android is of course it's familiarity. This shouldn't be overlooked when selecting a new device for your field service engineers. Familiarity can bring massive benefit when it comes to ensuring smooth adoption amongst your field technicians and engineers. 

The Ins & Outs:

As with many rugged tablets the ZX70 doesn't have a huge array of in/out options but ultimately this is something that is hard to avoid when selecting a tablet of this size that is fully protected against dust and water ingress to the level the ZX70 is.

So what does the ZX70 have? .Well there are two USB ports. There is a full size USB port as well as a micro USB port. These are USB 2.0 so not the fastest available for data transfer although perfectly acceptable for periphery devices such as portable keyboard, which one would imagine would be their primary use. Perhaps the most important inclusion is the POGO connecter at the bottom of the device which allows for vehicle docking and really is an essential requirement when it comes to suitability for the field. 

The ZX70 also comes with an optional barcode reader/and or contactless RFID/NFC reader as well. These options can be massive time savers if your engineer or technicians have a lot of parts moving through their van every day. The ZX70 also has two programmable keys which could be used in conjunction with these inputs to make scanning parts fairly effortless which will of course help with keeping visibility on van inventory. 

Perhaps the biggest omission is the lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack. This could in certain environments be hugely important, especially as remote support or engineer to engineer communication is becoming increasingly common. This has of course, increased since the prevalence of remote assistance in our sector since the challenges of the pandemic.  While there were able to conduct video calls during our tests the speakers would struggle in a noisy environment and while bluetooth headphones are an alternative, this introduces an additional drain on battery life. 

Talking of video calls, the ZX70 has two cameras, front and rear. The front camera is an 8MP webcam which is fantastic for this level of device and images on video calls we ran were crystal clear. The front camera is 12MP which is a bit more in line with industry standard but is still an excellent spec for such a device and this level of definition is particularly useful for both documenting work and also remote-assistance based calls. 

Finally, when it comes to physical input of data the ZX70 has a multi-touch capacitor screen and comes with a capacitor stylus. We found the stylus to be well weighted and it perfectly responsive and would be great for collecting signature on job completion. 

Connectivity:

When it comes to connectivity the ZX70 supports the newer 802.11ac wifi protocol. While being backwards compatible with older wifi networks the newer 'AC' wifi protocol only operates on the 5Ghz bandwidth. This allows for greater speeds with less interference,( the older 2.4Ghz bandwidth is very congested). The reality is that almost all WiFi is now delivered across both bandwidths but this is still a consideration to take into account, particularly if your field service engineers are working in more remote facilities where perhaps the necessity for a 5Ghz network hasn't reached your client base. Even in such situations however, the ZX70 supports 4G LTE mobile broadband as an optional specification. Running the device across multiple networks including wifi and LTE we found that it was able to consistently support fast internet relevant to signal strength available.

As mentioned in the above section the I/O on the device are somewhat limited so Bluetooth specification is important. Getac obviously understood this and have included  Bluetooth 5.0 in the ZX60. Bluetooth 5.0 uses less power and has greater range than previous versions and it is important to note that the majority of similar devices in this form factor and at a similar price range are still offering Bluetooth 4.1 so this does give the ZX70 an distinct advantage in this area. 

Ruggedity:

As we mentioned in the opening of this review the ZX70 feels reassuringly robust in the hand. It's rubberised casing looks and feels like something designed to meet the rigours of life in an industrial environment. Certainly it's rugged specifications live up to this initial impression as well. 

The ZX70 is certified to the newer MIL-STD 810H standard which is a 2019 revision of the better known MIL-STD810G and is the new gold standard for rugged devices. It is also important to note that the device is certified at this standard, rather than just tested or designed to. While these terms may often appear to be synonymous, they are not and it is only devices certified to this standard that are guaranteed to meet all of the stringent criteria of this military grade testing. The ZX70 sits proudly in that category. 

The device is also IP67 rated. This means that it is in essence impervious to both dust and water ingress. From a dust perspective it is perfectly sealed. From a water perspective, it is capable of being submerged in shallow water (up to a metre) for 30 minutes at a time. This makes the ZX70 suitable for almost every possible field service environment. 

The display is a LumiBond® display with Getac sunlight readable technology which is also an important factor when it comes to use in field service sectors as this makes it useable bright outdoor environments. 

Finally, the ZX70 is tested to six feet drop tests and also is vibration tested and has operational -21°C to 60°C. In our testing which includes heating and cooling the device, as well as multiple angle drop tests in accordance with the manufacturers claims the ZX70 was absolutely fine and continued to perform at optimal levels at all times. 

Battery Life:

In terms of battery life, the ZX70 comes with a Li-Ion battery (3.8V, typical 8480mAh; min. 8220mAh)

After an 8 hour day of reasonable to heavy usage the battery was at 19% so the device should be capable of seeing out most field service engineers working days, especially if the device is placed in an in-vehicle charging cradle in between jobs. 

Conclusion:

We like this device. It looks and feels like exactly what it is, a durable tool that can empower the field service engineer. It is certainly capable of coping with the tougher pressure of a life in the field and its super bright display could means it would be as comfortable in an outdoor environment as it would be on a factory floor. Performance wise there is very little to complain about either and it coped admirably with all of the tests we put it through. 

The only one drawback is the lack of a headphone jack which could be useful for remote assistance calls in a noisy environment. However this is somewhat mitigated by the introduction of bluetooth 5.0 which offers low-power headphone usage. 

All in all though the ZX70 is an excellent devices that sits comfortably amongst the best options available within rugged devices in this form factor and also this price range. 

For more information visit Getac  https://www.getac.com/en/products/tablets/zx70/

In this new article, Sam Klaidman, Founder and Principal Adviser at Middlesex Consulting, discusses how service leaders should make decisions based on data and research, rather than opinions...

According to Clayton Christenson, the late Harvard University Professor and strategy expert, “To find the biggest opportunities in the world, seek out the world’s biggest problems.” This is wonderful advice if your goal is to win a Nobel Peace Prize, but what if you are a senior executive in a business trying to survive? What to do? Substitute “Your Market” for “World.”

“To find the biggest opportunities in your market, seek out your market’s biggest problems.”

This is true if you are responsible for growing your company or your service business. The problems are the same but the resources available to help solve the problem at the business level are much greater than the resources at your disposal in the service business. This resource limitation frequently causes service leaders to make their plans based on opinions, not actual research. The outcomes are usually disappointing. The formal name of the solution process is Evidence Based Problem Solving.

THE BUDGET

Annually, most service leaders are asked to prepare a budget including a revenue and profit projection. These two commitments are then rolled into the next higher level’s budget. At that time, either the budget is accepted or more likely, the higher-level executives will come back with a comment like “We need an additional 10% on both revenue and profit” or “How much more can you deliver next year?” The only way to answer these questions is by having actual evidence to back up your projections. And when you finally settle on the new budget, you will first have to convince your team that you knew what you were doing when you submitted the budget and second, that you have an actual plan on how to deliver on your projection.

The implementation of your decision will require some service marketing. For example:

• Evaluate the profitability of all your services
• Create and price new services
• Update and reprice existing services
• Grow the number of people purchasing your services
• Align your branding with the corporate image
• Other things that effect your customers

EVIDENCE BASED PROBLEM SOLVING

This simple drawing shows the four steps that IMPORTANT customer impacting service decisions should follow to minimize the likelihood of having the outcome fail to meet expectations:

When trying to solve your important problems, following these four steps will not guarantee success, but not following these steps make it highly likely that you will miss the real opportunity.

Step 1: Brainstorm to define growth objectives

Defining your growth objectives seems easy – just accept your boss’ target. But doing this will be a big mistake because:

• The target may be unreachable within the time or operating budget set.
• The target may be to low and achieving it would leave money on the table.
• Your original proposal may have been spot on, but you were not able to defend it because it had been a guess and not backed by facts.
• Over time, every business tends to become less effective. You should use this opportunity to evaluate all your assumptions and make appropriate changes.
• Your operating environment may have changed. You need to update your plans to account for current situations.
• It is likely that your business experienced significant staff changes because of COVID-19. Some people retired, some may have been made redundant, others joined but were not fully on-boarded into the organization. They may not be the right people for the long-term or they may have undiscovered skills which will influence your plans.

The first thing you must do is identify any and all useful data. Some of it will come from your financial, CRM, and service management systems. Other data will come from external sources like industry projections, management articles and books, webinars, and discussions with thought leaders in your network.

Data collection should be an ongoing activity. Data from internal systems are usually reviewed daily, weekly, or monthly and reviewed to identify areas that are doing well or need help. The external data is a different story. The members of the service management team at all levels should be assigned one or more sources to follow and create and circulate summaries of useful content. Some of these summaries may result in group discussions and actions leading to operational or strategic changes. Be sure to give full credit to the people participating in these activities and take their actions into consideration when evaluating promotion candidates.

In the “crazy busy” world of field services, the organization can benefit from a periodic ½ day to multiple day meeting to just go off the grid and focus on continuous improvement. This is a fantastic way to prepare up-and-comers for future positions while getting their unique insights on your business.

There are two desired outcomes from this brainstorming - actions:

1. A set of growth targets for the coming year or two that everyone believes is attainable with a little stretch.
2. A list of potential ways to achieve these targets.

At the end of step 1, you will have gone from data to insight to action!

Step 2: Internal audit to find growth capabilities

Remember that step 1 was all about brainstorming to identify your 1 to 3-year targets and to create a list of potential ways to achieve these targets. In step 2, we begin to expand our list of potential services we created in step 1, understand the resources we have available to grow the business, and identify some of the underutilized resources in the organization.

There are two desired outcomes from this stage:

1. A prioritized list of all the possible ways the organization can grow revenue and profit. This list must include:
   1. A brief description of the offer
   2. Your best quantified guess (a range) of the contribution to achieving your target
   3. The advantages and disadvantages of each from both the customer’s and business perspective
   4. The key resources which will significantly increase over current conditions
   5. The resources that will be needed and are not currently available at all
   6. The resources which currently are used and will no longer be needed at all
2. A list of the underutilized resources in the organization including people, parts, equipment, space, etc. These will be candidates for redeployment or removal as the organization changes.

At this point, no decisions have been made about the way forward. You only have a list of potential offers and constraints. You still must interact with customers and find out how likely they are to purchase them if made available.

Step 2 can be done using internal resources only although a facilitator (either internal or external to your company) may be helpful if your team hasn’t done many of these activities.

Step 3 - Market research to discover growth opportunities

Step 3 will have the most impact on your evaluation since this is when your customers get to tell you what they want and don’t want and how much they are willing to pay for any novel offers you are thinking about. They will tell you their biggest problems, how much they are willing to pay you to solve them, and if they have enough confidence in your business to trust you and buy your new services.

This step is best done by an outside resource who understands the service business and will not bias or spin any findings or opinions. You need honest insights if your decisions are to turn into positive outcomes.

These are the steps most likely to be used to arrive at an understanding of what your customers want and need and are willing to pay for:

• Segment products and services in your normal way and then decide on which segment(s) to concentrate on initially. This could be product, geography, application, type of user, etc.
• Prepare to interview at least 15 customers in each segment.
• Develop questionnaire including the importance of every proposed offering or modification and other relevant information about how the customer feels about their relationship with your service business.
• Randomly select enough contacts to ensure being able to complete the agreed number of interviews.
• Telephonically interview the agree number of customers in each segment.
• Prepare recommendations and findings:
  • Importance of each proposed offering or modification
  • Contract elements for one or more levels or types of contract
  • Value proposition(s)
  • Acceptable price range
  • Recommendations for initial and long-term metric deployment
  • Ideas for a sales strategy
  • Other information learned from discussions

A project like this for one product and one segment in one geographical area can easily yield 2500 unique data points plus numerous comments. Compare this to the opinions of one or a few internal people and you see why this article is titled “Make Decisions Based on Data, Not Opinions.” And why your plans and commitments will carry enough weight that it will be difficult for anyone to challenge your decisions.

Step 4 - Service marketing to commercialize best opportunities

Recently I was thinking about the differences between a product and a service. One of the differences that nobody mentions is “There is no Kickstarter for services." I know that Kickstarter is for startup companies and rarely B2B, but the point is that companies can Beta test hardware products (including software), but how do we try out our services on our captive audience? The only way is through Step 3.

After we review the recommendations from the interviews, we are ready to choose one or more new offerings. Now we have to GTM (Go To Market). Here are the steps in their approximate order:

• Get buy-in from the C-suite. Sales, Marketing, and Finance are probably the most important support you will need although HR and Manufacturing may have a strong say depending on what you propose.
• Training will be critical to the success of your plans. People you must train include:
  • Your team.
  • Marketing to modify the standard quote forms and update the website to include your new stuff. You may need some dedicated advertising and an appearance at your industries upcoming real or virtual trade shows. This is your opportunity to boost your sales so do not look at this as a chore.
  • Sales needs training on how to sell what you will offer and probably would like a slide deck to use when presenting the service package to a new prospect.
  • In Finance, the Accounts Receivables team should receive an introduction to your new services so they can talk knowledgeably while collecting overdue payments.
  • If some of your service is delivered by the channel, then they the same training as the Sales team.
  • Customer experience, wherever they report, should be asked to do follow-up surveys or interviews on some of the early users of your new services.
• You can now start selling your new products. And make sure the CX group is surveying all early customers. Any negative feedback must be promptly followed-up by a senior service executive. And lessons learned should be quickly incorporated in your offerings and messaging.
• Repeat.

CONCLUSION

This whole effort deserves the same attention as the launch of a new physical product. If you have done everything well, the impact will certainly be the same in both cases. After all, new services are new products. Give then the same chance of succeeding as the product side of the business does.

Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more exclusive FSN articles by Sam Klaidman @ www.fieldservicenews.com/sam-klaidman
• Connect to Sam Klaidman @ www.linkedin.com/samklaidman
• Find out more about Middlesex Consulting @ www.middlesexconsulting.com
• Read more from Sam Klaidman @ middlesexconsulting.com/blog

Jim Baston, President of BBA Consulting Group, continues his series on “supercharging” revenue generation through the field service team. In this third blog he looks at defining the steps to ensure that the proactive efforts of your field service team will be successful.

In my last blog, I spoke about how the success of our field team’s business development efforts will be dependent upon whether they accept that their proactive efforts are part of their service role and whether the customer sees value in their recommendations. We can do this when we take a service perspective. How? Treat revenue generation as the valuable service that it is and engage our technicians in the proactive promotion of our services in a manner that we would be proud to tell our customers about. Then, support our techs’ efforts as we would any other service that we offer.

Let’s look at this a little more closely. Imagine you are about to add a new service to your portfolio and you want to take steps to ensure it’s successful. For the purpose of this exercise, we’ll call the new service “Super Service”. The service you are about to add has the following characteristics:

• It complements existing services (does not replace any of the services you are currently providing)
• It’s a new concept – the customer needs to be educated on the value
• Some new knowledge and skills are required but your existing technicians can perform the service – no additional staffing required
• Existing tools and test equipment can be used – no significant capital equipment needed
• It has the potential to be highly profitable – efficiency in delivery is critical
• You must rely on another division within your organization to deliver a small part of the service
• Super Service has the potential to be a game changer

The question is: What specific steps will you take to ensure the success of this new service?

Take a few minutes to write down what steps you’ll take to launch this service successfully. Don’t worry about completeness of this list for now. We’ll come back to this list later. We only want you to start generating ideas about the steps you would include.

To successfully launch this new service, here is a list of possible steps we could take:

1. Define the service
2. Support the initiative
3. Get buy-in from supporting divisions
4. Talk the walk
5. Tell our customers
6. Maintain focus

Now, look at the description of Super Service once more. Notice that the Super Service described also applies to the actions of business promotion by our field service team. Through their recommendations for example, the their efforts can complement our existing services. Their actions will require explanation to our customers so that they understand the motive behind, and the value in, their efforts. Although some new knowledge and skills may be needed by the techs, no additional staffing will be required. In addition, there will be no need for any significant capital increases and the results of their efforts can be highly profitable. Finally, our field team’s promotion of products and services can be a game changer if we can help our customers see how they’ll be better off for those recommendations.

So, we can supercharge our techs’ revenue generation by treating their efforts as the valuable service that they are. This means identifying those things that we must do well in order to successfully encourage and support their efforts.

Our next step is to determine and apply the specific actions we’ll take. Using the list above, my next blog will look at some examples of actions we can take. Please note that the actions that we identify may not necessarily be the actions that you, in your specific situation will take. It’s the approach that is important here, so simply apply the same approach used here to your list.

Reflection

Go back the list of steps that you have created that will ensure that the proactive efforts of your field service team will be successful. Is the list complete? What’s missing? Rework the list until you assured that those steps cover all that is necessary for your success.

Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more exclusive articles by Jim Baston @ www.fieldservicenews.com/jim-baston
• Connect with Jim Baston on LinkedIn @ linkedin.com/jimbaston
• Learn more about Jim Baston and BBA Consulting Group @ jimbaston.com
• Connect with Jim Baston directly by email @ jim@jimbaston.com

In this final excerpt from a recent white paper published by Esri UK, now available at Field Service News, we look further at the importance of location intelligence and discuss how organisations can achieve optimised field operations.

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Last week, we looked at how Esri's ArcGIS platform can help companies in challenging situations, such as containing the spread of a plant disease and saving lives in humanitarian disasters. Today we look at two further case studies highlighting the importance of location intelligence and discuss how organisations can achieve optimised field operations

SUPPORTING DIVERSE AND VULNERABLE COMMUNITIES

With its diverse and varied population, Oxfordshire County Council aims to provide excellent services to all its residents while promoting equality and ensuring fairness.

The Challenge

Oxfordshire County Council’s GIS (Geographic Information Systems) team has an extremely broad brief to provide ICT support across the organisation, including Oxfordshire County Council’s Fire Rescue Service. This small team assesses requirements and requests, gathers business analysis and provides user support while building interactive dashboards and web and mobile apps for internal and external use.

The Solution

Under its Enterprise Licence Agreement, Oxfordshire County Council has been using Esri’s ArcGIS platform exclusively since 2017 as its corporate GIS infrastructure. This has enabled the GIS team to build out a greater number of requirements, more quickly and efficiently, and help transform service delivery.

In March 2019 the Safe and Well service went digital. Workforce for ArcGIS was used to coordinate and allocate daily visits before crews left their stations and questionnaires incorporating broader health messages from the public health team were built using Survey123 for ArcGIS. The electronic forms were filled in onsite at residents’ homes and when there was no signal or internet available, users could carry on working and save a copy of the form on their mobile device. When the devices were next connected, completed surveys were synced directly back to the database in the office so colleagues could see which assessments had been undertaken, and the data visible on a central management dashboard.

The Benefits

Supporting diversity

The redesigned service demonstrates Oxfordshire County Council’s responsibility as a Stonewall Diversity Champion, committed to sexual orientation and gender identify equality. In its second year of inclusion the Council now ranks at 127 (out of 503 organisations) in the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index, compared to its previous ranking at 220 out of 445.

Secure data collection

Users can confidently collect anonymous data, securely, enabling the Council to collect vital information which ensures that the service it provides residents is inclusive to those of all identities and orientations, as well as help the organisation climb the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index.

Saving time

The use of ArcGIS apps has significantly enhanced the efficiency of reporting in the field as well as back in the office. Firefighters making home visits report that the quality of their visits and range of services offered has improved, and they feel more confident and competent in carrying out their work. The administration process has also been streamlined as admin staff no longer have to input data collected from paper-based surveys, reducing the potential for human error.

OPTIMISING THE ROLE OF 60,000 VOLUNTEERS

Volunteers play an invaluable role in helping the National Trust to protect and care for the nation’s cultural heritage and natural landscapes. The not-for-profit organisation is now embracing crowdsourcing and is using ArcGIS in a series of ground-breaking pilot projects that will enable more people to get involved and make a valuable contribution to its conservation work.

The Challenge

The National Trust has over 60,000 volunteers who play a vital role in helping the charity to manage 250,000 hectares of land, 778 miles of coastline, 80,000 archaeological features and 28,000 buildings. The organisation wanted to optimise the role played by this enthusiastic group and find a way to engage even more people in its activities. At the same time, it wanted to show its volunteers the value of their contribution and help them to feel more involved in conservation projects

The Solution

The National Trust is now pioneering new ways to engage with volunteers using Esri’s ArcGIS platform. In a series of pilot projects, the organisation is beginning to use ArcGIS mobile solutions, including Collector for ArcGIS and Survey123 for ArcGIS, to allow volunteers to upload information from their smartphones and tablets to a central portal. Called ArcGIS Hub Premium, this portal provides secure, authenticated identity for huge numbers of volunteers, which allows them to see the data they have collected, in the context of the wider project. Volunteers can therefore appreciate what they have done and the value of their contribution to the National Trust’s conservation schemes.

In the first of the National Trust’s pilot solutions, volunteers in the Peak District are gathering data on the condition of archaeological features on National Trust land, including barrows, ruins and ancient quarries. They are then uploading and sharing this data via ArcGIS Hub Premium, helping the National Trust to build up a clearer picture of the condition of ancient sites that are rarely visited but are nonetheless important to the history of the nation.

The Benefits

Well-informed decision about conservation and maintenance

Over time, the use of the new ArcGIS volunteering apps will enable the National Trust to collect a larger quantity of high quality data, which it can use to support its decision making. In particular, the organisation anticipates that volunteers will be able to help it build up a far more comprehensive picture of the condition of assets and habitats, such as signs and ponds. It can then use this information to see where it should prioritise its conservation activities and how best to plan effective, proactive maintenance programmes.

More successful conservation projects

Although it is still early days, the National Trust already recognises that ArcGIS Hub Premium is a highly effective tool for improving collaboration with large numbers of volunteers and partners. In initiatives such as the Riverlands project near Manchester, the organisation expects ArcGIS Hub Premium to play a pivotal role in enabling large numbers of people to share data and work together. “It feels exciting,” Davies says. “Our pilots are putting crowdsourcing into practice and demonstrating how volunteering programmes can be managed more successfully in the future.”  

REALISING OPTIMISED FIELD OPERATIONS

A GIS enables the virtuous cycle of efficiency in field activities. Organisations use field operations apps to plan fieldwork based on geography and better coordinate job assignments. Field operations apps connect workers and activities in the field with the office. Real-time navigation tools reduce fuel consumption, save time, and improve customer satisfaction. Data collection apps capture accurate data in the field and feed it into the GIS to become part of the system of record. GIS monitors field activities and generates intuitive maps and dashboards. The GIS suite of focused field operations apps drives location intelligence that helps organisations make faster and better decisions.

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Further Reading:

Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
Find out more about Esri UK @ www.esriuk.com

Read more about Esri UK on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/esri
Follow Esri UK on LinkedIn @ linkedin.com/company/esri-uk
Follow Esri UK on Twitter @ twitter.com/esriuk