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Tips on mobilising your field staff

Posted by SmartTrade Techs on Friday, 31 March 2017 in Smart Tips

Tips for successfully mobilising your business

For a service business to remain competitive, mobilising is a question of when, not if. Fortunately it is largely common sense, and most businesses mobilise successfully without hiring consultants or writing a detailed change management plan. Some tips are:
Plan

Define your key business objectives. Simple, measurable goals such as increasing the % of time charged out or issuing invoices quicker are best. Identify possible concerns. Some users may be apprehensive, say clerical staff wondering if their hours will be cut. The table over the page lists possible concerns and responses. Do this early on, but keep it in balance – don’t doom the project by raising too many potential problems, focus on 2 or 3 obvious ones. Select suitable mobile devices (see the table over the page). The likelihood is that any device more than say 2 years old will be a problem; trying to save money by using under spec’d devices is false economy.
Define workflows
A mobile application is just a tool that can be used well or badly. Mobilising is an opportunity to streamline workflows, not just to reduce paperwork. Decide on a sensible workflow, but be open to suggestions on how to improve this as you gain experience.
Set expectations
Ensure your employees understand the goals, and consider having a policy, part of the employment agreement, covering the use of mobile devices, particularly if you intend to use GPS tracking. The privacy of employees has to be protected, particularly if the employee owns the mobile device. Attached is a sample agreement covering mobile devices. Ensure that employees understand that running multiple applications and downloading large non-work files will degrade performance, particularly on older devices. Most reported performance problems are due to users running applications such as movies or having a number of browser tabs open.
Involve and reward the users
Involving employees is important, but don’t lose sight of the key objectives and never surrender control of the change process. Hold regular feedback sessions; say weekly at first and then fortnightly. Acknowledge that there will be some hiccups and frustrations along the way. Deal with genuine issues promptly, but also highlight what has worked and celebrate successes!
A natural question is “What’s in it for me?” Be honest as it goes without saying that the main reason for mobilising is to improve performance and profits, but there are benefits for users as well (see below) Be firm with resistors and work out ways to get them on board. But if this proves impossible, consider replacing them. As the owner of a US business that mobilised recalled, “We lost a few foremen because of it, but honestly they were people who probably needed to go anyway. They left because they knew what was about to happen, and we’d see what they were doing during the day.”
Trial and then roll out in stages
Mobilising all field staff in one go sometimes works, but is risky if there is resistance. Identify one or two employees who are technology savvy and get them to trial the system. Once they have it working and the benefits are apparent, roll it out to the other employees.
Train
A few short training sessions help to get people up to speed quickly and to allay fears. Some employees will get to grips with the new system quickly. Others will take longer or struggle, so schedule training on a needs basis. The software provider should offer training materials, such as on-line videos, and some businesses develop in-house manuals detailing their preferred workflows. In practice few use these resources after an initial period, and it can be a burden to keep up them to date given the rapid evolution of software. The best answer is for the application to be user friendly and intuitive, with adequate help information built in, so that users quickly learn from on-the-job experience.

Tips for successfully mobilising your business

Employee concerns	Affects	Responses
Can I cope with this technology?	Older employees	Implement in easy to digest stages, such as starting with time sheets. Train, with the focus on non-embarrassing self-teach tools
I prefer the current processes and don’t want to change	All	Trial with supportive employees to prove the system Use team incentives
Slashing paperwork will reduce my hours or may even make me redundant	Office staff	Identify productive alternatives, such as a customer care call sprogram If hours are reduced, offer more flexibility
The real agenda is to make me work harder	Field staff	Share the productivity savings. Offer more work flexibility.
There goes my overtime	Field staff	The goal is to increase sales, not reduce hours.
I will miss the social interaction from coming into the office every day.	Field staff	Structure regular opportunities to socialise within work hours(say 2 hours every fortnight). Increasing utilisation by say 10% equates to at least 8 hours per fortnight). Keep employees connected via other means
It will be used to track my whereabouts and invade my privacy	Field staff	Stress how GPS tracking enhances customer service. Ensure employees understand the policy. Ensure employees owning devices can turn off GPS tracking. As a last resort, state the obvious: those who don’t abuse company time have nothing to worry about.
What’s in it for me?	All	Happy boss! More flexibility, less time spent travelling and in traffic jams Better information on the job, less reliance on the office. Enhanced customer service and fewer unhappy customers.
Employee concerns		Responses
How do I deal with an essential employee who refuses to mobilise?		Offer individual training. Try a buddy system. Start by using the mobile as a simple notification system (jobs and schedule) and then move to timesheet entry and then, the job data entry.

Device issues	Solution
Some users may struggle to read the small fonts on Smartphones, even with a high definition screen.	Depending on the application and the user, a tablet may be a better option.
Some smartphones and tablets keyboards have small keys that can’t be upsized, and the standard Android keyboard has a limitation on inserting a decimal point.	3rd party keyboards can be downloaded either free or for a few dollars (SmartTrade recommends SwiftKey).
Performance problems such as SmartTrade Mobile slow to load or appearing to freeze from time to time	Check whether the user has other applications running and if so, close them. If this doesn’t work, call our support team
Internet browsers behave differently, and some suit an application better than others.	Ask the application provider to recommend a browser (SmartTrade recommends Chrome for all devices).
Smartphones (tablets) are prone to being damaged	Protective cases are available, ranging from soft covers through to waterproof cases such as those sold by Otter and LifeProof.

Example of mobile device agreement (obtain advice from your lawyer)

Employer: _________________________________ (We, Us)
Employee: _________________________________ (You, Your)

Device(s) used by you in your job (“Devices”)

Owned by	Device type		Make and Model	Serial#	Ancillary items	Insured
 Us	 Laptop	 Tablet				 Yes
 You	 SmartPhone Other:					 No
 Us	 Laptop	 Tablet				 Yes
 You	 SmartPhone Other:					 No
 Us	 Laptop	 Tablet				 Yes
 You	 SmartPhone Other:					 No

Mobile connection
Telco	 Vodafone	 Telstra	 Optus	 Virgin	 Spark	 2Degrees	Other: ___________________
Plan:____________________			which includes		 Voice/TXT	 Mobile data	(Mb/Gb/month)
Cost of plan met by			 Us	 You	 Shared ___________________

1. We may:

For reasonable business purposes monitor email, messaging systems and data on Devices.
GPS track Devices during work hours.

2. You consent to us monitoring email, messaging systems and data on Devices.

3. You must in respect of each Device, depending on whether or not we own it:

		We own it
		Yes	No
a.	Take good care of it, and advise us immediately if it is damaged, lost, or stolen	✔
b.	Not use it during work hours for personal purposes, other than answering incoming calls and making emergency calls	✔
c.	Not without our written consent make personal use of any data plan paid for by us.	✔	✔
d.	Not disable GPS tracking of it during work hours.	✔	✔
e.	Only load data essential to your job.	✔	✔
f.	Not load pirated software or illegal content, nor hack the operating system.	✔
g.	Keep it password protected and ensure that we have the current password at all times.	✔	✔
h.	Report any suspected unauthorized access to our data.	✔	✔
i.	Keep it up-to-date with approved patches and upgrades	✔	✔
j.	Return it to us immediately on ceasing employment with us.	✔
k.	Delete all our data residing on it immediately on ceasing employment with us.		✔
l.	Not use it when driving any of our vehicles.	✔	✔

4. This document forms part of your employment agreement with us

_______________________________ _______________________________

Signed by or on behalf of UsSigned by You

Date: __________________________Date: __________________________

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SmartSafe can help protect your business data from ransomware attacks

Posted by SmartTrade Techs on Friday, 31 March 2017 in Software Products and Updates

Ransomware - now the biggest cybersecurity threat! Make sure you have a solid backup strategy!!!

In previous newsletters we warned SmartTrade’s customers about ransomware hackers who infect the computer’s operating system with malware that locks the owner out from their files. The hackers then demand a hefty payment to unlock the system, often in bitcoins that are virtually impossible to trace.

Ransomware is constantly evolving making it increasingly difficult to protect against, some 2900 new ransomware modifications were reported between January and March of this year. Recently seen ransomware such as Petya not only lock down the files but also completely remove access to the hard drives and operating systems, basically imposing full system encryption. The ransomware may sit inactive for weeks before activating, that way it also infects all the backup copies.

Unfortunately, several more of our customers have been infected.

Currently the two most prevalent ransomware malware are CBT-Locker and Teslacrypt. The CBT-Locker screen message looks like this.

What can you do to minimise the risk of being infected by ransomware?

The obvious front-line protection strategy is up-to-date anti-virus protection. Because malware is built to circumvent anti-virus protection you also need an effective backup solution. It’s also very important to train your staff not to open email attachments unless they are totally confident about the source!

One of the mistakes some small business owners make is to do their backups to a different drive on their computer system, this gives you absolutely zero protection if ransomware locks you out of your system! It’s also of zero use if your computer is stolen or a fire or other catastrophe totally destroys the computer and/or hard drives. To be absolutely safe you need to store your backups on a completely different system in a different place, in the old day’s regular backups (retentions) were copied to disks or tapes and removed offsite.

These days if you don’t want the hassle of having to do backups yourself there’s plenty of “cloud” backup services available, a quick internet search will throw up a bunch of them.

SmartTrade offers our SmartSafe backup service, the entry level service costing $ 10 plus GST per month will meet the needs of most SmartTrade users. We’ve just negotiated a deal with the 3rd party hosting service which means the following enhancements to the SmartSafe service:

We’ve doubled the data cap at each price point. The new SmartSafe options are:

Retentions increase from 7 days to 30 days.

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How SmartForms can help NZ businesses comply with the Health and Safety at Work Act

Posted by SmartTrade Techs on Thursday, 30 March 2017 in News and Announcements

Major changes to New Zealand’s Health and Safety laws took effect on 4 April 2016!

ln this article we give a general introduction to the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 (HSWA) then focus on the following two aspects of the Act:

worker participation - Health and Safety Representatives (HSRs) and Health and Safety Committee (HSCs); and
the need to notify WorkSafe NZ prior to the commencement of particular hazardous works.

Seek advice!

We strongly recommend SmartTrade’s New Zealand customers visit the WorkSafe New Zealand site and get professional advice, to make sure they have an in-depth understanding of how the (HSWA) will affect their business.

An introduction to the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015

The Health and Safety at Work Act (HSWA) was enacted in August 2015 with most provisions of the Act taking effect on 4 April 2016. The new Act is based on the Australian Model Work Health and Safety Act.

The HSWA shifts the focus from monitoring and recording health and safety incidents to proactively identifying and managing risks. The primary duty of care is now on the business itself rather than the

employers or principals to ensure the health and safety of workers and others affected by the work it carries out. Key changes introduced by the new law include:

Introducing a new legal concept of a Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking (PCBU). A PCBU will usually be a business entity, such as a company, rather than an individual;
Imposing a new due diligence obligation on officers. Officers are directors and other people who make governance decisions that significantly affect a business;
Imposing a new duty to take “reasonably practicable steps”;
Including a new object of securing workers’ health and safety;
Promoting continual improvement and good practice, benchmarked on internationalstandards;
Implementing a presumption in favour of the highest level of protecting workers from harm;
Increasing the penalties for noncompliance.

The actions your business needs to take include:

Identifying health and safety hazards and risks, and taking steps to prevent these from happening;
Making sure health and safety in your business is led from the top, has involved and is understood by your staff, and is reviewed regularly;
Holding regular training on health and safety matters;
Engaging workers in health and safety matters that affect them;
Supporting all officers to get up to date with health and safety issues and key risk factors;
Reporting and monitoring health and safety goals;
Regularly reviewing any incidents;
Carrying out frequent health and safety audits.

A useful guide to the Act can be found at: http://www.business.govt.nz/worksafe/information-guidance/legal-framework/introduction-to-the-hsw-act-2015/introduction-to-the-hsw-act-2015.pdf

SmartForms, an excellent tool for managing workplace safety compliance in the field!

The ever increasing complexity of workplace safety and compliance requirements means more and more forms are needed to be completed and managed.
SmartTrade Mobile’s SmartForms feature enables businesses to complete workplace safety checklists on Android or IOS smart devices and store the resulting SmartForms in the cloud.
SmartForms can be emailed to your client, your clients can be setup to view their SmartForm results in the SmartGate online portal. SmartGate is a SmartTrade Ultimate feature, you need to have at least one SmartGate Ultimate licence to be able to use this feature.

For more information about SmartForms please contact our sales team.
Au 1800 350 495, NZ 0800 327 943 or email us at [email protected]

Worker Participation - Health and Safety Representatives (HSRs) and Health and Safety Committee (HSCs)

The Act requires businesses to engage with workers so they can contribute to health and safety on an ongoing basis, this is an absolute requirement so there’s no escaping it. To facilitate this outcome the Act introduces Health and Safety Representatives (HSRs) and Health and Safety Committee (HSCs).

One of the most asked question is do I need to organise the election of a Health and Safety Representative or setup a Health and safety Committee? The rules are:
All businesses with 20 or more workers, or who are in one of the high-risk sectors or industries listed in the Regulations, must:

arrange the election of HSRs if requested by a worker, and
consider whether existing worker participation practices are sufficiently effective and whether to set up an HSC if one is requested by an HSR or five or more workers.
Schedule 2 of the Act lists high-risk sectors or industries as:
Aquaculture
Forestry and logging
Fishing, hunting, and trapping
Coal mining
Food product manufacturing
Water supply, sewerage, and drainage services
Waste collection, treatment, and disposal services
Building construction
Heavy and civil engineering construction
Construction services

Accordingly, SmartTrade users working in any of the defined high-risk sectors, and those not in a high-risk sector but having 20 or more workers, will be obliged to elect HSRs or setup HSCs if requested to do so by workers. Many SmartTrade users will fall into the Building Construction and Construction services categories.

If a business asked by a worker to elect HSR(s) refuses to do so because it employs less than 20 workers and is not working in a defined high-risk sector it must give the worker written notice of its decision within reasonable time.

Notifying WorkSafe NZ of particular hazardous works

Businesses may not know that they’re legally required to notify WorkSafe NZ at least 24 hours prior to the commencement of a particular hazardous work.

Notifiable work is defined by the regulations as:

Any restricted work, as that term is defined in regulation 2(1) of the Health and Safety in Employment (Asbestos) Regulations 1998:
Any logging operation or tree-felling operation, being an operation that is undertaken for commercial purposes:
Any construction work of one or more of the following kinds:

a. Work where workers could fall five metres or more, excluding work on a two-storey house, or work on a power or telephone line, or work carried out from a ladder only, or maintenance or repair work of a minor or routine nature;

b. The erection or dismantling of scaffolds from which a person could fall five metres or more;

c. Every excavation more than 1.5m deep in which people are required to work and which is deeper than it is wide at the top;

d. Any form of tunnel or drive where workers work underground, irrespective of timbering or support;

e. Those excavations where the excavated face is steeper than one horizontal to two vertical;

f. Any construction work where explosives are used or stored;

g. Work such as diving, where construction workers breathe air or any other gas that has been compressed or is under pressure;

h. Lifts of half a tonne (500 kg) or more a vertical distance of 5 m or more carried out by use of a lifting appliance other than by a mobile crane, excavator or forklift.

Particular Hazardous Work Notification SmartForm available!

SmartTrade Mobile users wishing to complete Particular Hazardous Work notifications electronically and email these to WorkSafe NZ can purchase the applicable SmartForm for $ 95 plus GST. The price includes our customising the SmartForm with your company logo plus any minor modifications you want made, provided the modifications are advised to us within a month of us emailing you the SmartForm.

For more information about SmartForms please contact our sales team.
Au 1800 350 495, NZ 0800 327 943 or email us at [email protected]

Any restricted work, as that term is defined in regulation 2(1) of the Health and Safety in Employment (Asbestos) Regulations 1998:

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Voice recognition on ST Mobile

Posted by SmartTrade Techs on Thursday, 22 September 2016 in News and Announcements

Voice Recognition Dictation into SmartTrade Mobile
Dictate text into SmartTrade Mobile using the voice recognition feature on your smart device!

Most modern smart devices enable the user to enter text using a voice recognition.

Voice recognition dictation works with SmartTrade Mobile so give it a try, users will be amazed how much time can be saved dictating notes rather than having to type them in, a little practice and you will be a wiz! It even autocorrect possible spelling mistakes!

Voice Recognition - data use

Using the device’s native voice recognition will use data if your device is connected through the cellular network, the data is sent to the cloud to be processed and returned to the device. You will need 3G connectivity or higher
Wi-Fi usually gives you better results and means data isn’t being consumed on your phone account, data on your internet account is still being used, thereby avoiding using online data.
Instructions on how to do this are shown below. The app will take up space on your smart device and may affect performance.

Remember – not all smart devices are the same so you will need to check out your device’s capabilities!

Voice Recognition – how to use it

	On Android Devices(shown on a Samsung Galaxy S5) Using the native functionality: Tap in the field you want to insert text into [1] Tap on the microphone icon [2] Start dictating. Tap on the microphone icon to stop the dictation [2] Edit the message if needed. To download an offline app: Go to “Language and Input” in the Settings. Tap on "Download offline speech recognition" under the "Voice Search". Choose the language pack you want your Android device to recognize. Download the pack and start using the offline voice recognition functionality.

	To enable voice dictation – available on iPhone 6 and later devices! Go to Settings > General > Keyboard Scroll down to Dictation. If you own a supported device that is set to the right language, you should be able to download the offline dictation files from here. This will take a couple of minutes and take up some space on your device, which is why they recommend enabling it only if needed, and the available device storage space allows for it! You can use voice dictation even when you are not connected to internet!

Voice Recognition – tips (from the Apple website)

Talk into the microphone: You don’t need to speak very loudly; but you should keep your smart device close to your mouth, especially if you’re outdoors. On an iPhone are two microphones at the bottom, but only a single microphone on iPads, located at the top of the device. It’s not easy to speak directly into the iPad mic while looking at the screen. Speak into the tiny hole at the top of your tablet.

You’ll find dictation in noisy environments works much better with an iPhone, because it’s easier to speak close to the microphone. The iPhone also has a noise-cancelling mic, which filters out background noises. You might find that the Apple earbuds that come with an iPhone—which have an inline mic—offer better speech recognition, as do third-party headphones with mics, as long as you hold them fairly close to your mouth. The problem is Apple didn’t give the iPhone 7 an air phone jack.

Dictate when connected to Wi-Fi: Dictation to an iOS device requires that your voice be sent to a server, where it is recognized and transcribed, and then sent back to your iOS device. For this reason, dictating to an iOS device works best when you’re using Wi-Fi; it also works well with a 3G connection; but anything slower is hit or miss, in my experience.

Speak clearly: You don’t need to speak especially slowly, but speaking too quickly will lead to errors. The general idea is to talk like a newscaster: Enunciate, but don’t exaggerate.

Don’t say too much: Your voice has to be sent to a remote server, so keep your dictation segments under 30 seconds. (Longer than that might be too much for a 3G connection.)

Speak punctuation and symbols: To include punctuation in your dictation, you need to say “comma,” “period,” “hyphen,” and so on. Watch out for language differences. For instance, if you’re using British English, you need to say “full stop” instead of “period.”

You can say “new line” to dictate a return character, and “new paragraph” to add two returns. You say “apostrophe” for a possessive noun, such as “Jerry Garcia apostrophe S guitar,” for Jerry Garcia’s guitar.

You’ll also say things like “dollar sign,” “euro sign,” and “pound sterling sign” to get type the corresponding symbols.

When you want to capitalize a word, say “cap.” If you’re sending a message to someone about a movie preference, for example, you might say “I’d like to watch cap lord of the cap rings.”

Take advantage of autocorrect: While you can’t correct mistakes in iOS dictation by voice, you will occasionally see words that iOS thinks might be incorrect. They appear with dotted blue lines underneath them. Tap an underlined word or phrase, and you’ll see one or more options you can choose from.

Add emoticons: Do you want to type smileys? It’s easier to dictate them than to switch to the number keyboard. Just say “smiley,” “winky,” or “frowny,” for :-) , ;-) , or :-( .

Proof read what you dictate: While some errors will be obvious, and other misinterpretations may have blue dotted lines highlighting them, there will be typos—or, more correctly, speech-o’s.

As you get used to dictating into your iPhone or iPad, you’ll figure out the right cadence and volume to get the most precise recognition. If you need to type a lot on an iOS device, try using dictation. Whether you use it for text messages or emails, it may save you a lot of time.

If you want a more comprehensive beginners guide to voice recognition dictation have a look at this article.

https://zapier.com/blog/best-text-dictation-software/

Spell Checking on SmartTrade Essential and Ultimate

tinySpell - a free spell checker that works with SmartTrade Essential and Ultimate

We sometimes get asked why SmartTrade Essential and Ultimate, our office based software solutions, don’t incorporate a spell checker. The reason is there are a many free online spell checkers that do a better job than we could do with our own spell checker.

Our favourite free online spell checker is tinySpell, you can get it at http://tinyspell.com/.

It’s easy to install and use so if you need a spell checker give it a try. If you want more information on tinySpell, an online search will throw up plenty of reviews.

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SmartTrade Discovery

Posted by SmartTrade Techs on Wednesday, 21 September 2016 in News and Announcements

SmartTrade Discovery – self auditing your use of SmartTrade’s features and functionalities

‘Arguably the most productive 20-30 minutes you can spend to increase the productivity!’

We introduced SmartTrade Discovery in our last newsletter. It’s proven to be very popular with customers wanting to find out about SmartTrade capabilities they aren’t aware of. We’re currently working through the first batch of responses we received.

Due to the strong response we got we thought it would be worthwhile promoting SmartTrade Discovery again in this newsletter!

When software is mission critical to your businesses’ success you need to maximise the use you make of the software. We know most SmartTrade users use a subset of the software’s available functionality. This is typical of most software, a general rule of thumb is usually only 20-40% of the available features and functionality are actively used.

Here’s how the audit process works:

The audit is broken up into 6 separate forms, the longest should take about five minutes to complete.
You can complete the audit forms at your leisure and in any order, once you complete a form simply hit the submit button at the end of the form to return it to us.
When we give you your next customer care call (generally every 6 months) we will discuss your audit with you.
To help you achieve greater productivity from SmartTrade we may propose an action plan based on the audit results. This action plan will typically include additional training, remember we offer SmartTrade customers 2 hours of FREE online training a year!

IT’S SIMPLE – NO REASON NOT TO DO IT! THIS MAY BE ONE OF THE MOST PRODUCTIVE THINGS YOU DO THIS YEAR!
Here’s how to find the self-audit forms from the SmartBiz tab. If you have any trouble getting into SmartBiz please give us a call and our techs will sort it out for you.