We work in senior care and help older people to live independently at home. We are looking for special software with route and reporting functions to optimize our field service, which is involved in networking (not for caregivers).
To promote our services, we employ field staff (networkers), among others. They visit various contacts (intermediaries), such as pharmacies, doctors, and hospitals, to tell them about our services and hand out information material (flyers, guides, etc.). It is important to distinguish between “visits” that require little time and preparation and ‘discussions’ or “presentations” that require more time and preparation. A working day consists of approximately 95% visits and approximately 5% discussions or presentations. The route function (best route for a day or a week) is primarily intended to support visits. The report function should support meetings and presentations, as it is essential to prepare for these by taking notes. Past notes and reports should therefore be easy to find before a meeting. Although the software we are looking for should ideally be a combination of route and report functions, reports have priority because they will be used much more frequently in the future (than is currently the case).
We have the following requirements for the software:
Functions:
- Recording of intermediaries (company) with various attributes
- Recording of contacts who work in companies with various attributes
- Intermediary attributes (type, zone, AA-A-B-C, account manager) can be added individually with pick lists
- Contact attributes (position, relationship level, etc.) can be added individually with pick lists
- Plan visits, appointments, and calls and complete them with a history entry
- Overview of all history entries for an agent in chronological order
- Powerful search (e.g., family doctor, generic search by practice name or last name)
- Create dynamic lists (save if necessary). E.g., all Spitex organizations, all persons with social service positions, all family doctors with more than 3 referrals
- Optional: Parent/Child (relationships)
- Targets per intermediary (number of visits per year and checks); e.g., all A intermediaries are visited 4 times per year and checked
- Generic search must be possible! Search for various terms: Generate generic list (all Spitex in the Oberland)
- Multi-client capable, teams, access authorization, users in teams, manager has overview of everything
- Visit report for zone processing, report generator, preferably only online via app
- Type of route planning, with agents shown graphically on Google Maps (A agents in a different color to B and C agents). Function: show me all agents within a radius of any address with filter (only A agents who have not had a visit in the last 6 months)
- Optional: campaigns, mailing to all general practitioners, newsletter
- User authorization, role concept
- Easy to create your own dashboard to generate graphical evaluations, sales (current and new sales)
- Measure salesperson performance (number of visits, A, B or C, number of phone calls, number of service requests, customers)
Technical:
- Web-based
- Mobile access, preferably an app so that networkers no longer have to carry printouts with them
- Outlook integration
- Easy customization with fields, functions, validations
- Multilingual (German, English, French)
Interfaces:
- Export options
- Import (data from PP), RPNs, contacts, history per agent (activities) for ZO for a zone
Additional information on the route function:
Focus on meetings (and presentations); based on the location of the meeting, the most efficient route is created, which includes visits on the way to a meeting. For example: A networker has meetings in zones A, B, and C on one day. The software includes certain visits for agents that are on the way between meetings.
Output
- List of intermediaries in order of completion with time, name, location
- Calculation of the most efficient and effective daily or weekly route
- Automatic adjustment of times to current work progress
- Automatic updating of the route when a new entry is made
- Navigation function for the route to the next intermediary
Challenges
- Longer or shorter stay with agent
- Agent no longer present
- Agent closed
- Discovery of a new agent
- Scheduling a meeting in a different location
- Unpredictable events (accidents, etc.)
Approximately 30 field staff (networkers) are to work with the software.