Many businesses rely on paper records to track field employees who are involved in inspection, maintenance and field work. Keeping track of employee hours in the field, tasks they are performing, and equipment they are using can be daunting. The maintenance of job records is labor intensive and complex.
Improving employee time, task and equipment usage tracking can not only reduce operational costs but also help in improving operational efficiency. Using QR codes in combination with Geofencing is a great tool to monitor and verify field operations, digitize maintenance data, reduce risks and bring down costs.
Benefits of employee and task tracking
For many businesses, employees are their biggest resources and their equipment is their biggest investment. Therefore, monitoring employees and their work in the field is critical and brings big benefits such as:
- Making sure that the right team is at the right job site at the right time
- Recording the attendance of field team at job sites
- Getting alerts when team members are not at the job site in time
- Ensuring that the team is performing the tasks that they are assigned at each job site
- Making sure that tasks and activities are performed using the right equipment
- Getting alerts when faulty equipment is being used in the field
- Automatically generating job and payroll reports
How can QR codes help?
QR codes were invented in the mid-90s and were originally used in automobile manufacturing plants to track parts. As the advantages offered by QR inventory tags became apparent, more and more industries began using them.
The codes can contain basic information like links to websites or large volumes of data consisting of over 4,200 alphanumeric characters that are encoded into the patterns. To access the information, a person needs only scan the QR code.
QR codes are legitimately some of the most convenient pieces of technology out there but businesses don’t quite know how to make QR codes or how to deploy QR codes.
This is where allGeo comes in. We help businesses generate and deploy QR codes for their field operations, and provide a mobile app to scan QR codes to check-in/check-out at a job site, perform tasks and monitor use of equipment at the job site.
How can you deploy QR codes?
The simplest way to deploy QR codes is to generate them, print them on various materials (paper, plastic, metal), place them at the job site or equipment and have employees scan them during normal operations. With every scan, information is recorded, such as:
- Task X was performed using equipment Y at 9am by Richard in building#3 for 35 min
- Maintenance work was performed on the equipment X by John at 4pm, one issue was found
- 7 employees were late to jobs this past week
- Tasks were performed on equipment Y in building#3 was used for 22 hours this week
- Richard, Jake and Roberto worked on key activity Z in building 2 and finished the shift on time
All this information can be available to operations managers from anywhere and at any time if the information is stored in the cloud with every scan that takes place in the field. Businesses can run analytics to look at employee hours, tasks performed and equipment use over time, number of issues or problems recorded every day and so on.
The power of QR code & Geofencing
One of the hallmarks of deploying QR codes is the convenience factor. Businesses can get up and running with QR codes very quickly.
Geofences, also known as geozones, are virtual perimeters around a predefined area of interest, like warehouses, construction sites, or live customer project sites. When combined with real-time GPS information from an employee’s phone when scanning a QR code for instance, it can help track and map each employee’s location via GPS. This helps managers ensure employees are where they need to be and are performing tasks on the right equipment at the assigned times.
Reporting and Payroll
QR codes can be of great help to track to day to day operations and address issues in real time but good reporting can help you see the bigger picture over a longer period of time. Payroll reporting for example can be of great help. What if you were able to automatically track work hours for each employee so that they would not have to fill out timesheets? This is possible with QR code & Geofencing. With the allGeo QR code based time and attendance workflow, businesses can do exactly this. Supervisors can edit payroll reports and approve them before they go to payroll. Similarly, other types of reports can help in monitoring job performance by measuring operational KPIs for your business.
Tracking and maintaining employees, tasks and equipment is critical for operational efficiency of any business. Solutions such as those provided by allGeo helps businesses use QR codes to track their employees and tasks quickly and easily. Since employees do not need any extra training, QR codes can be deployed quickly and can be game changing for the business.
About allGeo
Abaqus, based in Silicon Valley, CA, is a leading provider of cloud-hosted, low-code / low-IT field service automation platform that helps midsize and Enterprise businesses achieve field service excellence. The allGeo platform helps businesses customize and automate their field service workflows to better manage and optimize their operations, field employees & assets. With allGeo, Field service businesses can significantly reduce payroll and operations costs while improving productivity and accountability. The allGeo platform hosts a suite of turnkey apps that can be rapidly deployed in a wide range of industries e.g. Scheduling, Time Clock, Tracking & Monitoring, Mileage, Dispatch, Electronic Visit Verification, Lone Worker Safety, and Field Inspection using QR / mobile forms. Visit www.allgeo.com for more information.
