Workforce management — you ask SME owners and they’ll tell you what heck of a task it is. And if you happen to have a business with extensive on-field work, workforce management can be a source of some serious frustration. However, lately, we have been seeing tech-drive startups churning out decent smartphone apps to allow workforce tracking, and one such solution is TeamTracker.
TeamTracker, as the name suggests, provides you with an app/web-driven workforce management in real time. The app aims at being a “WhatsApp+Google Maps” for the mobile workforce, thereby allowing managers to track exact locations and have a dedicated communication channel with their teams, on or off-field.
Dharmesh Kothari, President at Gray Matrix, the developers behind this app, describes why an app like Teamtracker is so much relevant in today’s scenario,
With the increase adoption of mobile in enterprises today’s mobile workforce needs a robust solution to communicate with head-office and carry- out their day- today work efficiently. The idea is to avoid repetitive emails or phone calls just to know what a person is doing or where he/she is.
Mahesh Jain, CEO at GrayMatrix further corroborates,
At the same time, allowing project heads to keep a track of real reporting times for the field employees. Team Tracker – a must have for any successful business to leverage every one of their team member to the fullest potential.
The app, which provides you with both web and mobile dashboards, lets you have an instant glance on team attendance, nearby teammates and messages from them. You can easily assess the number of employees available for the day and can use quick shortcuts for communication via mail, phone or in-built messenger. Also, members can be grouped according to the processes and one person can be a part of multiple processes.
The ‘Track Now’ feature can be used to get map view of employees day’s movement, sorted by distance from your location and color coded by team colors. Real time 1:1 or group messages, Detailed reporting and Web based live control room for team managers are other useful features available with the app.
Team Tracker can manage workforce requirements at large scale as well, ranging from company projects involving field research to event management, requiring co-ordination of various teams. Team tracker’s developers say, that the app can also be used in disaster management and for family safety while travelling. However, looking at more advanced apps for disaster management such as Life360, Canary or MamaBear, Team Tracker would probably remain focused on its core, employee management segment.
Dharmesh tells me, that they are integrating employer with enterprise worker’s communication and providing that information with location as the central focus. “In the custom version we take that to the next level and can give you intelligence like where are your most orders are coming from and which area in your city needs most attention.”
Clearly, the app has huge potential in Government workforce management as well, by putting in a real-time data of the whereabouts and work done by Government employees in front of general public’s smartphones. Government of India does offer a similar service, though it is currently limited to employees of the central government.
The application, which is built on open source web development platform, LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP), is deployed completely over cloud. It utilises LARAVEL framework in order to match the functionality of programming languages used viz. JQUERY , HTML5 and CSS3 and a NO SQL Couch Base database. Also, it has a certified secured communication over SSL.
While the app is targeted towards workforce management, its features point towards a more relevant use in India’s hugely scattered logistics segment. And Santosh Maharishi, co-founder of Team Tracker, thinks along similar lines. Santosh tells me,
This app can be a companion to Indian logistics, delivery and eCommerce startups.
He believes, that it will not only help the field staff in taking quick decisions, but will also increase optimization of workforce, area coverage and operational efficiency at the management end.
The app is available both on Android and iOS at a monthly charge of ₹180 and an annual charge of ₹150 per user. Currently in Beta phase, Team Tracker is offering a free trial period of 14 days to organisations, where they can try the app with maximum 10 users. One can log on to the company website and fill up his/her organisation details to connect with the team for the same.
The team is further planning to add plugins and modules which are specific to an industry or processes e.g.. Sales processes, order processing , service request.
Its difficult to predict anything about the success, since the product is still in Beta and traction numbers aren’t very specific. However, with Indian enterprise productivity market expected to touch $1.8 Bn by 2017, there definitely lies a scope for lots of new experiments.
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