Moving Words – Mobility
Written by Timothy Brady.
“The impression left after watching the motions of birds is that of extreme mobility – a life of perpetual impulse checked only by fear.” – John Richard Jefferies, noted English nature writer
Mobility is what drives the moving business. From the nature of our American culture in which people are always on the go, looking for opportunity, for their “next move,” we all have the desire for mobility, whether we need to get across town or move to another state or country.
However, mobility goes further than just being able to get from one location to another. In the moving business, it’s all about coordinating activities between team members of a local crew. Think about this: local crews handle multiple tasks, all of them culminating in a household ready for the van operator to load when he/she and the crew arrive to start loading. That ‘ready’ includes having the correct measurements for a required crate, what cartons are going to be needed, which cartons and how many were actually packed. Or, if a two-day pack, what will be necessary on the second day to complete the job.
Being able to communicate between local dispatch and the pack crews on different jobs to fulfill the needs of each move is crucial to the efficiency and time needed to complete a job.
In this fast-paced world, having that move information at your fingertips is as important for the local pack crew as it is for local dispatch and the move coordinators at the office.
Today’s mobile technology and the use of smart phones provides this capability for all employees and contractors involved with a particular job to have access to shipment information. The capability exists. You need to have a smart phone app installed for this.
So what should you look for in a crew app?
1. Ease of use. The learning curve needs to be short and sweet, and coordinate with the moving agency’s best practices so it enhances the job performance of its users.
2. Complete move information. Must be available from the field through the app; i.e., access to shipper origin and destination information with contact capabilities to call or text the customer. It should be able to link to a map of the shipper’s move location.
3. Provides the local crew with ready job info on each of their mobile devices. Lists assigned crew members and contact information for each for text or phone call. Job assignments, job status; the ability to clock in and out to accurately log time spent on specific activities such as working, building crates, driving to or from job, equipment maintenance, other specific tasks or meal break.
4. Special instructions. Example – ‘freshly-poured front walk; only enter and exit through the garage.’
5. Updates. Example – number and size of packed cartons vs. number of cartons brought on the job.
6. Access to all move documents. With the ability to add notes and photos as necessary.
7. Specific crew leader notes section. The crew leader can thereby approve all crew member entries within the app itself.
The point of any moving crew app is to increase efficiency; track job time (extremely important when you pay by the hour), track carton inventory to know what’s been used and what should be returned to stock in the warehouse, enhance the ability of your local crews to communicate between one another and with dispatch without spending time on a phone, and document the crew’s activities while at a shipper’s, in transit, or at the warehouse.
“Mobile is becoming not only the new digital hub, but also the bridge to the physical world. That’s why mobile will affect more than just your digital operations — it will transform your entire business.” – Thomas Husson, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research
The bottom line? Being mobile with technology is the future. It all began with the introduction into truck cabs of cell and bag phones, and Qualcomm® in the late 1980’s. Mobile computing is the moving industry’s first step to the IOAT (Internet Of All Things).
“The [mobile computing] industry is on the verge of a whole new paradigm.” Thorsten Heins, former CEO of BlackBerry
