Issue Date: 24 January 2014
Ref: DIV13/
Mobile Applications Enhance Customer Service & Audit Capabilities
Diversey Care Updates iMAP With Additional Interactive Tools and Resources
The iMAP auditing service from Diversey Care is now a central component of an updated mobile application that allows the business’s employees and customers to access a wide range of interactive performance, compliance and product-related resources and information whenever and wherever required. The new application suite can be used with any mobile device running Android or Apple iOS including smartphones, tablets and laptops which means users have complete flexibility to use their preferred mobile device.
The iMAP service was introduced in 2006 to enable real-time auditing of cleaning premises by Diversey Care employees equipped with hand-held PDAs. During a site audit, users work through a series of structured questions and provide simple responses. Information is stored on a central server to provide managers and customers with a complete view of the current status of audits, allowing them to monitor progress and see when and where an audit has taken place as soon as it is completed. The system ensures information is collected, collated and presented consistently to ensure it is easily understood by users and completely traceable and verifiable.
Auditing helps enhance cleaning quality and maintain consistent hygiene and safety standards. Users can drill-down into reports to analyse data for a single question, site, geography, or across an entire organisation. The iMAP service is also used to support food safety, equipment service, corporate sustainability and risk management. It has proved extremely popular and is used in more than 60 countries. Diversey Care has used the service to monitor over 50,000 sites in the UK alone to support customers including restaurant groups, food service providers and major public sector organisations.
As mobile technology advanced it became clear that an updated system could provide more powerful capabilities and support even greater flexibility to access a wider range of information and interactive tools. Working with a specialist UK-based app developer, Diversey Care has integrated the core iMAP service with new functionality to access sales, product and customer related information. The underlying application runs “in the cloud” as software-as-a-service (SaaS) which users have access anywhere, anytime using a simple app which they can download to their chosen devices.
Diversey Care has equipped customer-facing employees in the UK with Samsung Galaxy tablets with 3G and WiFi capability, ensuring real time connectivity in almost any location. Other countries will be equipped with Android or iOS devices in due course. The new application is quicker and more robust that the original iMAP which ensures higher levels of service quality and availability. Staff can now complete an iMAP audit when they visit a customer’s premises and the results are instantly updated and available in the cloud. The tablets have also been equipped with a number of sales tools - enabled through Diversey Care’s Oracle on Demand and customer relationship management (CRM) applications.
Customers and Diversey Care employees also have seamless and real-time access to information such as product specifications and cleaning guides as well as regulatory information such as safety data sheets. Any information updated on the central server is immediately available on the mobile device.
Email capabilities in the application allow users to correspond directly with Diversey Care account managers and technical specialists. For example, users can capture an image with their device and email it to Diversey Care for a quick assessment and response. Messaging is also enabled so that important information such as product alerts can be pushed directly to users. Managers can prioritise messages and see who has read them. These communication tools ensure Diversey Care is highly proactive with customers and can often pre-empt and anticipate enquiries. Sales and account management teams are more professional and can provide a quicker response.
Although the core iMAP service remains largely the same the integration with other information resources and interactive tools represents a significant advance in mobile capabilities for the cleaning and hygiene sector. Audits have always provided a benchmark and actionable intelligence for continuous improvement, but Diversey Care's industry-leading application expertise and process knowledge means results can now automatically trigger corrective action workflows for resolution and validation during subsequent audits. Industry-standard security ensures users can only access information they are authorised to see. The application updates automatically in the background so users need take no additional action to ensure they always see the latest available information.