The Houndit for Mobile Workforce system is flexible, fully featured and designed to provide control and security for any business with a field-based workforce that needs access to and manipulation of operational data on the go - be it a van sales organisation, engineer or repair force servicing businesses or homes, a utility company or telecoms giant. With the Houndit workforce system your operatives can reliably represent you and offer excellent personalised customer service, every time.

The standard system incorporates most common job-related tasks; however a wide range of extensions can also be offered to include automated communication, mapping and GPS route data, payment processing and a comprehensive ordering/returns/exchanges feature set.

The workforce management system is based on the proven Houndit mobile platform, which already reliably supports thousands of operatives in the field plus several hundred office and depot/warehouse staff. The Houndit platform provides a total solution for work and job management for a distributed workforce, and incorporates a comprehensive on-the-road system providing real time feedback of data, full traceability and exception handling.

The Houndit solution is unique in that it is designed to handle multiple partners, and it is capable of consolidating workflow feeds from multiple systems, plus reporting to diverse back-end systems. The principle is that you only need to connect your business environment to the core system once, via a secure link, so you are not exposing your critical environment to multiple remote devices. The Houndit environment is therefore separate and totally secure, and will not expose your sensitive or critical customer data.

Houndit has a flexible language capability, based on individual user log on, and can even cater for double bite character sets such as Chinese and Arabic script.

The Houndit system for Mobile Workforce is made up of 3 core elements.

1) System core:
The core system is purpose built to manage high volumes of data which it securely feeds from your own business systems and translates into essential work or task related information. It is configurable to your own unique business requirements, within a wide range of pre-defined parameters, giving you complete control of your field based operations.

2) On the road:
The Houndit mobile framework provides the field based employee with just the data they need, in the format that it is needed, and at the time that it is needed. Work, jobs, visits, calls can all be scheduled and presented to the user in a simple layout, driven by your own business rules and navigated with a finger - no styluses or complex navigation - just simple and intuitive navigation. Customise-able instructions are clear, simple and available in any language on the touch-screen on a choice of devices. The data is secure, and the system confirms to IGSOC standards, meaning that it is approved to handle NHS patient data.

The mobile device can either be locked down to run just the Houndit application, alternatively other device-based services can be exposed, such as phone and texting if your business requires this service. The key element is configurability and control, you can contain costs and limit access on a user or system wide basis.

3) Interface hub:
This is designed to flexibly fulfill the requirements of a single or multi-partner, multi-platform system. It has the capability of supporting multichannel interfaces receiving pre-advice data, job schedules and emergency inject events, plus returning completed or modified data. There is a standard XML interface, although the system can also cope with delimited file imports.

1) System Core

Hosted Platform
Fully redundant managed network service. Multi-location duplication with fail-over in near real time. N-tier architecture. Load balanced and scalable. Mirrored data storage. Multiple IP feeds. Monitored in real time. Comprehensive network reporting and adherence to robust SLAs. Service availability up to 100%.
Database
Secure, configurable, mirrored and duplicated relational database using scalable and proven SQL Server 2005.
Houndit Application
Logic and business rules, configurable, multi-language support. All applications written in C#.
Messaging & Encryption
Robust and scalable messaging and encryption layer. Multiple interconnects to Internet and mobile networks, supporting email and SMS communication using Web Services, on the .NET framework.

2) Mobile Platform – On the road

Applications developed and approved for a wide variety of mobile devices operating Windows Mobile 5.0 and above. Intuitive user interface with multi-language support. Encrypted database on the device. Operates with or without GPRS network connectivity. Multiple icon packs, can operate either in kiosk mode or with full access to phone/device features.

3) Interface Hub

Delineated or XML 2-way data exchange facility. Import pre-advice and order/job/task data, then export data for business systems access.