Tech Success: Mobile Devices As The First Line Of Defence

In late 2013, TechWeekEurope announced the seven winners of our second annual Tech Success awards. As an antidote to all the IT failures reported by the media, we have established these awards to celebrate IT projects that exceed expectations, deliver savings and make a difference.

Now it’s time to find out more about the winners. The award for the best mobility IT project of 2012-2013 went to the property management company SitexOrbis for creating a mobile system to protect lone workers using Liquid Voice software products.

SitexOrbis’ code5 service now combines scheduling, call recording, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), GPS and incident handling into a single platform that acts as a ‘panic button’, letting the response teams know when workers are in danger, and broadcasting additional information from the site. This is the first time such a system has been used to help lone workers in the UK.

“We then ran it extensively through testing and any changes we needed were handled quickly and professionally by Liquid Voice. The system is now up and running and both elements [voice recording and IVR] have been flawless,” said Andy Birss, technical services manager at SitexOrbis.

Panic button

SitexOrbis looks after 50,000 empty properties in the UK. It is also responsible for the safety of 14,500 staff including district nurses, care workers, traffic wardens and housing officers. Most of them work alone, visiting all manners of dangerous environments at all hours of day and night.

In 2012, SitexOrbis launched a project as part of its code5 employee monitoring service, aiming to develop a suite of mobile applications that keep it informed about the location and status of lone workers. It selected contact centre technology specialist Liquid Voice as the technology partner, and rolled out a suitable solution in just four weeks.

The new voice recording and automatic response features help the SitexOrbis response teams constantly monitor the well-being of customers. When a dangerous situation develops, users can call a hotline or issue a ‘silent alarm’ though always-on IVR.

The response teams can playback certain elements of the call using enhanced audio while the ongoing recording is unaffected. This way, they can instantly judge the severity of the situation and plan their response accordingly.

Code5 works on both company-issued and BYOD smartphones, as well as dedicated panic response buttons. It is integrated into the incident management system that can forward the most serious issues to police or other emergency services.

This is not the first successful mobility project for SitexOrbis. The company was the first in the UK to launch cellular network-based tracking for users without GPS-enabled phones. It was also the first to adopt open-mic technology to allow monitoring staff to quickly and covertly hear what is happening at the site of an incident.

“We would just like to thank the TechWeekEurope judges for recognising our achievement and Liquid Voice for helping us deliver a project that is providing tangible and on-going benefits to mobile workers across the UK,” said Birss.

We congratulate the team at Orbian on their Tech Success!

Look out for more stories about Tech Success winners in the coming weeks.

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