“The team at 245TECH created our Bed Bug Detection Reporting app and it has become an integral part of our business. Compared to our previous system, we are saving 10 to 12 hours a week in admin time and our dog handlers are happy to eliminate paperwork and send data through the app to our main back-office database. We look forward to enhancing the system as we grow.” — Chuck Nelson, President
The Challenge
Dog Inspectors is the first Tennessee Company to use trained, certified K-9’s to locate bed bugs in residential and commercial buildings. To provide this service, their field reps (or dog handlers in this case), visit hotels, cabins, and homes and record whether or not the dogs have detected bed bugs. The handlers then make note of any typical bed bug evidence. When the Dog Inspectors team came to us they were using a simple form system that was difficult to use for both the handlers and administrators in the back-office. It took several hours to produce reports for their customers that should have taken minutes.
The Goals
- Create a mobile-based reporting system for the dog handlers that is extremely easy to use in the field
- Ensure the mobile app works even when there is no Internet connectivity
- Enable work-in-progress to be sent to the back-office so no reporting is lost if the handler has an emergency or something else that takes them off the job
- In the back-office, create a secure web application that sends handlers their daily routes and mappable properties with security access codes and any other notes
- Provide client, property, and data type database functionality
- Enable automatically generated PDFs that gather the data from the handlers and their properties so their clients are notified with a detailed report of the inspection outcome
The Solution
- Extremely detailed prototyping of the mobile app and back-office web application was created before any code was written, thus reducing the risk of expensive rework
- Upon approval, coding commenced using the graphics from the prototype
- After an intense quality assurance phase, the system was rolled out with 245TECH staff on standby to immediately fix any issues
- The end result made the dog handlers happy and the owners of Dog Inspectors even happier. The system saves back-office staff at least 10 hours a week resulting in a cost savings of over $70,000 a year.