Indoor geolocation, the key to optimal task and team management

One of the main challenges when managing a large building is knowing all the activities that take place in it, and in real-time if possible, such as cleaning, maintenance and security. This ability defines the daily work of staff, contributing to more fluidity and efficiency.

The answer to this challenge can be found in an indoor location system, a valuable tool for work management and fulfilling contractual commitments. Geolocation not only helps an organisation, but also helps auditing compliance services.

When is indoor geolocation useful?

Let’s explore a few use cases:

• In the case of a security company operating in a shopping mall, for example, guards must make periodic rounds around the building. Let’s assume there was a robbery in a store at 1 PM when a guard was supposed to be there. But the store files a complaint to the mall, saying there wasn’t any security there at that time.

With a geolocation feature, it will be possible to determine if the guard was there or not. With this information, supervisors will have all the information to act if needed, whether it is with a fine or a service modification. In some cases, geolocated data can be used to avoid fines to justify a service, saving even thousands of Euros in a single trimester.

• Another standard use case is cleaning teams. If a chemical laboratory, for example, deals with toxic chemicals, the cleaning teams need quite a strict schedule to clean after lab employees, so everything is kept safe. If there's an intoxication case related to contact with a toxic element, the company needs to make sure the area has been cleaned. In this case, the geolocation feature will confirm if the cleaning staff was indeed there for the specified time. Combining this geodata with task management, the supervisor can know whether the service was completed or not and act accordingly.
• In other cases, in industrial environments, there are cleaning machines or vehicles. A supervisor may need to know the path these assets take. Why? The client doesn't know, and only through geolocation can we know this mandatory input in-depth to determine if the service is being fulfilled.
  
  

Locating inside a building without GPS?

Geolocation is already present in many areas of our lives. Once we have adapted to the use of GPS outdoors, the remaining question is how to geolocate indoors.

Answering this question, a location system that works inside buildings is able to work as an indoor GPS. And, among other uses, can be used for the management of work teams, with minimal dedicated infrastructure and fast deployment. This technology can achieve a full view of service-related operations, including tasks, rounds, and location history.

Management of mobile work teams and their activity through indoor geolocation

In large indoor spaces, such as office buildings, for example, it is important to consider different aspects to manage the tasks that different teams of mobile workers perform in the building:  

Workers walk through large areas, even in places without coverage. Geolocating staff in real-time is crucial for responding to unforeseen events, to know where team members are at a specific time and reassign them if necessary.

• Some of these spaces are combined with outdoor areas as well. With this geolocation feature you can actually cover both indoor and outdoor areas within the same dashboard and with a smooth transition between outdoors/indoors areas.
• Many of these workers perform rounds and tasks regularly. Therefore, managing their routes is essential throughout the process to check service fulfilment. And the best way to achieve this is with geoanalytics, i.e., graphics, heatmaps, step-by-step trajectories, and reports that contribute to transparency.
• Other technologies present some gaps in reliability as common issues are checklists being completed or codes scanned by stored photos, but without the confidence that the user was indeed in the place at the time. Basically, for auditing purposes, you need to be sure that the workforce has been where the task was assigned and at the time that it was supposed to be done. The only way to have this certainty and create analytics that can prove it is through a geolocation feature.  
  
  

Given these circumstances, it is essential to have an organisational system beyond paper records or complicated computer programs that do not provide real-time or location-related information.

Geopositioned patrols and tasks for efficient and transparent management

Usually, all the workers who move around a large building make rounds: checking hot spots for the safety of the building, carrying out occasional or periodic cleaning or maintenance work, etc.

With this geopositioned patrols feature, collaborative platform for services such as Urbest provides a complete system that allows you to customise different parameters:

·       Name and description of the round to be performed.

·       The number of daily runs required.

·       Identify checkpoints for the worker to pass through, the frequency, and order.

Meanwhile, geopositioned tasks are another of the functions that indoor geolocation provides:

·       Configure all types of tasks to be performed in the building.

·       Select which team members should perform them, how often, and of course, the precise location where they should be performed.

·       Visualise the tasks performed, but also the pending ones and their status.

To sum up, this indoor location technology and its features provide new tools to organise, understand, and analyse the activity performed by your staff that takes place inside buildings.

Indoor geolocation is not only a management tool but also an auditing and transparency device. It allows us to check and justify service compliance and thus avoid fines, and boost customer renewal and satisfaction. This ultimately translates into an increased efficiency and, therefore, also in the final profit.