Progressing the Improvement District: Lone Worker CRM & Data Entry Technology

Downtown Dublin – Creating an Inviting City Dublin City Business Improvement District, the first BID scheme in Ireland, has been in operation since March 2008, and has a five year renewable mandate to develop and promote the economic advancement of Dublin City Centre. Our goal is to position Dublin City Centre as the location of choice for retail, leisure and business activity. We work on behalf of the 2,500 businesses in our area to create an attractive, welcoming, vibrant and economically successful space in Dublin City Centre. Dublin City BID has developed a marketing and communications plan to promote the city centre to Dubliners and visitors alike; we are active in ensuring a safe and secure city and we lobby on behalf of the businesses in our area on key issues facing the area.

Difficulties to Overcome Dublin City BID operates a team of street ambassadors, capturing street issues via paper forms. Urgent issues were phoned into the office for actioning. The office team had to collect and re-key the information from the paper forms into spreadsheets, before beginning the lengthy report writing process. This resulted in delays in actioning street issues. Collation of information with images for BID member meetings was cumbersome and provision of evidence for achieving KPIs was difficult. Reports took days to compile at the end of the month, distracting focus from providing our service to the city.

Seeking Solutions Dublin City BID management sought a software solution that would enable the replacement of paper forms and allow quick transfer of information between the ambassadors on the street and in the office. A mobile workforce management solution was selected, created by GeoPal Solutions, an Irish cloud software company offering mobile and web applications to manage a street team. Dublin City BID became a pilot customer for GeoPal, which allowed us to test out and request new features during the development of the solution, based on the needs of our team, customising the solution to meet the unique needs of the BID.

Eliminating Paperwork The GeoPal cloud service and mobile application allows Dublin City BID to eliminate paperwork. Office staff are able to create digital versions of all our forms for capturing details of street issues. These forms can include steps to take photos, scan barcodes, make drawings, get GPS location, enter text and numerical data, and are fully customisable to suit our information requirements. This enables our ambassadors to record all the details of street issues easily, keeping all the different kinds of data in one place.

Mobilizing Street Ambassadors The street ambassadors are 20% more efficient as they quickly and easily capture and send information without the need to collate photos and paper forms following work, this allows them to spend more time on visitor assistance. Street ambassadors use the GeoPal mobile app to record the BID baseline – cleaning, graffiti, visitor assists and so on. The street information, with photos, is sent to the office in real time and actioned immediately by office staff.

Optimising Office Activities The speed and efficiency of communicating information between the office and street ambassadors has resulted in a 50% reduction in workload for office staff. Report writing now takes minutes rather than days, and pictorial evidence is easily tied to the captured data. GeoPal lets us customise reports to suit our needs. Because GeoPal has eliminated paperwork and freed up significant administration resources for staff members, it enables us to concentrate on marketing activities both on and offline. This has been a significant improvement for our overall marketing strategy and operating costs.

Managing Outsourced Services Third Party Vendor Management is much improved as vendor performance is more accurately measured and managed with GeoPal. For example, a key benefit of the solutions has been the ability to outsource night time patrols without the need for a supervisor. Using the mobile app means that the night crew are self supervising. The GeoPal app captures their location and activities and sends the data back to the office in real time. The outsourced night crew now follows the same processes as the day crew and very little training is required.

Benefits for BID Members Member reports can be easily created, on regular or ad hoc basis, and GeoPal also functions as a CRM system, with all members and contact details listed in one place, easily accessible. This allows the Dublin City BID office team to show the benefits of BID activities to the Levied members of the work being done on their behalf and the value created by Dublin City BID. For example, in 2012, we had a big issue with waste collection. We were able to go to the meeting with reports, dates, times of issues and photographs. GeoPal provides us with the statistics and back-up information.

Protecting Street Ambassadors In the UK and Ireland, Corporate Manslaughter legislation mandates that organisations are responsible for the health and safety of employees. This is a concern for Dublin City BID as many of our street ambassadors work alone, and we need to be able to provide protection in case of emergency. GeoPal mobile app allows us to track the location of our lone street ambassadors, and can offer the option to require them to check-in at regular intervals. It can also detect non-movement in the case of a fall and provides ambassadors with a discreet panic alarm that can raise a phone call, , and SMS message to the Dublin City BID office staff or the police.

Continuous Improvement Selecting the GeoPal software solution has enabled Dublin City BID to eliminate paperwork, increase productivity and efficiency, and accurately measure the impact of our services for our members. Because of this we can now provide more and better services to members and also reassign office workers to provide more valuable marketing activities to promote Dublin to visitors. We continue to improve our services, now using GeoPal mobile app as a tool to deliver online marketing content from our ambassadors on the street to our staff in the office, allowing us to be as up to date as possible with activity in our city. This has now put us in a position where we are seen between media and the public as the go to for up to date information in the city.

Outstanding Outcomes Participating as a pilot customer with GeoPal enabled us to help design the solution to match the information needs and process requirements for downtown associations. This project has allowed us to surpass our initial goals and continue to increase the variety and value of the services we provide to our members. Dublin City BID has recommended the GeoPal solution to other downtown associations in the UK, it has been adopted by many, and a community has evolved to share tips and learn from each other.