What is Mobile Field Data Collection And Why Does It Matter?

During the Winter of 2015, my firm, Knowledge Equity Partners, Inc., set out to develop a “Linda Proof” method of rapidly collecting field information, photos and the location of where we were were collecting that information. This was something that had bothered me from years back in the 1990’s when I was in the telecommunications business and one day, one of our well meaning co-workers processed a disconnect order that turned out to belong to a very prominent asset. But she did not have any information telling her that. She had lots of orders and like everyone, she was under pressure to get them done. So she processed the order. Unfortunately, it happened to be the telephone number of the Atomic Clock. And the impact was immediate. Feedback was immediate. Lots of things happened immediately. Lots of people learned a lot of things immediately and in the ensuing months about data and information management or the sore lack thereof.

I dreamt something up that night to ensure it wouldn’t happen again. It was the precursor to today’s AI. And it was later patented by the firm that I worked for, producing an annual revenue generating capability in the hundreds of millions of dollars and a huge work life improvement for the employees in the firm responsible for customer service and sales. People wept when I traveled across our very large geographic area when we rolled out the solution and presented it to them in work group meetings.

Why did they weep? Because the solution saved them tremendous amounts of time, made them better a their work and reduced considerable stress working with all of the data they interacted with in silos. They felt GOOD. To this day, telecommunications companies have some of the largest databases in the world. And they provide some of the most important, life saving services - whether it is on earth or in space.

In 2015, mobile device signal strength and processing capability had just reached the point where there was capacity to capture a GPS point, add some photos, create some notes and log it somewhere. Sure, there were some GPS firms doing that. The patent the telecommunications company I worked for owns included the process of manually mapping circuit data - that was my soluiton on that horrible day when we took down the Atomic Clock. I was pretty excited 9 years later to be able to pull that off with a mobile device, mapping and tracking other information.

In 2015 I learned how crucial that mobile capability is when I met represenatatives of the American Red Cross - who had a similar struggle - but in a live action Disaster Recovery setting. Red Cross Volunteers are in the disaster itself, helping people get care and shelter. They also conduct damage assessments - even while the disaster is underway. And they used to do it on paper. I am proud to say we built the first mobile damage assessment app for them, replacing an incredible amount of manual work, receiving soggy notes from the field, transcribing it into spreadsheets in the field and transcribing that information yet again into other spreadsheets for state and Federal agencies to begin the process of financial disaster recovery aid for people who lost their homes, farms, animals and assets. Our mobile app put a stop to all of that transcription effort. We built a situational analysis dashboard that was connected to the mobile app so you could see live data coming in and be able to learn more of what was going on in the field from a safe location.

I was shocked at how much manual effort it took to support the victims and admired the volunteers who would work incredible hours to help. I was very pleaased that our mobile app, designed to meet FEMA’s and Incident Command System (ICS) needs got critical information to decision makers in minutes rather than days. Volunteers could devote their time to the victims instead of paperwork. Aid could commence staging and delivery.

Whether it is disconnecting the Atomic Clock - which is responsible for so many critical behind the scenes life saving processes that we take for granted unless it is disconnected, or the “in your face” Disaster Recovery of loss of life, lost homes and damaged property, those are two lived experiences (mine) are what mobile field data collection is and why it matters.

I will delve into further benefits of mobile data collection and how it has evolved since we embarked on our journey over the last 11 years in future posts but it is important to set the table on how MapToTrack came about and what mobile field data collection is and why it matters.