Imagine yourself as Inspector Gadget, armed with a mobile device in hand, conducting inspections on-site using the latest technology; recording answers to questions on the “gadget”; taking photographs of the physical site using a digital camera and loading it onto the “gadget”; no more cumbersome papers to handle – blue copy, pink copy, yellow copy! Imagine clicking a button on the device to upload all the information recorded to a central database. You would make Inspector Gadget proud! Leverent’s Mobile Inspection Solution Series can make this scenario a reality. Built on a distributed application platform by Adesso Systems, the solution provides a robust solution for organizations with a mobile inspection workforce, making them more efficient and effective.

The Challenge
Agencies are facing an ever-growing need to ensure that public facing facilities and institutions such as restaurants, hospitals, buildings, etc. are safe and in compliance with a number of city and state regulations. While these inspections are necessary by law, most agencies find it difficult to manage the growing demand in terms of the number of inspections and the types of inspections, with the same number of inspectors. To add to the problem, almost all inspection results are currently recorded on paper at the site, manually re-entered into an electronic format by the back-office and distributed to managers and other interested parties via paper reports. This manual process causes several inefficiencies: a) lack of productivity due to paper based processes; b) errors caused by manual re-entry of data; and c) lack of integration between field inspection information and back-office processes. Apart from these inefficiencies, and irrespective of the type of inspection being conducted or the facility being inspected, there are several motivators to improve the inspection process, from field to back-office:

Liability: the risk associated with not completing an inspection in a timely manner could be enormous from a monetary and public awareness perspective.
Compliance: the need to make sure that all facilities are following regulations and are in compliance with government ordinances.
Public Safety: ensuring that institutions such as restaurants, hospitals, pharmacies, etc. are safe for use by the public.
Lost Revenue: making sure that all facilities under the agency’s jurisdiction are inspected, because in most cases lost inspections mean lost revenue for the agency.
Emergency Management: in the event of an emergency, it would be necessary to step up the number of inspections during the recovery phase and ensure that facilities are safe to use or occupy.

If your agency faces one or more of these challenges, it would behoove you to call us. We will show you a solution that can reduce risk, improve compliance, generate more revenue and at the same time be cost effective. Let us tell you how!

The Solution
Leverent’s solution is based on Adesso’s distributed application platform that provides an always available mobile solution for an occasionally connected enterprise. As a result, Inspectors can operate in a paradigm where they have use of a full-featured inspection application whether they are connected to the Internet or not, at the site of inspection – whether it be in a basement, an attic or a remote location. When connectivity is available, they simply synchronize the information to a central database using the click of a button. The inspection information is readily available to the rest of the enterprise to run reports, generate alerts or kick-off back-office workflows and business processes.

Full-featured Application
The inspection application looks like Forms that inspectors currently use and has field validations and rules that can be applied, making it easy to use. The application can display and carry file attachments such as photographs or documents to further improve the productivity of the inspector and the effectiveness of the inspection process.

High-impact Information Capture
The power of the inspection application is clearly in the quality of the information captured at the site. Apart from the structured data capture such as dates, text fields, etc., the application can accommodate free-form data capture such as signature, inspection notes, etc. Moreover, the richness of the information captured can include video and audio clips that are all attached to a single electronic record about the inspection. Imagine that - a single electronic record on file that captures all information about inspections at a facility with the requisite audit trail.

Peripheral Devices
It is not possible to enable high-impact information capture without the right peripheral devices such as barcode scanners, GPS locators or cameras. The solution allows integration of such devices with ease making the Inspectors very productive in the field.

High Performance
The Adesso Platform architecture is sophisticated and provides a robust foundation for building mobile applications. This foundation is fine tuned to enable high performance distributed applications on mobile devices. For example, when synchronizing information between the device and the central database, the platform has the built-in intelligence to only send the changes. This reduces the bandwidth requirements and increases performance tremendously. Leverent’s Mobile Inspection Solution Series has leveraged this architecture to create a smooth user experience for field Inspectors.

Secure
The transmission of data between the mobile device and the central database can be encrypted via secure socket layer (SSL). Furthermore, the applications are accessed by supplying username and password. Lastly, the data the application holds is automatically encrypted to the maximum allowed by the database on that platform.