ECAT

Have you ever used a piece of software and thought if only it could do…., it would make my day easier? That is precisely why ECAT's special projects team was formed. The team use ECAT's agility to support clients with their bespoke and unique workflows, making their job easier, faster and smarter.

What is ECAT?

ECAT stands for Electronic Compliance Action Tool and supports clients with the management of their service delivery.

Originally designed to streamline inspections and hygiene audits, we soon realised that although the basic aspects of the system improved the service delivery team's operational efficiency by up to 30%, it could do so much more.

ECAT stands for Electronic Compliance Action Tool and supports clients with the management of their service delivery.

The Trigger!

Our first lightbulb moment was when a client asked us, "could we provide proof of presence?" And that question saw the rise of special projects begin!

We already had the ability to scan barcodes as part of our pest control solution, but this didn't give the kind of proof of presence required that had triggered the question. For example, Legionella testing requires water to be run for a specified time.

Management needed reports to show this had been done, while the cleaning teams needed an efficient way to register the testing time.

The Storming!

Back at the office, the team brainstormed, and our Lead and App Developer spoke about Near Field Communication (NFC) tags. For those unfamiliar with them, this is the technology used in your bank card or phone when you tap it to pay. At the time, not all phones had this functionality, so we knew that at least some people were unlikely to be familiar with them. This meant we spoke at length about the best way to design a user interface that would require little or no training for our users.

We invited the client who had triggered this lightbulb moment to be part of the development process. The collaboration was invaluable in ensuring that the reporting function delivered, that the user experience remained front and centre and that we developed an additional feature that provided value to our clients.

The Outcome

The agility of ECAT meant that we completed the project within 10-14 days. Our client was happy to test the functionality before they formally adopted the feature and rolled it out across a number of their other sites.

This feature has grown beyond anything that we could have originally imagined. We now have thousands of tags across multiple clients, which are used in a range of different ways, from cleaning patrols to proof of delivery of letters to sites. We have also developed a range of bespoke reports and dashboard gadgets to support the reporting needs of our clients.

This functionality has been developed further into our Live Tracking feature, which allows users to see in real-time how their staff are progressing through their patrols. More recently, it has been developed further into our Active Feedback System (AFS), which allows non-ECAT users to know when an area was last actioned and provide feedback on the clients' performance.