Does the works council of your company ask questions about portatour®, and are you unsure regarding any of the points it brings up? Read on for assistance with frequently asked questions from the works council.
portatour® is first and foremost a tool for field service staff. Automatic route planning immensely simplifies daily work in field service. This is because daily work with portatour® means:
- Less effort for route planning: one push of a button does the trick!
- Support in achieving goals (number of visits, turnover,…)
- Better visibility of territory and customers
- More time for customer visits
- Less mileage on the road
- More free time in the evening and/or weekend
portatour® is interesting for the works council, too, as it supports employees in achieving business objectives. It helps to implement management’s requirements in the form of feasible plans and thus protects employees as well: if goals are unrealistic, portatour® indicates this right away.
Furthermore, optimized schedules are calculated in such a way that working hours are adhered to and thus not exceeded. The work put into planning, which until now was often done during what should be leisure time, simply melts away. portatour® takes over the planning at the push of a button and creates schedules within mere seconds. At the same time, there is no nightly reporting, as call reports in portatour® are entered during the day immediately after customer visits.
Nevertheless, the introduction of portatour® sometimes draws the attention of the works council or the data protection officer with regard to issues of data protection, surveillance and privacy. These concerns mostly result from misinformation about portatour® or due to the fact that individual functions are misunderstood. Additionally if the project goal is not clearly defined internally, there can be misunderstandings.
Ahead we address the most frequently cited issues and questions.
Can the current location of a field rep be pinpointed at any time by a manager (“remote location” or “live GPS query”)?
No, remote tracking is not possible.
When calculating the schedule, portatour® uses either the home location entered or, during the day, the address of the customer where the field rep last logged a visit. portatour® assumes that the rep intends to continue from this address. As an option, the field rep can determine their location once via GPS and have it used as the point of departure for the purposes of route planning. However, this is not necessary and in any case is only executed on the field rep’s own device. That location is not available for remote tracking. As such, portatour® also runs on devices without a GPS receiver or with the GPS receiver switched off.
We at Team portatour® explicitly distance ourselves from the remote tracking of employees, as can be found in other programs.
Does portatour® record the movements made or routes taken by employees (“GPS tracking”)?
No, GPS tracking is not possible with portatour®.
Therefore, there is no way of following when the field reps leave home, which routes they travel, or when they arrive home in the evening.
We at Team portatour® explicitly distance ourselves from automatic GPS tracking, as can be found in other programs.
How does the “geotagging” of call reports work?
Geotagging of call reports is an optional feature in portatour® that must be explicitly activated. If geotagging is turned on, this is clearly visible to the field reps. When a call report is entered, the current location is displayed as a geotag for the report, and the reps must save it themselves. Typically, report entry should be done immediately after the customer visit, but field reps can always decide when and where to enter their call reports with geotags.
Note: Geotagging in portatour® is similar to geotagging photographs on smartphones, whereby the photographer’s location is stored in the photo, to be able to search photos more easily.
What personal data of the users are stored in portatour®?
First and last name as well as e-mail address are mandatory; optionally a mobile phone number can be entered to be able to send users their personal access link via SMS. In the case of field reps, the home address is also entered, which serves as the start and end point for the daily routes. If reps do not wish to enter their home address, a nearby address can also be entered.
Do call reports also save the exact time of entry?
For better reporting, reports can be logged with an exact time. However, you have the option of saving only the date of the call reports without a time.
Do managers have access to the portatour® accounts of field representatives?
It is optionally possible to create other users who are not in the field, such as back office personnel or district managers, as so-called “supervisors”. These supervisors have access to the field representatives’ portatour® accounts. As of 10 field reps, you can restrict access rights of supervisors to individual teams through the use of user groups.
Is it clear to managers when and how often users use the software every day?
No, it is not possible to obtain detailed information on user behavior.
Are there secret statistics only for managers?
No, all data contained in portatour® is itself equally accessible to the user.
How safe is our data with you? What does portatour® do regarding data security?
For detailed information on the measures we take to ensure data security, read the article How your data is on the safe side at portatour®.
Why you should promote the use of portatour®
Finally, we would like to summarize in a few points why the works council should actively promote the introduction of portatour® in the company:
- portatour® helps your field service to increase performance by 5% to 25%. Better performance means more revenue for the company, which in turn results in secure jobs for all employees.
- Thanks to the artificial intelligence of portatour®, targets set for the field service are realistically achievable. If management sets unrealistic goals, this is immediately clear in portatour®.
- The work put into planning , which until now was often done on evenings or weekends, simply melts away.
- Field reps and management have the same level of knowledge. At regular meetings, you can rely on the same information.
- portatour® is often proposed to the company by field staff who have tested it at their own initiative and who have found it very helpful.
- portatour® is a tool that saves time and grief for field reps. The headache of optimal route planning goes away forever.
- With portatour®, field reps do not have to work longer, but rather spend the working day more efficiently and effectively.