Long gone are the days of filling out paper forms in the field and then bringing them back to the office to be keyed into the computer system. Your staff's time is more valuable than this and business efficiency demands a better solution. Thankfully the technology hardware to facilitate this increase in efficiency is pretty much in everyone's hands already – the smartphone.

At Emphasys Software, we heard customers talking about needing to get their PHA maintenance department teams out into the field more and to spend less time writing things down or keying information into computers. So, some years ago, Emphasys Software developed the Work Order Mobile Touch app, now available for Android phones, to meet this customer need using smartphone technology staff were already familiar with.

The Work Order Mobile Touch app fully integrates with Emphasys' Elite Work Order system and allows maintenance staff to enter time and materials for their work order tasks while in the field and on the go. The app reduces the overall time dedicated to mobile work orders with paperless processing and requires less than an hour of training for maintenance personnel. The Work Order Mobile Touch app stores data locally and then auto-syncs to the Emphasys Elite system upon wireless connection.

Since the introduction of our Work Order Mobile Touch product, our clients have reported being able to save approximately 10 minutes per work order. For our clients who process 7,000 work orders yearly, that's nearly 30 weeks they save in a year.

So what can a housing authority do with all this extra time?

For starters, an agency can establish better control over closing work orders in a timely manner, which will in turn increase a PHA's Work Order Indicator Scores. PHAs can also spend more time on preventive maintenance, which will reduce unit turnaround times.