Electronic Service Signature Solutions?

LilJC asks: "I work at a company that does service work nationwide for a major chain. Our vendor requires a signature for every visit to every store. We have been running thus far from ICR on faxes and linking to the faxed signature image on our web site, but are having numerous problems trying to depend on a thousand+ faxes a month coming through perfectly. We are looking for an economical alternative that would allow a contractor in the field to get a signature and transmit it to us in an system I can idiot-proof. Something along the lines of the UPS guy's digital clipboard, but without the pricetag of a Telxon. Brainstorming myself, I wonder if there must be a cheap PDA/modem combo or the like that would allow a contractor to enter required visit information, get a store signature, go home, plug it into their phone line (without needing a computer), and hit send. I can code and am not afraid of doing some custom work for an app on a handheld. Does the Slashdot community know of any projects along these lines, or have ideas about a wise choice for hardware to homegrow the software on?"

Comments

A possible solution...

[MrIcee]

I'll make an assumption about your problem here that may not be true. But here goes... assuming that by *signature* you mean 'a verified way of determining who went to the store'... and that perhaps other things than the signature could be used.

One possibility would be to issue each vendor and each employee that requires tracking a unique bar-code ID. Then a simple scan tool, one carried by the employee and one at the vendor could be used. The vendor could scan the employees ID and the employee could scan both the vendor and his own ID and that info could then be easily uploaded and visualized in a large number of ways. That would give you verification in both directions, as well as a timestamp of exactly when the employee visited.

Re:Can you afford it?

[pbox]

One more thing, would it be not easier to write a fax server system, in which your contractors can fax in the signatures, and it would organize it and archive it automatically?

You can have the field contractors dial the server's fax number plus the order number, and the server would store it accordingly.

This would utilize already technology that is present everywhere (ie fax machine) and would not put any burden onto your field contractors (in regards to carrying/learning/purchasing new equipment/software)

Royal Linea

[jayrtfm]

the Royal Linea may be a good platform for you, since it has a built in modem, and is reasonably priced.

Pick two:

[jolshefsky]

• Features
• Cost
• Development time

Pick two:

• Features: allow a contractor in the field to get a signature and transmit it to us in an system I can idiot-proof
• Cost: economical alternative

In other words: this may take a while.

We're doing this...

[knewter]

Actually the company I work at, InLine (http://www.InLine.com) is doing this currently. I'm developing the app right now (in .net), and we're almost live with it. We also tie to a customer database, which keeps track of various assets the customer has with us (an asset-tracking, trouble ticket system, basically). Rather robust, if I might say so. Alas, no chance of open-sourcing this project - we've spent a considerable amount of time refining it.

Anyway, point is, it can be done, and relatively easily. But it will take time to do it right.

Re:Why go electronic?

[duffbeer703]

They need to look at their forms and the fax system.

Improving the fax backend would be infinitely cheaper and more reliable in the end than moving the problem to the field.