ScoopMAE provides mobile-first access for global companies to communicate with employees in various locations around the world. This means an employee located in one location can easily communicate with other employee in another location very easily. The platform encapsulates business rules and centralized communication with a tie in for existing tools. Moreover, the data create a cohesive workflow from the field to the main office.
ScoopMAE has already catched attention of leading companies such as Oldcastle, LG, BC Hydro, and Kinross. These companies have started to leverage the new platform to achieve operation efficiencies and competitive advantage in the Manufacturing, Field Services, Energy & Utilities, Retail and Mining vertical markets.
In an exclusive interview, Babak Sardary, Chief Executive Officer, ScoopMAE shared more information about the product.
Learnxpress: What is the real purpose behind the creation of ScoopMAE?
Earlier in my career I ran the operations at a robotic automation company where I witnessed firsthand how businesses of all sizes struggled with paper forms, spreadsheets and emails to collect and communicate vital field data. These methods are slow and inefficient, impractical under field conditions and often result in vital information falling through cracks. With the advent of mobile and cloud technologies ScoopMAE was concepted to help businesses transform paper/spreadsheet-based and other manual processes such as inspections, audits, site reports and the like into mobile-app driven counterparts.
The benefits include reduction of manual steps in gathering, entering and uploading data, increased data quality and fidelity, faster communication of critical information to key personnel and availability of real time analytics. Together these benefits lead to increased efficiency, increased workplace safety (as hazards are detected and removed faster), better product / service quality (proactive decisions and continuous improvement informed by analytics) and worker engagement (apps are easy and fun to use)
Learnxpress: You have stated that ScoopMAE enable developers to create apps. We would like to know if apps can be created without coding?
The Apps in ScoopMAE are actually often configured by business managers, business analysts on their own with initial guidance either from us or from their internal IT resources. These folks do not require programming skills to build Scoop Apps i.e., no coding is needed. However for those customers that want a deeper integration with their backend systems their developers/ IT staff could take advantage of the ScoopMAE REST API (Application Programming Interface)
Learnxpress: How does ScoopMAE improve productivity?
Per question 1 above ScoopMAE eliminates many currently manual steps. On the data collection side these include steps such as: seeking a paper / electronic form (e.g, spreadsheet), often printing the form, manually re-entering the data into a central database after completion of the form. On the communication side ScoopMAE helps eliminate chaos and issues associated with broadcast emails by centralizing all communication as contextual comments in relation to each entry in the system (scoop) and taking full advantage of pictures and video to reduce the time to clearly communicate subtle / technical issues in the field. On the reporting side, managers can create saved queries/PDF reports on the fly and use these to access purpose-driven entries say to run a weekly status meeting or focus attention on high priority issues without needing to waste time hunting through tens of documents, file folders and emails. Finally on the analysis side Scoop increases productivity by providing quickly configurable dashboards that feed off of the real time data (in-situ / native) thus eliminating the need to move or export/import data into another database for analysis.
Learnxpress: Can ScoopMAE be implemented in IT companies?
Yes even though ScoopMAE was inspired by field operations at industrial companies, many IT companies also have paper form / ad-hoc processes that can bnenefit from ScoopMAE in many similar ways. We are also rolling out a new partnership program whereby qualified IT solution providers could also join ScoopMAE as VAR partners and generate new revenues by providing solution configuration and training services to end-customers in their industry verticals.
Learnxpress: Who do you think are the potential competitors to ScoopMAE?
By far the biggest competitor to ScoopMAE are ad-hoc processes using paper forms, spreadsheets, emails and file folders to handle data collection, communication and storage of field data. There are also a number of other quality vendors out there that have been providing electronic forms to replace these methods. While these are definitely a step forward, at ScoopMAE we think they fall short of unlocking the massive potential of mobile devices and cloud computing. The real key here to us lies in building a collaborative network that’s not just about collecting form data but which allows lateral real time communication and problem solving and ultimately Mobile Awareness and Engagement (MAE) and this is what we are focused on delivering.
Learnxpress: What is the future of ScoopMAE?
ScoopMAE is focused on providing increasingly more powerful features and flexibilities to businesses so they could configure apps to automate their processes, engage their workers and use the platform to analyze the data generated for actionable information. Keeping our eye on this mission there are many exciting possibilities that we are exploring in the applications of wearables and Internet of Things (IoT).
