ALcontrol Laboratories switches on to mobile office and works the field

2 August 2004 , ROTHERHAM , UK : An environmental disaster is nightmarish. With past incidents in Europe like virus epidemics, contaminants in the water supply and air pollution, ALcontrol Laboratories is on the front line to help local authorities test and analyse crucial samples.

ALcontrol is acknowledged as an authority in this area and has built its resources to become one of the largest testing organisations in Europe with a Group turnover of approximately £60 million per year, with 30 laboratories in countries such as Holland , Sweden , UK and Ireland . Its UK operations alone require a staff of 700, responsible for generating a turnover of £31 million and tests approximately 2.0 million samples per year.

The nature of its work is high profile and requires on-site environmental sampling. It has mobile teams which tests food, water, air and soil quality. Using its laboratory precision, it can highlight the contaminants found and recommend corrective procedures.

However, its mobile teams consisting staff and laboratory experts who performs site visits need constant access to the laboratories in order to refer and obtain the most up-to-date information. The numerous field and remote workers also require access to their email and critical data while on the move or on client sites. “The environment in which we operate demands that we have constant access to the most up-to-date information,” said ALcontrol Data Security & IT Support Specialist Tom Rabbitt.

This situation changed as the non-voice services segment in the mobile telecommunication begin to rise in prominence. Recently, ALcontrol began to explore the technological feasibility of a mobile office for its field teams with a large UK-based mobile telecommunication service provider.

The result was an easy-to-implement, easy-to-use solution which could be immediately deployed to provide real time, 24/7 connectivity and access to corporate information. Furthermore, it uses the existing mobile phones, PDAs and laptops that ALcontrol's staff already possesses and use in their daily work. This meant ALcontrol's mobile teams can receive job allocations and information updates while traveling and, critically, can now use the time between jobs to feed information to the ALcontrol headquarters instantaneously, saving time and reducing costs. In addition to sending and receiving corporate email while away from their desks, the teams can instantly update their calendars, to-do tasks and contact details.

The issue of high connectivity access costs brought on by the mobile office service was also addressed. The mobile office service had pegged a fixed usage rate of £30 per user per month for unlimited connectivity access – this had meant this cost was the same no matter how much it's used by ALcontrol's staff.

The mobile office service can be quickly deployed as it recognised the use of email addresses. It supports email systems including Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino. This meant ALcontrol did not have to incur additional capital expenditure for hardware nor face any disruption to its activities as it embraced mobile office technology.

Furthermore, the new mobile office service guaranteed that ALcontrol's company data was highly secured at all times. This is made possible as the data transmitted is encrypted at every stage. And more critically, using the mobile office service meant ALcontrol can drastically reduce the important response times as connectivity to the laboratories were constant and on-demand. For example, in a scenario where a Health & Safety Manager working offsite must be alerted to a serious health and safety issue, ALcontrol's team members can immediately communicate and draft a report with detailed assessment of the situation and have it sent by email. The manager can be alerted to the arrival of the email via Short Message Service (SMS) alert in real time, and respond instantly to multiple key personnel, dealing with a potentially serious and hazardous situation in minutes rather than days.