Anne Parkin
Lead Consultant
Aon Global Risk Consulting
On the Go and in One Go with iPads
Consultants leap into 3G technology and turn around site surveys in record time.
When a management company in Abu Dhabi wanted surveys of 750 of its buildings done in six months, standard assessment processes wouldn't come close to delivering results on such a tight schedule.
"Generally when you do a property survey on various facilities you go out and do the survey and then you can spend as much as 10 to 20 days doing various reviews and preparing a report," said Anne Parkin, lead consultant at Aon Global Risk Consulting.
But the prospective Abu Dhabi client made it clear it couldn't afford to wait that long.
Enter the Apple iPad 3G technology, which had just come onto the market. Parkin eyed the iPad and saw it as a godsend. "The iPad had just come out and everybody was talking about it, it was everywhere, and I thought it would be great to utilize this technology," she said.
"What happened was that I was brainstorming with our account executive and I said to him it would be great if we could go out and do this work onsite with iPads, and then basically as soon as we finished doing the surveys onsite we would be able to send the report through to the client," Parkin said.
The account executive bought into the idea and soon so did the client, who wanted detailed information to help plan improvements to buildings for the next 10 to 20 years. "The client was very excited about being on the cutting edge of technology," Parkin said.
"The unique thing we were doing in the Middle East was gathering basic information so we didn't need to do the formal reviews we normally had to prepare," she said. "So basically we were able to provide the client with the information as soon as we left the site, which is really a unique thing when you're doing risk-control reports."
This process was saving money as well as time because Aon didn't have to write down the information twice--"we didn't have to write it down in a notebook and then go back and write it down on a computer," Parkin said. "You can get it done on one go. That was the main reason the client selected us, because we were forward-thinking enough to use new technology to save time and money."
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September 15, 2011 Copyright 2011© LRP Publications |
