finnCap Tech Chat | Management is child play?

Well lockdown is coming to a warm and sunny end, restrictions are being eased and we are back to socially-distanced gyms, shops and – a finnCap favourite – pub gardens (and that’s all you need in summer). Most importantly, schools are back and I’m sure I speak for all parents when I say we are very, very grateful for that. The last few months will certainly have cured many of the desire to resign and spend more time with the family. Strangely, Prince Harry resigned to spend less time with his. Parents will have discovered a whole new appreciation for school teachers and their patience and ability to manage youngsters. Undoubtedly one of the toughest things about lockdown has been managing the kids stuck at home and particularly supervising their work. Clearly we need some sort of app for child management. There is an app for everything else so why not one for busy parents to check the kids have done their schoolwork, tidied their bedrooms and fed their pets? Some sort of remote workflow management app for busy executive parents…

Remote workforce management has been a topic on my mind of late. We recently raised £6m for our corporate client, Crimson Tide, developer and supplier of mpro5, a cutting-edge cloud-enabled SaaS platform for field service management. Providing its users with the ability to remotely manage their workforce - smartphone/tablet delivered job scheduling, along with alerts and analytics, and able to integrate real-time IoT data - it has unsurprisingly seen adoption across a wide range of industries and applications. Users include big blue-chips like Tesco which uses it in 3,700 stores for checking logbooks, health & safety checks, and hot food safety checking. Northern Rail uses it to check its cleaners have cleaned trains and stations properly. The Metro uses it to make sure its free papers are delivered properly and in time. Just this week, Crimson Tide announced a January pilot scheme with the World Federation of Haemophiliacs had been converted to a 3-year contract enabling clinicians globally to scan pharmaceuticals, verifying expiry dates and authenticity, and allowing the WFH to gain real-time insight into their usage.

We are similarly impressed with Checkit’sconnected workflow management solutions. Used in healthcare, catering, manufacturing and retail, it helps complex multi-site operations track and optimise performances at every level through data driven decisioning. The blue chips using this solution include John Lewis, Waitrose and BP. In essence this software ensures the right people do the right thing, in the right place, at the right time.

I am continually taken aback by the range of applications for this sort of remote workforce management solution; a vast range of potential applications across many industry sectors; managing employee processes. This functionality has become even more important during the restrictions on travel and access. Interestingly a key use of the funds raised byCrimson Tide will be to develop a lighter touch product for the huge SME market; something we expect to instigate a dramatic change in its revenue trajectory from FY23.

So surely some smart and resourceful developer can bend this sort of cutting-edge remote workforce management tool to the needs of us parents? What responsible father would not sign up to a SaaS provision for the ability to remotely send the kids job schedules, receive an alert when homework hasn’t been ticked-off in the evening, or get a real time notification from their connected toothbrush that it hasn’t been used this bedtime? And after months of lockdown with the kids, the more remote the management, the better…