Ian Williams, one of the UK's leading property service specialists, recently gave a presentation at the UK Mobile Communications Conference in London. The event gave an insight into creating a fully supported mobile infrastructure in order to deliver flexibility within a business, regardless of location. Rob Lomas, Operations Support Manager, and Stephen Harvey, IT Manager for Ian Williams gave their presentation to a packed audience, which included delegates from John Lewis Partnership, PricewaterhouseCoopers and major Housing Associations.

They discussed the implementation of handheld technology in the delivery of asset management services.

They also shared the challenges the company had faced during the implementation stage and detailed how they had chosen the right handheld device for their technicians.

As a company that highly values its customers, Ian Williams' decision to use mobile technology has added great value, generating a 30% improvement in efficiency from its mobile work force.

The use of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) has enabled technicians to download their daily schedule, rather than having to go into the office each morning.

This now means technicians often arrive for their first job early and remain punctual for all their appointments during the day.

Clients can now access and track any job online, view the status of work, look at due dates and even log a repair.

Rob Lomas says: 'We were delighted to be given the opportunity to explain the successes we have achieved with mobile technology, to companies such as IBM, Siemens HiPath Wireless LAN and Nokia'.

'Using mobile technology has been hugely beneficial to us and our clients'.

'Not only have we been able to streamline our working practices, we now use mobile vehicle tracking to improve our responsiveness'.