Making Every Move Count

A Tauranga company's innovative product that improves communication between companies, employees and customers is currently being trialled by a number of high profile organisations, including Scotland's Glasgow City Council.

Panztel's eziTracker is a time recording service that uses the telephone to record the work of mobile employees. The system provides immediate notification of who is working where and when by monitoring log in and log out times, it is used by a variety of companies with employees working in off-site locations such as cleaning, facilities management, home care and temping.

Jonathan Hudson, Panztel Managing Director, says the service is accurate and low cost (around $1 a week per employee), but the company has just finished a further R&D project that will see new features and flexibility add to its market potential.

Funding of $74,000 from the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology's Grants for Private Sector Research and Development (GPSRD) scheme enabled the company to increase its understanding of the complex technology behind the software.

"That research has enabled our five person R&D team to take the basic technology that we launched into the New Zealand, Australia and UK markets and add a number of refinements using complementary technologies like mobile telephones and the internet," says Mr Hudson.

The results of the R&D have just been launched and will give an improved management tool as well as better employee safety and security.

Mr Hudson says worker safety was one of the key features they sought to accommodate. "We're aware that often people are working in vulnerable situations such as homecare and there have been instances of workers being held hostage or injured. The messaging system will send a text message to a manager's mobile phone letting them know if a worker is late to arrive or fails to leave, which is particularly valuable as a security measure in high risk jobs.

Panztel was formed three years ago to develop the software, building on Mr Hudson's experiences in the UK, where he took a European telecommunications company from startup to NASDAQ float and sale. Mr Hudson sees a strong growth path for Panztel, which already has sales in hand and he is hoping to find additional capital to fuel the next stage in the company expansion.

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