Over the past couple of weeks there have been some great debates regarding iOS6, Android, and even Windows Phone 8 (sorry Blackberry) among OnForce Pros on our LinkedIn forum (if you are an OnForce Pro you should sign up).  I thought it would be worth summarizing some of the thoughts as well as sharing my own experience and perspective as a way to broaden the debate.

Overall, Pros seem neutral to negative about the new OS and neutral to positive about the iPhone 5.  Some highlights/problems cited from the discussion regarding iOS6:

• iOS 6 is killing battery life!  Adrian Kingsley-Hughes’s of ZD Net gives his view.
• Passbook seems almost non-functional.  Bev Robb said: “[iPhone 4] It was a train wreck with the Passbook”  Tuaw’s overview of the problem
• Several Pros are choosing to wait to upgrade until there is more stability
• Some reports of wifi connection challenges – ZD Net’s view here
• Split perspectives on Maps.  Here’s Tim Cook’s letter about it.
• Some installation problems
• Some Pros having great experiences and problem free

As for me, I’m still using my iPhone 4 on iOS6, although I’m about to switch to my Galaxy SII for a while.  Have to say that I’m still not clear about whether iOS 6 is an upgrade.  I like the VIPs in mail, but it seems like battery life is reduced.  However, either I am getting used to it or it’s getting better for some hard to understand reason  Initially I felt that I could watch the battery drain (and others have said the same), but now I’m not sure if it’s different from when I was on iOS5.

Also, can’t tell for sure, but it seems to lose wifi connection periodically.  It recovers quickly, but I don’t remember this before iOS 6.  Maps – I haven’t had a problem but I haven’t used it much.  In the end, I think that iOS 6 has pushed my iPhone 4 one notch closer to obsolescence.  I’m not unhappy, but I’m not impressed either.

Yesterday, in a conversation with my neighbor I got the best endorsement for iPhone that I could have.  My neighbor is excited about his Samsung Galaxy Nexus SIII (Could they make their phone names any longer?) and was telling me he thought that this was Apple’s last big release.  I was agreeing with him that it might be true although we had different reasons.  His reasoning was that his SIII was so much faster and far ahead and Apple just wasn’t keeping up.  I was a bit skeptical as he quoted processor speeds and mentioned that I hadn’t seen that the faster processors lead to consistently improved performance… and he proceeded to demo his phone and watch it freeze for a few seconds while scrolling and then come back… then freeze again.  We proceeded to test who could do basic tasks faster – like finding a phone number.  The iPhone was much faster.  This is the not so well kept secret of why Apple continues to do so well.  The phones just work and work well.  You don’t have to spend a lot of time tuning and managing settings like my neighbor does on Android.  This conversation really drove home a point though – the specs do matter to buyers.  As consumers we often buy on specs – more is better.

I’m no Apple fan boy.  I love the competition and I’m really hoping that Microsoft will get back into the game with their innovative approach with Windows Phone 8.  As for Apple, I’m watching the problems stack up with this latest release and I have real concerns that they erode Apple’s key competitive strength – the phones just work.  In particular, the problems with Maps are hard for me to understand.  At first, I thought that people were over-reacting to a few small issues, but it seems fairly wide-spread.  How does Apple – with all their focus on customer experience and quality – let this happen?  Is it indicative of greater problems as the company scales or problems stemming from the loss of Steve Jobs?  Stack this one with all the other reported issues and I get worried about their future.  If Apple doesn’t deliver the best quality and best experience, what are they?  It’s still early and there’s a lot of noise about the problems that makes it hard to tell how serious they really are.  When the dust settles we’ll have a better picture.

Lastly, in our Mobile Perspectives Study (pre-iOS6/iPhone 5) iOS users had a Net Promoter Score of 69 while Android users were at 27.  Further, iOS was 10 or more points higher in satisfaction when it came to performing 10 of 11 key tasks with the phone (like email, phone calls, voice mail, video, etc).  The only category where Android scored better was in Maps/Directions which makes sense given that Android has had turn by turn navigation.  It will be very interesting to see how the scores shift in the next survey.

What has been your experience?

Post by Scott Epple, OnForce Product Manager

As smartphone owners, we can tell the apps we use to keep us up-to-date on almost anything:  maybe we’re tagged in someone’s photo on Instatwitterbook, or news breaks that Curiosity shot its lasers for the first time, or our opponent just played “xylophone” on a triple word score (ouch!).

Of course, some of this stream-o’-info is important, and some of it’s just noise.  One of the dilemmas of our modern digital lives is that much of the world’s information is available to us almost instantly – what are we to do with all of it?  This connected existence forces us to push the limits of our distraction-blocking powers and carefully consider what information matters to us, lest we look up to find we’ve spent the past three hours reading Facebook status updates.

In field services, distinguishing critical information from all the rest is, well, critical.  When we talk with OnForce Pros, we consistently hear the same thing:  OnForce notifications are most definitely important. Pros come to OnForce to find the best IT and CE field service work, and expect to be notified about new work opportunities as soon as they’re available.  It’s crucial that OnForce alerts make their way to Pros quickly and effectively.  Yet, we’ve traditionally relied on email and SMS but we’re offering another way to alert OnForce Pros of new opportunities.  And it’s better.

To answer this call, we’re bringing the speed and power of push notifications to OnForce iPhone and Android apps! With push notifications, Pros will be alerted of important work order updates through their iOS or Android notification center.  This brings a number of benefits for OnForce Pros (and ultimately to the service buyers they support):

• Faster response: many Pros have told us that they want more than just plain old SMS and email alerts. The process of receiving an email or SMS, opening the OnForce app, finding the relevant work order, and opening it is inefficient.  With push notifications, responding is faster and easier than ever.

• Easy, one-swipe access: from the lock screen or from anywhere where the notification tray is accessible, swipe or click on a notification to directly launch the OnForce app.

• Non-intrusive, ever-present alerts: to help keep track of recent updates, OnForce notifications are held in the notification center and, on the iPhone, the OnForce app icon is always badged with a count of new notifications.

• Never miss a thing: a custom sound differentiates OnForce from other notifications received to help easily recognize and respond to important updates.

We’ve also created a new section in the app, “Inbox,” where notifications will be stored.  This will allow Pros to keep track of and access the last 20 notifications they’ve received when needed.

This big update to our iPhone and Android apps is currently in beta and we’re aiming to have it ready for you to download in the next 30-60 days. Please stay tuned here for updates – and if you’re interested in helping beta test, reply to this blog post and we’ll do our best to get you in!  OnForce Pros, if you don’t have the app yet, you can download it from iTunes or Google Play.  When notifications come out you’ll just need to update.

Guest Blog: Scott Epple, OnForce Product Manager

As many of you may know, we released our first Android beta app in February to a small group of OnForce Pros, and have been steadily iterating on the product and growing our beta group in the months since. Today, we’re pleased to announce the release of version one of the OnForce mobile app for Android smartphones to the Google Play store. If you’re in a hurry, you can grab the app here. If you have a minute to stick around though, I’d like to share a few of the learnings we’ve picked up along the way.

Android’s a jungle

We always knew our OnForce Pro community was a diverse crowd, now we know their choice in smartphones is just as varied. During the beta, the OnForce app was installed on 144 distinct devices running on 23 distinct flavors of the Android OS, not one of which holds more than 8% usage share among Pros. When people talk about fragmentation, this is what they mean. Developing for such a wide array of devices makes for an interesting challenge, but one that we know will be worth it as we expect the app to reach about two-thirds of our Pro base that use Android devices.

User feedback is invaluable

In the past four months, we’ve grown our beta group from a small handful to more than 500 Pros. One thing OnForce Pros have never been shy about is sharing their opinion – and we couldn’t be happier about that. It sounds obvious, but it bears repeating:  user feedback is critical to the process of building great products and services, and great companies. Our beta Pros have given us feedback in spades and our whole team was able to see it and read it in real time. Feedback sparked many conversations and debates internally, it helped us discover issues faster, and it gave us data to prioritize what we work on. And it’s not just a beta thing:  we’ll keep that line of communication open for all users of the mobile app. So, send us a thought, a question, a suggestion:  it all helps us improve.

Powerful tools lead to powerful results

We’ve written before about the impact of mobile technology on field services. The results continue to confirm our belief that Pros in the field are able to be more responsive, more efficient, and more reliable when equipped with the proper tools. We see evidence of this in our data and in comments from our beta Pros. Today’s announcement means that these capabilities will now be available to thousands more OnForce Pros. In fact, we expect that around 85% of our community will now carry the OnForce app on their Android or iOS device.  Our plan is to continue to arm this community with the features and information necessary to deliver great service efficiently.

Last, but certainly not least, the entire OnForce team would like to say a sincere thank you to all of the Pros who participated in the Android beta for your honest, thoughtful, and constructive feedback. We’re proud to have worked with you to get this app shipped, and we’re excited as ever for what’s to come!

Guest Blog: Scott Epple, OnForce Product Manager

We’re living in pretty exciting times.  Most of us carry around small computers with us everywhere we go.  The same computing power that used to take up the size of a large room, now fits handily in our pockets.  Smartphones are connecting us to the people and places we care about, helping us be productive anywhere, and making our lives easier in ways we never imagined.

Advances in technology are also changing the game in field services, and OnForce is playing center field.  We believe the smartphone is the new must-have tool for field service pros, and we’re leveraging mobile platforms to advance what’s possible for technicians on the go.

We launched our iPhone app at the end of 2011 and quickly followed with a beta release of our Android app in February.  Our technicians are now equipped with powerful, responsive mobile apps running on their iOS and Android devices.  It’s enabling them to work better and smarter than ever before.

As a service buyer, the benefits of this innovation for you are huge.  You need pros who are responsive, timely, efficient, and productive.  OnForce’s mobile apps are helping field service technicians make impressive gains across all of these attributes.

We’ve seen amazing adoption so far, with over a quarter of a million actions being completed through our apps.  Here are just a few ways OnForce Pros are taking advantage of our mobile apps to improve their level of service:

* Faster response:  Pros are reacting to new opportunities 68% faster through OnForce mobile apps compared to other methods.

* Improved efficiency: Pros report saving an average of 12 minutes per work order on administrative tasks.

* Greater reliability: OnForce mobile users have seen 200% greater year-to-date improvement in their on-time arrival performance compared to their competition.

Service buyers have long come to OnForce for our trusted network of field service pros.  This network just got a lot more powerful.  And we don’t plan to slow down: our Android app will be available publicly in the Google Play store Spring-Summer 2012.  We’re going to continue to push the bounds of innovation in field services and we’re glad you’ve chosen to join us for the ride!

Guest blog post by Kevin Kay, founder, Willows of Easley

When it comes to technology, I just want it to work.

Technology is essential for every small business – but we’re not in a position to have an ‘IT Department’ dedicated to helping us manage our network, set up a workstation or troubleshoot a technical problem.

Every day it seems like there’s a need to upgrade our software, or there’s a new gadget that’s critical for running our business. I see value every time we invest in technology, but we can’t afford to jump on every new tech trend as soon as it enters the market.

Just recently we took a leap. We decided that we wanted several new Apple products (I’ve been a happy MacBook owner for a while now) and I went to the Apple Retail store to talk to them about it. Apple has in-store associates just for SMBs (who knew?) and I spoke with them about what I was looking to do and they outlined a plan to make it happen.

• Phase 1: Data Transfer – We were an all PC business and we had nearly a decade of data that we needed to transfer over to new Apple workstations. I brought in our old PC’s and had Apple transfer everything over to our new iMacs.
• Phase 2: Configure QuickBooks – This was the biggest hurdle that we had to overcome and it wasn’t something that Apple could help us with at the retail location. We needed to update our QuickBooks software without losing our data. The software was so old, that we had to upgrade to QuickBooks 2009, before we could update to QuickBooks 2012. We needed an outside expert that could help us – and Apple referred us to OnForce Services – who worked closely with us to help solve our problem.
• Phase 3: Time Capsule – Once everything was set up, we wanted to be sure that it was backed up so that we wouldn’t lose anything. We purchased an Apple Time Capsule and tapped OnForce Services again to help with set up and configuration.

Our data transition in-store went great and we were equally impressed by the quality of service delivery from OnForce Services. The technician who came on-site was able to diagnose the problem and get our new and improved QuickBooks system up and running – and set up our Time Capsule so that we were covered in the event of a system failure.

If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t change a thing. I have a business to run and I’m not interested in setting up work stations or researching how to correct a computer or network problem. The process through Apple Retail and OnForce Services was quality all the way; it was quick; and it fit my budget.

I’m confident in Apple products and, because of the quality experience that I had with the service delivery, I’m confident about OnForce Services. I plan on working with Apple Retail and OnForce Services again in the future.