Add Kevah Works to your Arsenal.

With an ever growing market share and an ever increasing number of offerings the commercial cleaning equipment industry is fast changing to adopt the latest and greatest technological advances, especially in the field of commercial cleaning management software. Gone are the days when the site owner or the site manager were stuck filling endless paperwork, snail mail delivering it to all the stake holders for action and then painstakingly keeping  track of each step to ensure a quality outcome.

Today commercial cleaning equipment includes software tools that are fast becoming the cornerstone of efficiency and profitability for the biggest players in the commercial cleaning industry. The smaller players are also realizing the power of such software tools in streamlining their business and make it easier to manage, more competitive and ultimately more profitable, but what about the costs?

The good news is that thanks to years of experience in the field of facility management software and the ability of taking on board a great amount of feedback directly from the trenches and translate it into a solid and extremely affordable software solution, Valorem Systems, with the ubiquitous Kevah Works, is providing even the smallest player in the industry a piece of commercial cleaning equipment with the power and the weapons to successfully compete with the giants.

Kevah Works is a web base application suitable and completely scalable to suit any commercial cleaning business and built with the latest web technology to make it highly available, user friendly, easily customizable and completely affordable. It is without doubt the most effective piece of commercial cleaning equipment any commercial cleaning company could possibly add to their business efficiency arsenal to increase productivity and establish new supplemental streams of income.

Competitiveness for commercial cleaning businesses is vital and software management automation has become extremely important in an industry where even the smallest efficiency can mean the difference between failure and success. The ability to quickly process and leverage real time information from and to managed sites has proven to be the solution in acquiring better contracts and then managing those contracts to completion in an efficient and remunerative manner.

To make the transition from old and obsolete manual commercial cleaning management methods to a cutting edge, cloud based software as a service application easy and fast, Valorem Systems is now offering a 30 days free trial of Kevah Works complemented by an exclusive and affordable starter package that could see your commercial cleaning business management completely automated and paperless in only a few short days. Valorem Systems will also provide reliable support and know-how to help your cleaning business transition to Kevah Works painlessly every step of the way. Overcome the digital divide to compete with the big market players and take your commercial cleaning business to the next level now with Kevah Works!

Are you finding it tough to run and manage your contract cleaning business? Are you overwhelmed by thousands of paper documents flooding your files in a disorderly fashion and disappearing when you need to retrieve them? Are you loosing track of work orders and struggling to quality assure your services? You are not alone. But do not despair! With Kevah Works, the premier contract cleaning business management software, all your contract cleaning management problems could be solved in the blink of an eye…Or, I should say, in a few clicks of a mouse or taps of your fingers.

One of the major problems for any contract cleaning business manager is to keep track and be on the top of all that is happening every day in each of your sites. It is humanly impossible to achieve any form of control and therefore the ability to manage and grow your contract cleaning business in an effective way only by trusting your memory or your obsolete manual business data filing and retrieval system.

Expect your paper based systems and old fashion spread sheets to become harder and harder to handle as your contract cleaning business grows and, unless you resort to hiring extra staff, sooner or later you are destined to lose track of it all and rather than running your business, you will be running in circles, lose sight of urgent or important tasks at hand and fail to take advantage of new opportunities to make money as you are too busy chasing your back log.

Kevah Works, software for contract cleaning business management, has been specifically designed and built to overcome such roadblocks and give you the ability to become extremely efficient in handling and keeping track of daily tasks for each of your sites eliminating the need to increase your work force and reducing your frustrations to almost zero. Kevah Works is easy to use so you do not need to be a propeller head to make the most of it and can concentrate on your core business rather than getting lost in tasks that do not make you any money.

You can either decide to set up Kevah Works, your contract cleaning business management software, by yourself or get it customized and branded to fit your organization by the professionals at Valorem Systems for a very affordable fee. Once configured, Kevah Works can be accessed virtually from everywhere on most digital devices, giving you the ability to free your mind from the clutter and leverage your expertise to increase your bottom line. Kevah Works is extremely affordable and scalable and can grow with your business. Start small by digitizing your most important sites and then add more sites as you grow, eliminating the need to mentally or physically keep track of your work flow.

Sounds exciting? Indeed if you are looking for a definitive solution to electronically manage your contract cleaning business needs you have finally found it. And you can start without spending a dime. All you have to do is take advantage of the Kevah Works 30 days free trial and start customizing it to fit your business needs. The experts at Valorem Systems are available to assist you in every aspect, from totally building it for you to giving you all the know-how and support you need to be able to make the most of it in no time flat.

Do not procrastinate any longer. Take advantage of this offer today and start building your contract cleaning business of tomorrow. Contact us or start your Kevah Works 30 days free trial. You will be amazed of what you will be able to achieve with Kevah Works, premier software for your contract cleaning business management.

The trend is pretty clear, smartphones are increasingly becoming more and more powerful with the latest models running multi-threading quad-core CPUs. But what function of a smartphone could be so power hungry to require so much power to run? The answer is no doubt those AMOLED  (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode) high definition touch screens now reaching up to 4.7” on the HTC One X or even up to 4.9” on the soon to be released Samsung Galaxy III.

Still, I do not know about you, but no matter how crisp and clear that smartphone touch screen is, I’d rather be running my janitorial services management software and quality assurance business on my beloved 10.1” Android tablet or on the iPad. The problem is that both my tablets are Wi-Fi only and sadly become much less useful as soon as the office Wi-Fi connection is out of range which kind of defeats the purpose of those comfortable, mobile pads. But what if you could connect your tablet and access Kevah Works from any of your sites? That would definitely give you an edge in managing your janitorial services business and it’s pretty easy too which is a definite plus.

The solution to the connectivity conundrum, a part from purchasing 3G tablets of course which would be unwise at this point in time, is to become a walking, human hotspot. Sounds cool…Does it not? Well, we are always carrying that “smart” phone with us anyway and with mobile data becoming more and more affordable, it only makes sense to leverage its power and expand its reach. One easy way to do that is to use the “Portable Wi-Fi Hotspot” function found natively on all Android 2.3 and above smartphones (earlier Android versions can use available apps) and on the iPhone 4 and 4S…Actually for accuracy on the iPhone this function is called “Personal Hotspot”…

So if you are out and about running your janitorial services business and you are powered by Android, just go to your smartphone settings and tap on “Wireless & Networks”.  Look down the list of settings and select “Portable Wi-Fi hotspot”. Then tap on “Portable Wi-Fi hotspot settings”. If you are an iPhone user tap on settings and select “Personal hotspot”.  In both cases, here you can give your hotspot a memorable name and change the default password which I strongly recommend. Up to 5 devices can connect to your hotspot so you can not only get your laptop or tablet connected, but also get a colleague or a friend to connect to your portable wireless network when they are in range if you so wish.

To connect your portable device to your hotspot, on the portable device access your wireless settings and scan for Wi-Fi networks. Once your network is detected, tap on it to enter your password and connect. The only downside is that the portable hotspot function is fairly intensive on the smartphone battery, so if you are using Kevah Works while out and about running your janitorial services business and prefer to fill your forms or manage your sites on the more comfortable tablet, my suggestion is to connect your tablet to your smartphone hotspot sparingly, for example when you need to refresh your Kevah Works dashboard or sync your forms or jobs if using the mobile app.

If you would like to experience how Kevah Works can benefit your janitorial services business,  just test drive Kevah Works absolutely free and with no commitment for a full month. This means that you get the opportunity to create your sites and get the feeling of what Kevah Works can do for your business by using immediately the inbuilt, generic forms first. Once you get the hang of it all and it won’t take long, you can start building your own forms and model the application to fit and efficiently manage your business workflow. Or we can build your forms on your specifications and get your janitorial services business management set up and running if you prefer for a very affordable fee; just let us know.

Take a step in the right direction, subscribe to Kevah Works NOW!

We have seen how to work with Kevah Works Mobile forms in the getting started visual tutorial.

Click here to see the Kevah Works Mobile getting started tutorial

In this tutorial we will look at Kevah Works Mobile “Jobs” tab. This will give you ideas on how to utilize this core feature of Kevah Works Mobile for your sites.

Every task that needs to be performed on site can be documented as a Kevah Works Job.

This will allow to:

• Track all contracted tasks
• Schedule periodical tasks
• Register and manage Extra Jobs
• Staff can check Jobs schedules
• Staff can mark Jobs a “completed” when done.

There are 4 distinct “Types” of Job:

• Periodicals
• Work Orders
  
• Extra Work
• Form

We are in Kevah Works Mobile and we want to create a periodical job for one of our sites.  A periodical job is a job that is scheduled to be performed regularly over a period of time.
Tap on the Jobs tab to access the navigation menu from where jobs can be sorted by status: To Do, Started and Overdue. The above view is “All Jobs” where all the jobs related to a particular site can be viewed.
Let’s tap on the “Create New Job” button on the top right corner of the screen to open the “Create New Job” form.

Fill in the Job title, description, and your reference number and start date.  As Job Type select “Periodical”.

By selecting Periodical in the “Job Type” field you will be prompted to provide details on how often and for how long the job must be performed.  Here above we have selected a quarterly schedule have declared that this job takes 3 days to be completed, there will be two occurrences of the job and the end date is set exactly in 6 months.

This Periodical Job is now ready to be created so we go ahead and tap on the “Create” button.

The Periodical Job is added and synchronized and then the instances we created appear in the All Jobs list.

In this case we called the Periodical Job “Scheduled Maintenance” and we can see the two instances here above. Kevah Works Mobile creates series of Jobs called instances each with unique Due Dates.
Notice how the status for the Job Due on the 4 May 2012 is “to-do” while the status for the instance due on the 4 June 2012 is “Raised”.  Periodical Jobs can be reviewed and the history of each instance is accessible in the same series.

Many details of the periodical jobs can be edited after creation. For this example we are going to open the Scheduled Maintenance job due on the 4 May 2012, see what fields can be edited and then change its progress field to “Started”. Note that this is only possible for jobs that are “To Do”. Periodical jobs instances in the future can only be changed from raised to cancelled.

All the fields that are not dimmed can be edited. There is only a compulsory field that needs to be filled marked by a red asterisk. In this case we change the “Progress” filed by tapping on the down-arrow next to the field and selecting “Started”.

We then enter a comment in the comment box and we scroll all the way down the job form and tap on “Save”. The periodical instance of this job will now be visible under the ‘Started” tab.

From here we can report when the job gets completed. We select the job by ticking the box next to it and then select “Due Date” if the job was completed by the due date, “today” if the job was completed today or a custom date can be entered. As soon as the job is marked “completed” it will disappear from the site’s list of jobs. If the job is not completed by the due date, it will go under the “overdue” tab where we can see all the jobs that are overdue in a single list for easy access.

Of course all of the above can be followed and managed in real time by all authorized Kevah Works users linked to this particular site by logging on to the Kevah Works dashboard from any connected browser.

In the next tutorial we will look at the other types of jobs available in Kevah Works Mobile.

Until then why not take advantage of the 30 days full trial of Kevah Works we are currently offering. There is no commitment on your part and you can start building your sites workflow structure immediately. We can help you get started easily and quickly. Also remember the smart phone app is free and that Kevah Works can also be used from your PC, laptop, tablet or any compatible device connected to the internet.

Start your trial now by using the “sign up” button here above on the right and take your business to the next level affordably and with little effort on your part.

If you are still thinking about leveraging the power of Kevah Works for your organization, here is a visual on how the Kevah Works Android App looks and feels on an Android smart phone. The App is free and can be easily found, downloaded and installed on any Android device.

Valorem Systems is currently offering a 30 days trial of the full application for you to subscribe to and test with no commitment on your part for a full month. Standard cleaning forms are included in the trial version and are designed to let you start managing your sites as soon as you confirm your trial subscription.

And this is how it looks and what you can do on your Android smart phone. Of course if you have an iPhone you will need to download the Kevah Works App from the App Store, but the look and feel and functionality remain pretty much the same.

To find and download Kevah Works for Android, just tap on the “Play Store” icon in All apps.
For Apple devices just tap on the App Store icon.

Once installed, just tap on the Kevah Works icon in All apps to start it. You can also add the Kevah Works icon to your home screen by using the “Add to Home” button in your settings.

You are presented with the Kevah Works app log in screen. Simply type the email address you are registered in Kevah Works with, your password and tap on “Log in”.

As soon as you log in, the very first synchronization will start to download your Kevah Works profile and forms. Be patient as this may take a couple of minutes to complete.

Once the first sync is completed, you are ready to tap on the drop-down arrow and select the site you would like to open.

Under the “Forms” tab you will see the forms available to you for the site you have just accessed.
For our example, we will open the “Cleaning Inspection” by tapping on its link.

In this form example, you can see listed all the sub-locations that are to be inspected for this particular site. Kevah Works forms are very flexible and can be easily customized to show only sub-locations relevant to each specific site. Let’s look at the Female Toilet  form.

And here we have filled the form by selecting an answer to each question. Please note: when “Unsatisfactory” and “Not Done” are selected, a link to the “Non Conformance Report” form is displayed. These two “Non Conformance” forms are linked to this report and need to be opened and filled before the report can be saved.

In the “Non Conformance Report” pictures of the location can be attached as visual proof. The pictures can be taken while filling the form by leveraging the smart phone camera. Tap on “Take Picture” to do so.

Pictures taken beforehand and saved in memory can also be easily retrieved and attached to the form by simply tapping on “Choose Picture” and selecting them. This multimedia feature is very useful and unique to the Kevah Works app. It can be used for quick assessments by clients or maintenance teams or simply as damage or non compliance proof attached to the report.

Once the “Non Conformance” sub-forms are filled and saved, you are returned to the main form. Notice how the sub-forms links are now green
All there is left to do is fill in a comment if required and then tap on “Save”.

The “Submit” button is now available for the Cleaning Inspection. From the green markers on the right hand-side, it is easy to see which sub-locations were inspected and how many fields were filled in each sub-form.

If these were all the sub-locations to inspect for this inspection, the form can be submitted.
The synchronization window will appear. As soon as the sync is completed, the Cleaning Inspection form will be available for retrieval in Kevah Works from any PC or Mac and it is also automatically emailed as a PDF to all persons linked to the site, including site owners, cleaning\maintenance teams, sub-contractors and even to yourself.

If other sub-locations are to be inspected at a later time, then the form cam be saved and re-opened for completion when required.

This simple Kevah Works procedure is essentially replacing any possible form of paperwork with the digital equivalent running on your smart phone, saving you a great deal of time not only on site when performing inspections, but also when the data need to be retrieved, collated or simply organized and safely stored in the cloud. Just log on to your Kevah Works dashboard from any connected PC to manage and monitor your sites workflow at a glance at any time. Subscribe NOW!

Last week comScore has released its monthly numbers on who dominates the smartphone platform game in the USA, and it’s Google’s Android in the lead by a mile. This month has shown both RIM with BlackBerry and Microsoft with Windows Phone to be taking tiny dives with 3.2 and 1.3% losses in the market since February, RIM still sitting in the lead amongst the two at 13.4% to Microsoft’s 3.9%. Apple sits in second place and has gained a 1.5% lead over last month’s scores, and Symbian hasn’t changed a bit – still sitting in the lowest position here with 1.5% of the mobile market.

At Valorem we have been involved in the mobile game for a long time and have experienced firsthand the amazing technological advancements and incredible proliferation of mobile devices that has characterized the first decade of this century. We are a pretty open minded bunch and are happy to handle most of those amazing little things so it is no surprise to see us walking around with an Android or an iPhone or a Windows Mobile or a Blackberry phone.

And even though we are so well attuned to the mobility ecosystem, last week we have been stunned by the release on comScore of the monthly update on who is dominating the smartphone market in the USA which is a reliable benchmark to gauge what is going on in Australia as well. The big news is that Google’s Android is in front by a country mile and has just smashed the 50% barrier with 50.1%. Apple with its iPhone is a distant second with 30.2%, RIM’s Blackberry is going down to 13.4%, Microsoft Windows Phone also going down to 3.9% and Symbian stable at 1.5%.

On the hardware front, it appears that Samsung is the hardware manufacturer leader amongst all USA mobile data subscribers, with LG in second, the former having 25.6% of connected users and the letter coming in with 19.4% of the market. This portion of the survey comprises feature phones, of course, or we’d expect the third place company, Apple, to be further up on the list.

The comScore survey also found that over 104 million people in the USA owned at least one smartphone in December, January and February. That three month period blows the previous three month period by a massive 14%. There is no doubt, people are definitely getting connected and fast!

Are you a proud iPad owner? Then I am pretty sure you have already searched in the Apple App Store if you could find the Microsoft Office app…No, I am not a mind reader. I know it because that was one of my first searches in the Apple App Store when I first put my hands on an iPad. Sadly, I could not find it because that app did not exist – yet.

When I get involved in one of many discussions about the iPad with my colleagues and peers, one of the main, recurring arguments against the Apple tablet is that “It cannot run Microsoft Office”.
But that argument could very well become obsolete in the next few weeks. According to some pretty reliable sources, the rumor is that a Microsoft Office app, including the all familiar Word, Excel and Power Point, will be available soon in the Apple App Store.

According to this rumor, users will be able to have on the iPad pretty much the same Microsoft Office functionality they enjoy on their PCs, namely create new documents and edit them both when on line or off line. And, as the proverbial cherry on the cake, the Microsoft Office App could also be integrated with SkyDrive, Microsoft’s cloud storage application.

The expectation is that when it is finally published, Microsoft Office for iPad will be able to handle documents much better than all the rather useless (in my opinion) alternatives out there and will grant users ways to create and edit Word, Excel and Power Point docs in an environment they already know intimately. Basically if Microsoft office is on it, the iPad can definitely become the elusive enterprise device everyone has been searching for.

Microsoft has already contributed to the Apple App Store with a couple of applications. The note taking application One Note has been published last December and an iOS app for SkyDrive is also already available. iPad users can also access Office 365, a cloud centric version of Office with features similar to Google Apps, but Office 365 is only accessible when on line and therefore allows users to view and edit documents only if they have an internet connection.

There is no doubt tough that a Microsoft Office App locally installed and available on and off line even if with less features than the desktop version will be much more attractive. The challenge for Microsoft will be publishing the Office app for the iPad without impact on the desktop version and the most plausible solution would be a version with limited features suitable to the iPad ecosystem with some level of integration with the Windows version.

Speculations are also going wild on the licensing model and pricing. Because the Office app will be available through the Apple App Store which gets 30% cut, my guess is that Microsoft will not offer multiple or enterprise licensing and the price will be in the $20-30 range. In any case it will be a god send for IT departments currently struggling to support their users with document editing on the Cupertino ubiquitous tablet.

We are submerged by acronyms these days. We see them everywhere and we constantly use them in our everyday conversations sometimes in just the way they were intended, to save time, mostly just because they have become buzz words and make the speaker sound smart and cool. But do we really know what they actually mean?

There is a recent one that has become very common since the advent and introduction of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets as potential business devices. BYOD stands for “Bring Your Own Device”…Just in case someone was not yet aware…which  by now I really doubt.
The weak economic climate has induced businesses of any size to look for ways to cut costs making many believe that allowing employees to use their personal devices for business would cut costs and generate substantial savings in funds and resources.

More and more employees each day are pushing companies to let them connect their personal mobile devices to the corporate network and use application like CRM, email and many others. Many people actually purchase mobile devices with both personal and business use in mind, in my opinion often to give themselves one more justification to offset their often impulsive purchases.

But are there actual benefits and savings for their companies in letting them use their cool devices at work? Actually, according to recent surveys, companies are losing money when adopting the BYOD model and opening themselves to all sorts of headaches. For example only for sourcing and contractual issues on a research segment of 7,000 users for an annual spend of 10.7 million there could have been savings for 4.5 million if the devices were provided by the company.

Another key driver for BYOD is savings on IT infrastructure and support. Unfortunately nothing could be further from reality. IT departments would still have to keep support policies and standards and users would still call the help-desk for support. Effectively help desks would experience a really difficult time in keeping up with employees asking to troubleshoot iTunes, Wi-Fi or other personal apps over and above ActiveSync or corporate mobile applications and the huge variety of different devices would put a huge strain on support and security infrastructures.

And security is in fact the strongest argument going against BYOD. Smart phone and tablets need to be connected to corporate networks and access business applications to be operational, putting enterprise data totally at risk. This is even truer when a BYO mobile device is connected to a corporate Wi-Fi network which could lead to unmanageable security threats. Also IT departments should be given the ability to wipe or kill devices in the event they are lost or stolen or if the employee\owner is terminated. How would you react if all your personal data was to be wiped out as well under such circumstances? Realistically there are important legal implications at play, not to mention potential high employee dissatisfaction and loss of personal data.

Ultimately mobility as main communication method for the future is simply too important to compromise just for some theoretical short term savings. A sound mobility strategy and the ability to support the business environment appropriately will have a huge impact on the bottom line and will result in more efficient and gratified employees, more satisfied customers, more sales and finally a maximized ROI and increased revenue.

Would you like to expand your iPhone and iPad ability to assist you while on the move in your sites day to day operations? Installing Kevah Works on your iPhone or iPad is easy and fast to do. The Kevah Works Apps will exponentially enhance your productivity  by giving you the ability of completing forms, raising jobs, and monitoring the status of jobs or non-conformance on the fly.

It only takes a few steps to install the apps on iPhone and iPad and you can simply do it over the air directly from the App Store if your devices have a live data or WI-FI connection or through iTunes by synchronizing your devices to your PC or Mac in the remote case they do not.

These are instructions on how to install Kevah Work’s iPhone and iPad applications using Mobile App Store directly from the devices without using iTunes.

• Tap to launch App Store from the Springboard.
• You will be presented with featured applications you can download and install.
• Tap on the Search tab at the bottom of the screen to open the search box.
• Type in Kevah Works in the search field and tap on the magnifying glass.
• Depending on the device you are installing you will be presented with the Kevah Works iPhone or iPad App. The Apps are free so you will see a “Free” button.
• As you tap on the “Free” button you will notice it changes to a green “Install” button.
• Tap on this button to install the App.
• A popup will appear asking you to enter in your iTunes account password.
  Do this and then press the OK button.
• You will be returned to your Springboard where you will see a dimmed icon with an install bar superimposed.
• Once installation has finished successfully the icon will become active.
• Tap on it to launch and you will be presented with the Kevah Works log in Screen.
• Enter your Kevah Works User ID and Password to access and manage your sites.

At this point the first full Kevah Works synchronization will start automatically and download your Kevah Works profile and data to the mobile device. This may take a few minutes so in the meantime just relax. When done, the app will report: “sync completed”. Now select the site you would like to access from the drop down menu and tap on “Open Site”…

That is all there is to it. Pretty simple, but very powerful as you are now able to manage and monitor all your sites on the fly from your beloved iPhone or iPad with Kevah Works Mobile.

Smartphone selling faster than babies are born? A sensational headline to grab attention? Or the new reality?

After the introduction of the Apple iPhone in 2007, we have since seen exponential growth in the smart phone market.

According to figures from the Sydney Morning Herald, the December 2011 quarter resulted in 37 million iPhone sales for Apple. This figure equates to a rate of 4.6 phones sold per second. The current global birth rate is 4.2 seconds, meaning that iPhone sold faster than babies were born around the world!

However impressive this figure is, it can’t compete with the Android platform. Google’s open source platform  has proved to be the most popular mobile operating system in the world. Since the launch of the OS in 2008 Android has activated 300 million devices. The LA Times reports that in the December 2011 quarter, Android was activating 700,000 devices a day. Which equates to a 8.1 phones sold per second, almost double the global birth rate!

It’s almost unfair to compare Google Android to Apple and it’s iPhone, because Android has more than 800 models running its operating system while Apple has just 3 phones on the market and 2 tablets. There also is a large difference in marketshare between the OS’s by country and region, as the mobile phone providers sell and subsidise some models more than others.

The sale of smart phones has risen dramatically recently as people refresh their personal technology. For example, in the UK, 50% of people have smart phones, with Apple’s iPhone leading with 29% of the market share according to data gathered by Online Marketing. With smart phones become cheaper, people are being encouraged to upgrade from their old handsets. Many people are predicting that in Australia in 2012, smartphone marketshare amongst mobiles will exceed 65%. At this point, mobile application and mobile access to the web will become the norm, and no longer restricted to executives and tech-heads.