Glidebooks online
Workforce mangement can be streamlined with Gildebooks, which lets mobile workers record what they are doing.
Andronikos Nedos and Raymond Cunningham developed their start-up company Glidebooks during their time with NDRC. Having secured significant investment from an international investment house in 2011, Glidebooks is developing a product for novel scheduling and recording of field work.
Glidebooks joined NDRC’s LaunchPad programme in 2010 to develop its concept for a mobile software-as-a-service (SaaS) workforce management tool. Through the course of its three months, it completed a beta prototype which it tested with trial customers, reaching more than 250 users of the system.
The tool simplifies workforce management by allowing mobile workers to use their mobile phones to record what they do. The recorded information can then be viewed and manipulated in real-time through the Glidebooks’ online service.
“The Glidebooks online service significantly reduces the cost and complexity of mobile workforce management, allowing potential customers to deploy the service on the phones they already have,” says Nedos.
The target market is companies with a mobile workforce where the significant value added by the company is through the work carried out by the mobile workers, such as installation, maintenance and repair companies. There are more than 800,000 people in the UK and more than 6m in Europe employed in this market.
Nedos and Cunningham both have research backgrounds, having been research fellows at Trinity College Dublin.
With support from NDRC, they began fundraising in 2010, and secured investment from a well-known investor. This capital investment is enabling Glidebooks to enter a global marketplace with a clear focus on the US. The product launches in autumn 2011.
