Data Collection

Business Case Handdata b.v.

The firm Handata b.v., established in Katwijk, a small town in the north-western part of Holland, which is specialised in mobile solutions wanted to have an application with which its customers could collect data using a smart phone. The collected data had to be processed in real-time as well as in batch on a central server

The goal was to develop for a smart phone of Sony Ericsson a data collection application. The forms of this data collection program are produced dynamically on a server and the smart phone fetches the forms, collects the data and send them back to the server.

How the goal was reached

After the requirements of the customer became clear a specification was made, iteratively and in close cooperation with the customer. The software on the client had to cooperate with an existing data collection program on the server. This program not only produced the new forms but also processed the collected data.

In the final solution it was possible to receive and send data from/to the server real-time using GSM/GPRS, USB, Infra-Red or Bluetooth .

One part of a form was taking a picture of the to be collected data. This picture was sent in real time to the server.

The client software is written in C++ for the Symbian Platform. The data collection application is extensively tested by customer and accepted for operational use.

The result

The result is that the firm Handata can offer a part of its customers a data collection solution using a smart phone including the taking of pictures. The collected data can be sent to a server either real-time or in batch.

The smart phone makes three other tools superfluous: the paper form, the camera and the mobile phone. By producing data and pictures with the same tool it was not difficult anymore to relate collected data with the picture taken and by sending the data to the server it was not necessary anymore to perform actions by hand like typing the text.