Every month, we receive calls from route salespeople who woke up in the morning, grabbed their handheld computer, started their delivery truck, drove out to their first stop of the day, and before they could even enjoy their first sip of coffee, they hit a roadblock in their route. Not a physical roadblock, but rather a digital one; they can't open or log into Solid Sales Pro™ to make their sales! Maybe their handheld wasn't synced by the warehouse personnel last evening, or perhaps the sync didn't complete successfully, giving Solid Sales Pro™ only partial data to work with, which results in an error when starting the program. Either way, now their handheld computer isn't working correctly because of it, and it could have been avoided.
How to avoid this situation and all the frustration and time loss that goes along with it is simple. Every route salesperson should make it part of their routine that before they head out, make sure they can open and log into Solid Sales Pro™. This way, if any issue should arise, it can be addressed immediately by the warehouse personnel, before them driving two hours to their first stop and then noticing the problem. This simple preventative step will allow them to enjoy their morning coffee with peace of mind.
This responsibility must be instilled in the route salespeople themselves, even if it's not themselves who sync their handheld computers. The reason is that even if a warehouse person syncs all the route sales people's handheld computers, that warehouse person may not have the needed passwords to enter Solid Sales Pro™ on all handheld computers to make this check. However, even if the warehouse person does have the needed passwords to enter Solid Sales Pro™ on all handheld computers, that just means that both the warehouse person and the route sales person should be performing this check to make double sure that the sales program is accessible and working properly before heading out for the work period.