Field Agent

News Alert - October

Are you ready for action?

We’ve got yet another fantastically busy time with thousands of varied tasks to be completed before the end of the month! Thanks to your hard work delivering excellent results we’ve now got more Clients and more jobs than ever before - keep up the great work.

As always, please check your app regularly and here’s a hint at what’s coming up:

New from today…

Cinema Trailer Checks! (you can reserve from today for a Friday OR Saturday viewing and completion)

This is a new and exciting type of task. Fancy getting paid to go and see the new Bond film SKYFALL on Friday or Saturday? All we ask for are a few photos of in-cinema posters and confirmation (or not) that you have seen a specific film trailer. There are 100 locations to be visited on both days (one job per location per Agent!). See the map here.

Pallet Checking (live from 24th October for up to 28 days!)

This is also a very new and different task. We are working with a company that provides a service where, after goods have been delivered to an address, they would normally pick up the used pallet(s), but often what happens is that they don’t have the phone number of the location in order to arrange the pick up or even find out whether the pallets are still there. Our task is to help the pallet guys and the various locations to get the pallets back to base. The map will be posted on Facebook.

Dolce Gusto (Saturday and Sunday only)

We have a number of visits to local stores to mystery shop the Dolce Gusto coffee machine product demonstrators in some electrical retailers and department stores. It’s a mystery shop where you will need to “pretend” to be a prospective customer and record some details. The map will be posted on Facebook.

BBC Olympics DVD launch (on Monday 29th October ONLY)

We have hundreds of tasks all over the country in Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and Asda to check on whether a the new BBC Olympics DVD is being promoted and is available to buy. The map will be posted on Facebook.

And last few remaining…

…Grocer Store Checks (until quota reached)

We’ve still got some checks to do across the country in independent grocery stores as well as a few supermarkets and petrol stations. Please, please, please read the instructions carefully - there is a specific brief requiring you to print out a letter of authorisation AND not all the questions follow the same format. Agents who have done these so far - thank you - we are hoping this will provide you with regular monthly tasks!

…Garnier Check (until quota reached)

This is just about checking the deodorant products in various Tesco stores - pretty simple, a couple of photos and some data. See the map here.

…Cosmetics Check (until quota reached)

We’re looking for information about the availability of cosmetics in various Boots stores - and need an excellent photo. See the map here.

Note: Field Agent tasks could start, finish or be cancelled at any time without notice. Please check the Field Agent App for the most up-to-date task information.

Don’t forget - if in doubt…ask!

We always aim to make the instructions and questions as easy to understand as possible, however if you have any issues doing any of the Field Agent tasks you can contact us atany time on our support email or via posts on Facebook AND you should always write details in the feedback question. We are normally pretty good at responding quickly…

And, above all, have fun!

Who is Using Field Agent and How?

We’re often asked about how Field Agent is actually being used; and whilst every campaign is Client-confidential, with the data and images belonging to the Client that paid for them, we thought we’d share some top line stats and some broad case studies to show the applications for crowdsourced data collection using Field Agent.

Field Agent has been put to various uses since we launched including: demonstrator checks, shop front photographs, stock level audits, price checks, competitor analysis, opinion surveys and merchandise and promotional compliance checking. We are delighted that to date over the 4,500+ tasks we have been working with:

Here is just a snapshot of some of jobs that have been carried out:

• A consumer electronics brand checked whether their product promo display was in designated retail outlets air-side at UK airports. Request fulfilled over a weekend without any pre-booking.
• A major drinks manufacturer checked on price promotions in a nationwide chain of convenience stores. Data on 100 stores was received within a few hours.
• A leading Brand Experience agency uses Field Agent regularly to audit their own demo staff to check on attendance, brand messaging and training. They have healthcarebrands in their Client base.
• Field Agent was used by a brand in the dairy category to check on pricing and stock levels of a competitor in a leading supermarket chain.
• A food company used Field Agent to check stock levels in their key retail stores as well as to mystery shop on compliance and brand messaging.
• A market research agency used Field Agent to carry out mystery shopping for new business pitches to the automotive industry. They won the business.
• Field Agent was used by a major games publisher to check on launch week chart positioning for their new game title across multiple consoles in supermarkets and games stores. 60% of the store checks were completed on day one for the week-long campaign.
• A supplier to a DIY chain used Field Agent to check on fixtures and fittings for their product range.
• A computer brand used Field Agent to check on waiting times and product availability inconsumer electronics stores.
• Field Agent was used to establish opinions on a Sunday newspaper and reaction to adverts.
• A leading FM Agency used Field Agent to give them coverage in remote locations that were too costly to cover with their normal tactical team.
• An individual used Field Agent to gather insights and research for a job interview.
• Field Agent was used to understand brand preference and get usage data in a survey on home printing.
• A stationery supplier used Field Agent to check their products were on display in DIYstores.
• A logistics company is using Field Agent for asset management.
• A franchised business wanted to check on branding and marketing material compliancein their outlets.
• A company targeting new mums used Field Agent to survey on product awareness and preferences.
• Field Agent was used to check planogram compliance for a luxury watch brand in specified jewellery stores.

The reality is that literally anyone can use Field Agent to find out virtually any kind of data or information and so the limit is your imagination. And whilst of course it does cost money to gather data; using Field Agent is generally cheaper, quicker and more cost-effective than other traditional methods such as using your own team or outsourcing to a tactical agency.

We’re already working on expanding the service into Europe and beyond and there are some major global brands that are considering using Field Agent for their data collection requirements in the US and across-Europe. If you’d like to find out how Field Agent could benefit you, your business or your brand simply get in touch info@fieldagent.co.uk or call 0845 1 90 20 90.

Money Makes the World Go Round

The UK is now officially too expensive. It’s too expensive to travel to shops, buy stuff, cook food, heat your house or get your waste taken away. You can’t afford to retire, you can’t get a decent-paid job and in-between times you have to pay to be educated. Instead of us Brits complaining about the weather, we now have a much more pressing topic of conversation: trying not to spend too much, trying to save as much and attempting to earn as much money as possible.

Whilst Field Agent cannot single-handedly pull the UK out of recession it is playing its part by providing easy jobs for all ages of people with the only requirement being an iPhone. Field Agent is a service for putting people who want data and information in touch with people who can collect it and would like to be paid to do so. So what’s it in for you?:

• The Field Agent app is free to download. There are few things left that are ;0).
• There’s no interview process, recruitment procedure, assessments or daily management. Registration is quick and simple, all we need is an email – although giving us a few more details helps.
• Jobs pay between £1 and £10 for a just few minutes work. There are seven types of question (yes/no, 5-point scale, free form, multi-choice, price check, count and take photo) and instructions are clear and simple so no training is required.
• You get paid real cash – PayPal is a fab way to bank. You get to cash out when you want (after about 48h) and you don’t have to wait until you reach a minimum level. Plus Field Agent picks up any fees.
• You are in control – you decide whether to accept a job or not, you need to decide whether the payment you will receive is worth the effort required. We aren’t asking you to travel or make special arrangements you are earning whilst you are doing what you were going to do anyway.
• The taxman is fundamentally not interested. Earning a few pounds technically should be declared, as would any income gained from selling something on eBay or babysitting for a friend, but HMRC is not really concerned about the relatively small monies earned by Agents.That said, be on the safe side and check with the HMRC!

All we ask in return is honesty – we need to trust that you are providing accurate data, that you are where you say you are and that you have completed the task to the best of your ability.

Field Agent is never intended to be a source for full-time employment and there is no guarantee of regular business but what have you got to lose?

Download the app from http://bit.ly/FieldAgentUKApp or find out more fromwww.fieldagent.co.uk.

How to be the perfect Field Agent

We’ve had some great learnings from the jobs our crowdsourced Field Agents have been doing on behalf of clients. We thought it would be a good idea to share some best practice and hopefully this will continue to improve the quality of the submissions over time. The key thing to remember is that the better the data our agents provide, the happier the clients, which in turn equals more jobs. So here are some “please do’s”:

1. Do read the instructions carefully. You may risk losing points or being blacklisted if you miss key information or misinterpret the task. Remember you can always go back to your previous answer, read tips or retake a photo before you click on “submit”. 
2. Only accept jobs if you are in the right place. GPS accuracy is a very key quality check! You do get a warning screen (see below) and if you cancel at this stage you will not get penalised:
3. Only accept jobs if you are willing to do what is required – eg travel or take a photo. Learn to identify the symbols that accompany each task such as:
4. Please try to take the best photos possible - clients may want to use them in internal presentations or reporting back to their investors. If you are challenged by a retailer, you could say that you are emailing a friend to ask which brand they want you to buy.
5. Please be patient – we are aiming to get as many clients (and therefore jobs) on board as possible but this takes time and we are only young! Please check back regularly to see new jobs.
6. Please ensure your job is completed before you leave a location and the “thumbs up” screen appears. If not, you make risk submitting incomplete results and could be penalised:

1. Do sign up for Push Notifications if you’d like to hear about jobs as soon as they are posted:

1. Do be honest and truthful. We are proud of the quality and trust levels we have with our Agents, but we are well aware that some people just want an easy way of earning cash. We have so many checks in place, don’t be one of the few we have to blacklist.
2. Do keep in touch. Let us know what you think of the App, the jobs etc – we can only improve if we get constructive feedback. Visit http://support.fieldagent.co.uk.
3. And finally, please spread the word about Field Agent. We think that everyone has the potential to be a client, and more clients means more jobs. Do you know anyone who needs data, opinions or information..?

Field Agent - Friend or Foe to the Agencies?

Since launching on 1^st November 2010 Field Agent has signed up nearly 5,000 Agents across the UK. That’s really without any active recruitment activities other than: PR (thanks guardian.co.uk et al), presence in the app store (peaked at 3^rd position) and, very importantly, word of mouth.

This effectively means that Field Agent is the fastest-growing tactical field marketing agency in the UK. So, should the “traditional” agencies be quaking in fear? Maybe.

It’s true, some agencies do feel threatened. ‘Field Agent is going to undercut our margins’, ‘the quality can’t be good’ or ‘it’ll never take off’. But, others can see the light… see the opportunities, see the value add, efficiency and cost savings. Could it be that actually the best agencies are embracing Field Agent?

Field Agent is indeed an unrivalled way to find out information from across the UK cost-effectively, quickly and efficiently. It makes market research, mystery shopping and auditing (any data collection) really affordable and viable, even for Clients who have not considered these services before. In reality Field Agent should be seen as a complementary service rather than a replacement for the great work field marketing, PR, market research and other agencies do.

So how does Field Agent measure up to the more “traditional” Agency?

Field Agent is cost-effective

• Field Agent is a self-service platform – it doesn’t have Head Office overheads with scores of employees booking staff, team managers or employment costs. So there is no need to charge booking fees.
• Field Agent does not employ field teams, it crowdsources “Agents” which means the people who are closest to the specified place at the right time, and are willing to do so, will carry out the job. There’s no need to spend time recruiting, training, booking or monitoring the staff – the job is available for the Agents to select, carry out and submit without any intervention.
• Field Agent does not have teams or regional management structures to monitor the Agents or manage communication lines. Importantly Field Agent does not have to tell people when a campaign is cancelled or postponed – the job simply comes off the system - and rebooking is as simple as making it live again. This means Field Agent doesn’t charge any cancellation fee as essentially no costs are incurred until the job is submitted; and rebooking does not require any further set up costs.

Clear advantages for Field Agent therefore include no booking fees, no management fees, no contract, no minimum order, no cancellation fees and Jobs starting from as little as £5 per response.

But traditional agencies can benefit from using Field Agent eg crowdsourcing stock level data so that the agency can deploy their trained, experienced and skilled field teams to where their value will be appreciated: they are an expensive resource – don’t send them to a product demo job at a store where there is no stock. Plus Field Agent can be used to quality check or mystery shop an agency’s own staff to ensure compliance levels truly are as high as you want them to be, training has been successful and quality standards are exceeded.

Field Agent is quick

• Nationwide coverage is instantly available. Field Agent already has agents signed up from Thurso in the Highlands to Newlyn in Cornwall. There are two Agents on the Isle of Man and great coverage in all the main cities as well as smaller towns and villages in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
• Opinion surveys get speedy responses whatever the time of day – as they do not require travel or shops to be open. Filling out simple surveys on an iPhone or iPad somehow seems so much easier than logging onto a website. Agents can do jobs on the train, during a coffee break, first thing in the morning or last thing at night. Crowdsourcing via Field Agent means that it is flexible to fit around people who have full time jobs as easily as those who are without employment.
• Jobs that need travel may need a little more time but a recent price-check job in a leading supermarket was completed in full within just an hour. And it seems some Agents already plan their day around the Field Agent store visits…
• Importantly Field Agent is quick and easy for Agents to sign up, do a job and get paid. Payment is all handled by PayPal so there are no pay runs or invoicing delays and you get happy and loyal Agents. Clients also benefit from the speed  of getting results, allowing time to rectify problems and report on successes can be done in a timely manner.

Field Agent is not the most comprehensive mystery shopping service, nor is it the most sophisticated opinion survey company, but it can be an invaluable complement to test surveys, get quick snapshots and nationwide data. The Agency value here can be on management and analysis. There is an art to question writing to get responses you can act on and good agencies can provide analysis and recommendations and use the intelligence to improve their agency-client relationship.

Field Agent is efficient

• Clients have access to data from across the UK within hours or even minutes of it being posted rather than waiting for information to be pulled together by their agency. Added to the live, updated dashboard on the website all the data is automatically collated into one downloadable (.csv) file and images are stored in a single online space and downloadable as a zip file. There are no delays in collating reports from across the country and formatting to present to the client.
• The client has 24/7 access to live reports - no need to wait for “Office Hours” or your Account Manager to send you the report.
• Quality checks are mostly automatic – GPS co-ordinates are checked, images are scanned and data undergo a variety of checks. And in addition Field Agent includes behind the scenes manual checks to ensure the best possible quality and accuracy. Blacklisting is swift and any erroneous data is queried, but the best news is Clients only pay for the (accurate) data they receive.
• Clients are also in control of who they target, how many responses they want, when to start, stop or even pause the job. This unprecedented level of flexibility would normally have cost implications as the agency may need to compensate staff, recruit or rebook replacements.

Efficiency is therefore a key value for Field Agent where the sophisticated website and app infrastructure streamlines processes and keeps costs very affordable.

That said, busy clients don’t necessarily have the time or inclination to get into the nitty gritty detail of job requests. They’d be happier signing off a £100K mystery shop contract to an agency than a few hundred pounds for a pulse survey or quick stock check. Savvy agencies can use Field Agent to their advantage – for their own agency, their competitors; their clients or client’s competitors; as well as their prospects and prospect’s competitors.

So, agencies of the UK rejoice! Field Agent is here to help you in many ways:

• Data audits
• Mystery shopping
• Verifying your results
• Extending your coverage
• Extending your service offering to your clients
• Pre-checking POS before sending in merchandisers
• Pre-checking stock levels before sending in demonstrators
• Gathering competitor data for pitches/ adding value to clients
• Gauging reaction to/opinons about your clients’ products or services

Here’s to a Happy New Year all round!

“Wot No Jobs?!”

This has to be one of the most depressing sights we will have with Field Agent: few or no jobs available and not even any reservations. We’re always going to have down times when there are no active jobs on the system and what with Christmas and the festive weather issues there’s a definitely sense of “let’s wait until the New Year” going on at the moment. With this type of business and certainly during the startup phase we are always going to be “chicken and egg”:

Too many jobs and not enough agents = jobs not completed + Client dissatisfaction Too many agents and not enough jobs = app deleted, interest lost + Agent dissatisfaction So we’ve had a delicate balancing act to do since the beginning of November and we’ll admit we’ve still not got it quite right yet. However, we want to reassure everyone that we’re still very much on the case and there are a few things we want to share with both Agents and Clients, present and future:

Message to Agents

Firstly, please be patient and bear with us. We’ve got some incredibly exciting prospects in the pipeline and some interesting jobs just on the horizon, but it takes time… (And don’t forget it’s that funny time of year).

We believe with the cracking start we have had we can only get stronger – momentum builds case studies and PR which in turn can build awareness and ultimately generate more jobs.

What we’d like you to do is to keep checking the App and basically keep in touch. The more contact you have with us, the more likely you are to hear about new jobs first… and there are plenty of ways to keep in touch: We’ve got a Facebook page and a Twitter account as well as the all-important Support Forum for new ideas for 2011. Plus, we are just about to send out our first newsletter by email – keep a look out for that in your inbox.

Field Agent is really proud to provide a relatively easy way to earn money and the ability to cash out after as little as £1; but, please don’t give up the day job – this is never intended to be a full time occupation and we cannot guarantee jobs for everyone.

Message to Clients

We’d just like to ask one small thing of all those potential Clients out there – why not give Field Agent a go?

It’s a low-cost way of getting data for consumer insights and field intelligence and you only pay for the (accurate) data you receive.

Plus, you can get data back as soon as it is approved – once it has undergone certain automatic and manual checks so you get the information within minutes of it being collected, giving you time to react, respond or report. And thanks to over 4,500 crowdsourced Agents we’ve got the UK covered – there’s literally someone in every corner of the country, so nationwide coverage is not an issue either.

Rest assured that the data quality is good too and the Clients we have had so far have been delighted with the results.

Sure, it’s tough to try out something new, especially when you’ve been doing things in a certain way and you like it the way it is. You don’t have to drag yourself away from the comfort of the known – Field Agent can complement your existing data sources. What about getting your field marketing/advertising/PR/Market research agency to use it on your behalf?

We are confident that 2011 will be a great year for Field Agent with major brands and agencies using it as part of their core offering. So, “watch this space, you ain’t seen nothing yet!”

Oh, and Merry Christmas!!!

Trust and Quality – is it possible when you crowdsource?

One thing is for certain - wherever there is a system in place, there will always be people who will try and cheat it. That is human nature and it has existed since the year dot.

In traditional Field Marketing audits you are reliant on having specific data recorded accurately by methodical and conscientious staff who are usually trained to a certain standard of capability.

With Field Agent crowdsourcing means that the task could be in the hands of a student, a trained auditor or a retired accountant, most of whom may never have even heard of Field Marketing let alone worked for an FM agency.

However, with the actions of over 4,500 Agents to analyse and scrutinise we’ve actually established a fundamental truth - that you CAN trust the crowd.

We’ve based this on three key areas: location accuracy, data correctness and photo proof:

Right place, right time

I recall back in my Field Marketing Agency days we were managing a weekend demo job with a leading printer brand in a certain PC retailer. We’d had some delays in getting kit out on time to the demo staff and there was a need for a willing volunteer (aka yours truly) to hand-deliver the kit to demonstrator “X” on a Saturday morning. I did and left “X” to go into store and spend the day demonstrating…or so I thought. It so manifests that he went in, he even signed in and then promptly went home for the rest of the day. Not only that, but he also did the same thing the following day!

We only managed to discover this by having weekend staff calling the stores to back check. This Agent obviously got blacklisted and lost two days’ pay; the Client did not get the store covered and we had to book and train a replacement for the following week – costs and dissatisfaction all round.

So, why are we so confident about Field Agent location accuracy? The answer is simple, GPS. GPS co-ordinates are more accurate than ever before on an iPhone – and we can see where an Agent was when they accepted a job, answered each question and took a photo.

It’s virtually impossible to fake this… (although some will always try - I think being 3,800 miles away was a little too obvious).

Dotting “i”s and crossing “t”s

Recording accurate data can be tricky even for experienced full time tactical field teams. If they are operating covertly, eg for mystery shopping, staff may have to remember a number of things and write this up when they have left the store. They may have to compile reports online when back at home, which could be a few hours later; and this data may then need to be consolidated into team reports. There’s plenty of scope for human error and a delay in the Client getting complete data.

With Field Agent the majority of operations will be covert. But the Agents type the data into/take a photo with their phone whilst they are still at the location and have a specified time limit to do so. Each type of question comes with an array of automatic and manual checks such as min/max ranges and we can show aggregate scores and averages to highlight any discrepancies.

If the Agent cancels or submits incorrect data the job can be rejected, the Agent blacklisted and the job instantly re-posted for another to complete. The checks are virtually instantaneous and the Client can have their data as soon as it is checked. “Live” reporting all consolidates into one spreadsheet, ready to analyse. Quick, efficient and accurate.

Picture perfect

The all-important proof point is the photo. Not easy to fake a picture is it? Think again. I have two personal favourite scams – from the sublime to the ridiculous:

Exhibit1: “Take a photo of the in-store demonstrator.” (This was clearly a picture of an image on a PC – even has the photographer’s copyright info on it!):

Exhibit2: “Take a photo of your motorbike” (er, really?!). 

We are currently storing well over 5,000 images and I can honestly say we have only rejected a small percentage - less than 1%.The cameras on iPhones these days are pretty good and most people are fairly adept at taking reasonable images with minimal blur.

Overall we’ve been pretty happy with the quality of the images taken, all of which are tagged, named and stored online for the Client to review, export and use as required. And all-importantly the photos are geo-tagged, so we know exactly where and when they were taken. And given that the photo is taken as an integral part of the job, you cannot simply attach an image later.

Zero tolerance

We are not naïve enough to guarantee 100% compliance or 100% accuracy, but we do ensure that Clients only pay for the accurate data they receive and Agents only get paid for the accurate data they record.

From our crowd source of over 4,500 Agents, where nearly 3,000 jobs have been completed and well over 21,000 individual questions have been answered, of course we have rejected a few responses for incomplete data or wrong location. But we have disabled just 10 Accounts – which actually only equates to seven individuals.

We’re pretty happy with these stats and are confident that Field Agent remains one of the most accurate data auditing systems available today. Keep up the good work Agents!

Crowdsourcing Pays - Make Money from your iPhone

In an economy of buyers and sellers millions of pounds are invested by a whole lot of people who want data and information on researching, validating and verifying - from checking if a toothpaste promotion is on display or the baked beans are the right price; to whether a poster is in a shop window or if the “2 for 1” offer is near the till….

And in order to get this information millions of pounds are spent on a plethora of people who get paid to provide the data and information, people employed by field marketing agencies, merchandising companies, mystery shoppers, opinion pollsters and the like.

The data collection industry is literally worth billions in the UK – Market Research alone is estimated to be £1.5billion* - and people who need data and information still continue to pay people to collect it.

Enter Field Agent – a free iPhone application that has been likened to “an information eBay”, a self-service platform connecting the people that want data to the people who can provide it. In essence Field Agent creates a new economy which is user demanded and user generated, an “Uconomy”.

Clients enter questions via a website and these get pushed out to anyone who has downloaded the app – giving agents the opportunity to earn real cash from £1 to over £10 (depending on the job). The beauty is agents are selected based on how close they are to where the job is located, so there is no recruitment, training or management involved. There’s a technology game change where crowdsourcing has made data collection quick, efficient and cost-effective.

It is estimated that the number of iPhones in the UK will top 6.4 million** by the end of the year…and these devices are now smarter and more affordable than ever before as well as completed with accurate GPS and pretty good quality cameras.

In little over four weeks 4,000 people from across the UK have downloaded the Field Agent app and carried out thousands of jobs for a variety of companies. But does it pay? We think it does:

• Of the 4,000 Agents, over 700 have completed at least one “job”, with the minimum earning of £1.
• 9% of the active Agents have completed five or more jobs.
• The lowest paid job (an opinion survey) earned the respondent £1 and the highest paid job (a supermarket price check) was £10.
• The top earning Agent has so far earned £93, having carried out 24 jobs – an average of £3.88 each.
• The 100 top-earning Agents have averaged just over £20 each since the app was launched - almost enough to pay for their monthly phone contract.

What’s more the Agents can “cash out” as soon as their job is approved, even after earning £1 for one job, thanks to the PayPal process where Field Agent picks up the fees.

And crowdsourcing pays for the Client too – a similar price check exercise carried out by a full time field marketing team member could cost on average around £25 per store, the job via Field Agent effectively cost the client just over half of that.

The only real downfall is the perceived lack of jobs which in turn can prompt an early deletion of the app. So far the patience of the many has been stronger than the impatience of the few (who often vent their spleen as a negative app review). Even though it’s tricky to track how many people may have deleted the app, we know that we do still have over 82% who have opted in to receive push notifications when new jobs are available in their area…we’re encouraged by this level of engagement.

And the reality is that there are many more jobs on the horizon with some major brands and agencies setting up accounts and running test jobs before nationwide rollout.

So, Agents, please keep checking; and Clients, go on give it a go!

And thanks to all our Agents and Clients who have supported us to date.

Crowdsourcing Works - whatever the weather

It’s that time again, when the great British public can do nothing but talk about, photograph, tweet and moan about the weather. One flake of snow and the country comes to a halt. Even the prospect of a flake of snow sends the UK into a frenzied state of chaos, blaming councils, gritters (or lack of them), government, employers and school mums for creating mayhem on the roads.

Why am I joining this mob of moaners? To fly the flag for crowdsourcing.

Field Agent is about giving a task to someone who is closest to a location which means:

• Less cost for the client – no booking fees or cancellation fees if the project has to be postponed. And they only pay for 100% completed jobs.
• Less cost to the agency – no recruitment, employment or management costs and no requirement to cover mileage expenses. No rebooking or cancellation management, eg no phone calls. 

Can anyone think of a better way to get things done?

Photos courtesy of my Facebook friends: Paul, Caroline, Jane and Roz - from across the UK today.

3 weeks old and 3000 agents

We have had an amazing start to our new UK business and in our first three weeks we managed to attract and recruit over 3,000 agents in every corner of the country.

The map above shows our coverage as at last week, with our most Northern agent based in Thurso in the Highlands and our most Southern from Newlyn in Cornwall - about 820 miles apart. The great benefit of this crowdsourced coverage is we are now able to collect data from every part of the UK within a very short period of time with most jobs now being snapped up in minutes. There are still a few locations where we need to improve numbers but out of the 2,700 mainland postcodes we have people in all but 17.

Not bad for a three-week old business.

We have some very big tests coming up in the next few weeks with projects that require 500 jobs completed from across the country in just one day. Not only will this be an amazing feat if we can pull it off but it will prove that the system we have built is going to change the way data is collected in the UK forever.