Willem Crause is the Property Manager at Sondela Nature Reserve in Limpopo, South Africa. The self-contained nature reserve contains a Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre, Spa, outdoor activities and different accommodation types. Over the past three months, Willem has been using fieldmargin along with his team to keep track of maintenance jobs as well as farming tasks within the reserve.
“fieldmargin is useful, reliable and so simple to use. All of the team are really happy using the mobile and web app. We use it everyday to keep everyone updated and focused on daily tasks around the reserve.”
Willem has added 21 members of his team to work together on the app. The team can view and add notes and tasks to the map. Tasks can be discussed in a single place which saves time and effort. The messages are stored safely, creating a history of what was discussed that they can refer back to.
“The comment section on tasks is very handy for discussions as jobs are always changing. If I want an update of progress for a particular task I can tag a team member and they receive a notification to their phone. No need for back and forth to coordinate because everyone is already on the same page. We are able to manage ecological resources more effectively with all the information captured on the App. Savings have included fuels for vehicles and and effective procurement of resource.
By adding photographs to notes on the map the team instantly share’s what they are busy with and what their progress is for that particular task. The maintenance team as well as the students (Sondela has an Academy where training takes place) and other Conservation related persons can add photographs of the issues “before” and then “after” when the problem has been fixed.
“Supervisors can view work updates from staff that are out on site using the web app in the office. We save time because supervisors don’t have to go out and check to see what has been done. On Sondela we have many people out in the field and by switching on their locations using team radar we are able to see where people are.”
“We are also able to keep data such as rainfall and meter readings on fieldmargin which can give us graphs. We can use these to compare data over time and with other data sets.”
“Using fieldmargin has definitely reduced our down time so that we can get a lot more done in a day. It is a simple tool that everyone can use and it really makes our day-day management run much more smoothly.”