Meadowlark: Sheffield based computer consultancy

Meadowlark technology

JobVision: Job management system for plumbers, builders and electricians

JobVision is a simple but powerful computer program designed to make life much easier for any plumber, builder, electrician, plasterer, or in fact anyone that does work and gets paid for it. It was designed after seven years of careful research and development into work practices by business in general.

Among other things JobVision does the following:

Job management:

• To do list (what work must be done when)
• Follow up list (who do I need to chase up?)
• Jobs complete but not invoiced list (who do I bill?)
• Invoice not sent list (who do I bill now?)
• How many customers are on my books( how much is my business worth if I sell it?)
• Invoice not paid list (who owes me money?)

Customer management

• Who have I worked for and how do I contact them?
• What should I know about a customer before I visit
• Who are my good customers?
• Who are my worst customers
• How many customers are on my books( how much is my business worth if I sell it?)

Financial management

• Estimates
• Invoices
• Quotations
• How much have I spent on my business?
• What category of expenditure would each of those expenditures come under?

Customer correspondence

• JobVision stores correspondence within its own internal database. This means that important communication cannot get lost and it is very easy to produce, even without a wordprocessor..

What you can expect from computer hardware in the future?

1. Smaller faster, cheaper, lighter computers for the desktop. They will be no larger than a DVD drive. They will be silent, and run free software, and much of this will be web based. They will use solid state disks, and large quantities of cheap memory.

More powerful mobile phones will largely replace traditional PCs. The screens of mobiles will occupy as much of the phone as physicallly possible. Soft buttons will have largely replaced mechanical buttons in top of the range phones.

Sophisticated screen display technology will be available that will allow us to use bigger computer monitors in smaller less likely workplaces.

Micro-factories: places of work no bigger than a loft extension, where budding entrepreneurs labour in their free time printing products with 3D printers and selling their wares by the internet.