Young entrepreneur relies on walkie-talkies to run business

"Peace of mind is something money cannot buy."

Pinky Sinfuego, the young driving force behind Progressive Laboratories, has relied on mobile technology to give her the peace of mind both as far as her business and her family is concerned.

For many years now, she has utilized Next Mobile walkie-talkies to closely monitor deliveries, arrival of medicines, the whereabouts of her sales people, and more importantly, the whereabouts of her children.

Progressive Laboratories was established in 1996 by Pinky, a chemist by profession. The company is a toll manufacturer of veterinary products for multinational companies and importer. It is also a testing center for for pharmaceutical, food and veterinary products produced by other companies and is accredited by the Bureau of Food and Drugs and the Bureau of Animal Industry to provide this service to others.

It is also ISO-certified which means that its processes and manufacturing capability are heavily audited and undergo stringent tests.

It is Pinky’s sheer determination to succeed that made Progressive Laboratories into what it is now.

Born into an affluent family, Pinky was never a spoiled child. She was taught the rudiments of business early in life by her parents who were already into the poultry supply business. It was part luck and largely determination that gave her the first break-producing for Univet, and from then on, Progressive’s reputation spread.

Progressive has around 125 employees, many of who are in the field. "It is easier to get in touch with my staff using Next Mobile radio handsets. Even during meal-time, I know where they are. In fact, all the drivers have their own units," she said.

She also noted a remarkable decline in phone bills since the company started using Next Mobile phones, by as much as 70 percent. "You cannot imagine how high the phone bills were when they were still using cellular phones. Everytime you talk to them and they start to converse with someone else, the meter continues to run, unlike when you are using radios. Since phone use is restricted to sending dispatches, we avoid telebabad," she emphasized.

As administrator for finance and as a single proprietor, the charming entrepreneur is well aware that every centavos saved counts. "With the Next Mobile phones, I can talk to them for hours and still pay a fixed rate per month. That way, I am able to maximize our resources," she noted.

Using Next Mobile phones has also resulted in tremendous savings to the company other than in terms of phone bills. She recalls an incident during the last typhoon when delivering to the North late would mean spoilage of the medicine to be delivered and consequently, huge losses. "It was almost midnight and the farms needed the medicine badly. I was in constant touch with my delivery people the whole time which allowed me to make that crucial decision to push through with the delivery. I could not have done it without the radios," she said.

Pinky is also all praises for NMI’s customer service which she describes as superb. "I can call them up now and then have my new unit delivered three hours later or even earlier. There is also less maintenance headache for us unlike before when we were maintaining our own radio frequency. You can just imagine the tons of approval that we have to get from government just to maintain that frequency. And having that huge antenna sticking out of our building before, it was bad feng shui," she muses.

She also reveals that the yayas and drivers of her children have Next Mobile units. According to Pinky: "Before, when I was assigning them prepaid cellular phones, they would use the excuse that they do not have loads so they cannot text me back. Now, there is no excuse for them not to respond when I radio them. I know my children‘s whereabouts the whole day and that gives me the piece of mind money cannot buy."

Like NMI itself, Progressive Laboratories is looking forward up to the upcoming services of the former that promise to give companies ‘on the go’ the edge to succeed. "For companies like us where time is of the essence and time wasted is money wasted, real-time communication is very important and could mean the life and death of the business," she adds.

"Personally, I own GSM handsets which I turn off when I am attending to important matters or when I am in business meeting. But when it is my IMX (Next Mobile’s brandname) that alerts, it means business. My IMX phone is my business phone basically and we in the company have grown to depend on it," Pinky emphasized.

Next Mobile has succeeded in just a short span of time to become the leading mobile communication tool of choice among ‘mission-critical’ businesses and industries by providing its subscribers not only a mobile phone/radio but also a host of services.

For instance, IMX Telematics is the integration of several technologies such as global positioning system (GPS), GIS Map, a call management application, digital dispatch or push-to-talk, mobile messaging and internet into one cutting-edge solution to efficiently convey information to improve a host of business functions.

IMX Telematics lets companies monitor every transaction as they happen. The GPS location of a mobile workforce, timestamps of incoming calls, processing time, call completion as well as electronic notations on the transactions are made available to the users of the system.

IMX Telematics helps companies track their network in real time – be it vehicle fleet, people on the field, or parcels and packages for delivery. It provides up to the minute data for better control and flexibility in managing the business.

The base component of the IMX Telematics system is the IMX Push-to-Talk mobile phone, a digital multi-way radio that gets one connected to an individual or to many simultaneous users instantly with a push of a button. The connections are clear and secure. Mobile messaging and mobile internet are also available on an IMX Push-to-Talk mobile phone, thus making information available while on the go.

Another major component of IMX Telematics is iLocate, an asset tracking and monitoring system. With iLocate, vehicles are tracked using the built-in GPS receiver on the IMX mobile phone. The system allows users to view or locate vehicles via a web-based map. Other applications are also available for better vehicle fleet and asset management.

IMX Telematics also comes with IMCS or Intelligent Mobile Communications System. IMCS is another software solution that allows IMX users to monitor and manage the calls between the base unit situated in the office and the units used by the mobile workforce in the field. With IMCS, all call transactions are logged for easy reference using time-bound and status report modules. It also has an SMS or text messaging feature for replying back or forwarding call information such as numeric figures andother sensitive data.

IMX Telematics provides real-time information that is useful for measuring operational efficiencies and other performance metrics and can also serve as basis for personnel accountability.