Inspection Software Buying Tips

When you’re working in an industry where inspections are mandated, it’s important to research inspection software buying tips to make sure you’re procuring the right product to meet your inspection and data collection needs.

To that end, the long-time experts in inspection software at Asurio, Inc., developers of BirdDog Mobile Inspection Software, have assembled a series of inspection software buying tips to help speed the process of buying the right inspection technology.

The Top 5 Inspection Software Buying Tips & Criteria

Here are 5 important buying tips to help you buy the right inspection software:

Inspection Software Buying Tip 1: Choose a Cloud-based Inspection System

To be frank, this is the direction a majority of products are moving, and for good reason. A cloud-based solution is affordable by small, medium & large organizations because the starting price point is usually a low monthly fee. What’s more, when you buy a subscription to a cloud-based inspection software product, there’s no big investment in software. There’s no software to load on your own computer or maintain. All the updates are handled by the vendor offering you the subscription.

Inspection Software Buying Tip 2: Choose a Universal Inspection System

Some inspection systems have been designed just for one industry. And that’s fine for that one industry. But when you choose an inspection system that’s universal, it means that inspection system can be configured to handle multiple industries, multiple types of data collection needs, and more. By choosing an inspection system designed from the ground up to be configured to specific needs, it gives you a vast increase in what you can actually DO with the inspection software.

Inspection Software Buying Tip 3: Choose A System That Offers More Than “Yes / No” Answers

Some inspection systems offer pre-configured templates that only offer the ability to answer “Yes” or “No.” However, to provide more clarity in the inspection report, a Yes or No answer just doesn’t provide enough information. What if an item was not inspected because it wasn’t in the inspection contract? In an example like this, an answer of “no” in the answer field just doesn’t provide enough insight for an inspection report, especially if something goes wrong, and litigation results.

Inspection Software Buying Tip 4: Choose a System That Can Handle Team Inspections

There are plenty of cases where an inspection job requires more than 1 inspector to get the assignment done in a timely manner. But some inspection software products don’t allow for that. Make sure that you choose inspection software that can easily handle team inspections, i.e. multiple inspectors are conducting field inspections, and then the inspection data is uploaded and synchronized into 1 convenient inspection report.

Inspection Software Buying Tip 5: Choose an Inspection System That Works Online or Offline

Let’s face it. When a field inspector is conducting an inspection deep in the bowels of a building, surrounded by cement walls and big metal machinery, it’s a good bet you’re not going to get a WiFi connection down there. If the inspection system only works in WiFi mode, the field inspector’s going to have a heck of a time doing the job. The solution? Make sure that the field data collection portion of the inspection software can work in an offline mode, with the information entered onto a tablet, and uploaded to an administrative or reporting function once a WiFi connection is available.

Consider these 5 buying tips when researching mobile inspection software, and you’ll be on the road toward buying the mobile inspection software that’s right for your organization.

Thinking about purchasing mobile inspection software? Contact Asurio, Inc. & schedule a demo of BirdDog Mobile Inspection Software.