Hi everyone -

I have kind of a unique situation here, and I don't know enough about phones to explore the options available to me. I'm hoping someone here can help me interpret what I think I want to do and direct me to the right type of technologies that will allow me to achieve this.

Of course I am still in the "brainstorming" phase, so if at any point you think of another method that may better suit my needs, please don't hesitate to interject, as at this point I'm mostly thinking out loud. Ok here goes:

My family owns and operates a small business with about 5 employees. We are in the pest control industry, and each of our employees service about 10-15 customers per day.

Our current means of scheduling and paper work is ANCIENT! I'm talking about we are doing stuff the same way we have been doing things for almost 20 years. The bottom line is this - my parents are spending far too long doing paperwork that I believe could be managed much quicker and easier given some of the current technologies available today.

Let me give you some background on the way things are done right now - currently if a customer calls into the office and requests service, the office has to call the assigned technician and then the technician has to call the customer to arrange the appointment. This can sometimes take hours, particularly if the technician is already tied up doing other things and a game of phone tag ensues. Wasted minutes, wasted time, even occasions where we lose the sale due to inability to immediately respond to the customers inquiry.

What I'm looking into is using M$ Outlook as a means of the office handling the scheduling of each of the individual employees. For example, if a customer calls the office, the office can view each of the day to day schedules of the technicians that are in the area. Furthermore, the office would be able to make modifications to the schedule by inserting additional appointments, or deleting those who need to reschedule. The technician would receive all of this information automatically and both devices would be synchronized via the network.

Yesterday, I spent some time with an individual who had access to an exchange server or whatever it was that he was using, where was able to do something very much along those lines. He programmed in some info into my phone and into his computer, and was able to update contact and scheduling information via either device and have it automatically synchronize with the other. I believe he called this "Outlook Exchange Server" or something to that effect. Anyway it looked promising!

The phone we set this up with was an HTC 8525 from AT&T. One major concern of mine is that our technicians are hard on equipment. I have a hard time accepting the idea of spending $400+ dollars on a phone, with no guarantees as to how long its going to last. (lost/destroyed/stolen etc). Are there other phones that would be capable of doing what I need to do, possibly something cheaper and or more durable?

What other alternatives do I have for this?

Thanks, and if you need more information please ask. This is a work in progress and I am open to all ideas!

Thank you very much,
Justin