Handy.la uses Roam.ai to improve location accuracy and battery efficiency

Florence Rodgerson
Florence Rodgerson
Content Writer
November 4, 2020

Handy is a Mexican-based company that offers a complete business mobile application for sales representatives working in the field of delivery services.

We had a chat with Arturo Ojeda, co-founder of Handy, about their business and experience with Roam’s location APIs and SDKs.

Who is Handy? Tell us more about what you do!

Handy is an effective and accessible solution for companies of all sizes who want to automate their sales processes, have better control over their teams and ultimately increase their sales. To put it simply; Handy is a business app that drives sales enablement and simplifies workforce automation.

In Mexico, where we are based, there are hundreds of thousands of convenience stores that act as an important distribution channel for the companies within the food and beverages (F&B) industry. Every day thousands of sales representatives from various F&B companies visit these small shops to sell their products, collect their orders and even deliver the goods directly.

Handy help representatives do their work more efficiently in a number of different ways. You can create sales orders using detailed product information, manage the returns, generate and print receipts for your customers.

Thanks to location technology you can easily log your customer visits and get directions on the most efficient route to take to visit your clients. We also have a web app that has a managerial supervision function. The management has access to analytics such as the number of visits, the time spent with the customer and sales results.  

Who are your customers?

The end-users of Handy are the sales representatives working in the field. The web app is mainly for the management to have an overview and control over the sales process and performance. Handy is an enterprise app, it is licensed by a company and then gets redistributed amongst its employees, kind of B2B2C.

The majority of our customers are medium-sized companies within the F&B industry in Mexico, and we’re growing in popularity in more Latin American countries. We currently have around 10.000+ end-users.

How did you come up with the idea of Handy?

Handy started six years ago. I went on a trip to Silicon Valley in 2013 and I became inspired by all the ambitious companies solving people’s problems with technology.

Then, together with two other colleagues, we decided to use our experience and knowledge to do the same. The beginning was challenging, I had to wear many hats since I was responsible for the development, product management, accounting and selling our solution. Over the years the company grew and now I can proudly say that we have a steady and successful business.

You’ve been using Roam's solution for over two years now. Can you tell us more about it?  

I came across Roam (formerly GeoSpark) two years ago on the website Product Hunt. Your promise sounded exactly like what we had been looking for: great location accuracy and low battery usage. We needed to ensure the location technology solution we use doesn’t compromise any of that, especially as our end-users very often don’t have access to high-end mobile devices.

We currently use your Android SDK and Get Location API to provide the location of our users. It’s an important part of our solution as it helps the sales representatives easily log their customer visits, plan the most efficient routes to take. The management can supervise their work using their employees’ location updates.

What location solution were you using before Roam?

We’ve built our own location tracking solution. Although I’m proud of it, I also have to say that it was a great decision to move to Roam as our customers spotted the difference.

What differences did your customers notice after the implementation of Roam?

Firstly, the accuracy of location tracking improved, we were able to track our users with much higher accuracy.

Secondly, our app became more battery efficient. Our users are always on the go so it’s vital for them that the app doesn’t drain their battery quickly.

Last but not least, using Roam saved us a lot of engineering time.
Arturo Ojeda, co-founder and CTO, Handy.la

What’s your experience with the implementation of our location SDKs and APIs?

The process was very smooth. We simply created an account on Roam.ai, followed all the provided instructions and integrated your solution into our app. We didn’t need any support so we didn’t need to reach out to you even once.  

We rolled your technology out in two steps. First, we did an A/B test. We were running our mobile app Handy with our in-house build technology for part of our user base and at the same time, the other group of users had access to the application powered by Roam location tracking. The results were satisfying so after a short while we decided to fully implement your products.

What’s the future of Handy? What’s the next big step for your business?

We’ve recently introduced a feature we’re really proud of - the possibility to pay in the local currency. This marks one step towards expanding our business geographically! We already hold a fair market share in Mexico and we have the goal to increase our market share in other countries in Latin America.

A big thank you to Arturo from Handy for talking with us and sharing his experience. To learn more about Handy visit their website.

Interested in using Roam location technology in your app? Contact us today.

Want to know how Roam provides location solutions?

Thank you for reading! If you want to learn more about how Roam provides location solutions then check out our product and solution pages.

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Florence Rodgerson
Florence Rodgerson
Content Writer
November 4, 2020