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Unprecedented Times Inspire an Unprecedented Response: SPI Launches New Technology Solutions to Improve Contact Tracing and Slow the Spread of COVID-19

Sales Partnerships, Inc. is North America’s leading field sales organization and under ‘normal’ circumstances has hundreds of sales representatives actively in the field every day, engaging with customers face to face, opening new markets, and acquiring accounts for some of the most successful brands in the world. 

But, in the Spring of 2020, everything changed. The global spread of COVID-19 and the ensuing shutdowns that closed cities, towns, and communities across the U.S. brought field sales operations, along with almost everything else, to a grinding halt. Businesses were shuttered. Reps were grounded. And everyone except essential workers were ordered to stay home to “stop the spread.” During this Great Pause, so to speak, rather than stop operations and close ranks, the SPI leadership team began to aggressively brainstorm for ways the company could use our technology, resources, experience, and award-winning strategies to make a real contribution, in a time when the need for true innovation and leadership has never been greater.   

Learn more about all of SPI’s contact tracing technology and workforce solutions here. 

SPI realized early on in the COVID-19 pandemic that our proprietary technologies — the same technologies that have enabled us to maintain the distinction as the most awarded, successful sales outsourcing organization in the U.S. for nearly 20 years — were all but tailor made, market-ready solutions for contact tracing programs. 

From our geo-location technology that tracks individual data in relation to other individuals and other data points to our enhanced data visualization capabilities to our in-field territory management solutions… we quickly realized that many of the tools, technologies, strategies, and insights that we’ve been using for decades to achieve massive growth in the private sector could also be used to create successful contact tracing programs, thereby helping to slow the spread of infectious disease and mitigate negative impact on the public, social, and economic health of our communities. 

Contact Tracing is SPI’s “Call to Service” During Pandemic

Having a successful contact tracing program in place is key for communities to drive down infection rates. When infected people are quickly identified and given detailed instructions and support on how to self-isolate, cities and regions can effectively interrupt and slow the ongoing spread of disease, as well as catch and control new outbreaks before they are able to grow.

But contact tracers across the United States are struggling with a number of challenges, including limited technology, poor data, a lack of communication among neighboring counties/regions, widespread workforce shortages, low response rates and noncompliance from the public, poor visualization of disease “hot spots,” little to no insight into locations of disease transmission, and more. 

When SPI realized that our proprietary territory management solutions and Geo-Informations Services (GIS) technology could solve for these problems and offer much-needed support to contact tracers in this historic public health crisis, we knew we had to move quickly.

 

“Counties and cities across the U.S. are in urgent need of ‘aggressive modernization,’ for their contact tracing programs. We know that SPI’s proven technologies can meet this challenge, and we realized early on in the pandemic that we had a moral and ethical duty to make these solutions as widely available as possible.” 
SPI Founder and CEO Fred Kessler

 


SPI’s Contact Tracing Solutions

  • GIS-Powered Contact Tracing technology, including an innovative new data visualization and analytics platform
  • Territory management and allocation support for face-to-face contact tracing programs
  • Routing optimization & visualization for in-field contact tracing
  • User-friendly forms software for contact tracers
  • Outsourcing & training for a distributed contact tracing workforce

A New Data Visualization and Analytics Platform for Contact Tracing

Our GIS-powered suite of contact tracing tools including data visualization and analytics that enable health departments to pinpoint an infected individual’s movements in relation to where others in their community have gone (rather than just recording their home location, which is the current standard for most public health departments), enables the swift identification of locations of disease spread and transmission “hot spots.”

This provides greater transparency and more effective data sharing among neighboring counties, states, or regions to support a coordinated effort to stop disease spread, and also enables contact tracing data to be quickly actionable for critical decision making on both the public health and economic fronts. 

In-Field Territory Management and Workforce Solutions

Cities across the U.S. are reporting disturbingly low response rates as contact tracers attempt to call infected individuals and identify their activities and interactions. Far too often, phone calls are not answered and, when they are, many people refuse to provide accurate information to the contact tracer. 

As a result, for contact tracing to be truly effective, many cities must conduct face-to-face investigations, in addition to phone calls, to generate better response rates and successfully identify and isolate infected people. 

SPI is the leader in territory management and field activity, and optimizing
complex field routes and managing large amounts of data has been our core competency for nearly two decades. We offer dynamic territory allocation, routing optimization and visualization, user-friendly forms software, and outsourcing and surge capacity support to organizations conducting face-to-face contact tracing investigations. 

Click here to learn more about SPI’s contact tracing solutions, or email Jay Graves, VP of Strategic Sales, at [email protected].