Drinks manufacturer Red Bull has equipped promotions teams with a bespoke pocket PC application to reduce administrative duties, speed up feedback and create standard management reports.

Red Bull has 30 'energy teams' across the country tasked with promoting the benefits of the product.

They carry Ipaq pocket PCs to record consumer responses immediately and upload the information via GPRS-enabled Orange phones, directly to a Red Bull web page, hosted by mobile computing company BlueTrail.

Feedback from the field to Red Bull's central London head office is much more efficient with the new system.

David Lourie, head of consumer collection, Red Bull said the role of the energy team manager has completely changed since the introduction of the system, built using Lotus Domino, with Candenza mForms middleware.

Previously the job meant hours spent writing up reports and dealing with faxes. The way things were recorded was very disparate.

Now information and trend analysis is available instantly and can be accessed by managers across the organisation.

'Reports are compiled from up-to-the-minute research which has proved a huge asset in developing and fine-tuning our marketing and sales strategies,' he said.