24 hours in the mobile, action-packed world of James Pickton

Not Kiefer Sutherland unfortunately, but our take on 24 hours in the life of a virtual UK businessman. It's a new article we've just published and you can read it all here. Below is an extract to whet your appetite.

Now he’s got the UK’s leading fast food chains queuing up to be served, James Pickton, or JP as he’s known to his colleagues, rarely touches the ground these days. Since launching his food service equipment business last year, his wife reckons he’s the small businessman’s answer to 24’s Jack Bauer.

With an eight-man engineering team, a small admin office in Hampshire, and customers spread as far afield as Manchester and Bath, JP ascribes his remarkable success as much to mobile technology as to his grasp of the restaurant game. He stopped by long enough to give us his snapshot of a typical day:

The countdown begins as I awake to the dulcet tones of Katherine Jenkins on my Windows Phone 7 alarm. Then it’s shower, shave, Shreddies and a quick check for overnight email on the PC in my study. It’s usually the last time I use a desktop device until I get home. For the rest of the day, it’s down to my trusted armoury of mobile tech.

Time to hit the road. Quick check first on the traffic using the Map feature in my phone. As well as giving me turn-by-turn directions to my destination, it pinpoints restaurants in the vicinity and people’s verdict on them - which is particularly useful as that’s our business, so it often gives me a talking point with the customer.