Did you know that sheer volume of paper not only cost a business owner’s business but also reduces productivity as well? On average, it can take up to 18 minutes to locate a paper document. A colossal 70% of businesses would fail if there were an unexpected disaster such as fire or flood. Paper does not fend well against fire or moisture.
Everyone has walked into work with a go-get-it attitude to be soon defeated by the sight of the pile of paperwork hiding one’s desk. A lot of the paperwork just gets filed away in the filing cabinet never t be seen again. There must be a solution to this losing battle of inefficiency, unproductivity, and just flat out loss of space.
Yes, a mass amount of paperwork can have this effect and if this sounds at all familiar.
Mobile forms are here to help those struggling business owners who have not heard of the advantages of getting off the paper trail, and going digital. Mobile forms have grown in popularity quickly over the course of the past few years because they are simply making the lives of business owners easier, less overwhelming, and stress-free.
Two companies have partnered together to help small and large businesses with this problem and get back to maximum efficiency. Canvas and Evolution Business media group are here to relieve the burden.
Their goal is to help business owners recoup a giant chunk of their time, and money, that is being wasted with paper forms. Some of the most common losses of time boil back down to lost or damaged forms, illegible handwriting, storage and access, their slow to share, and no analytics.
Mobile forms can be used for order forms, quotes or an estimate, work orders, inspections, time cards/slips, and driver logs. These forms can also be integrated with GPS locations, check-ins and markers which can make business easier when on the road or if it is purely a mobile business.
Moreover, one can integrate mobile forms with image uploads from mobile devices to ensure accurate data collection. Signatures and maps can also be integrated with the forms, and by integrating these two, it will help track product and ensure it has been received by the hands of the Customer.
Businesses with workers/laborers that are often mobile are never up to speed on what they are doing on a daily or even hourly basis. By creating a time card mobile app, businesses can have the time automatically entered to ensure accuracy and that information can be sent in real-time via the cloud to the office. Accuracy means fewer issues and allows one to spend less time tracking employees and more on their performance at work.
A cloud-based mobile app solution can also improve routing efficiency as you dispatch workers to job sites and customer locations. A GPS location captures routes on a map, consolidates two routes and even calculate date and time for maximum efficiency.
Mobile data collection applications, such as Dropbox, Salesforce, and Evernote, offer solutions that are simple and powerful to use. Plus, With mobile data collection capabilities, one’s employees can fill out information anywhere and have that data stored securely in the Cloud. A huge cost savings driver as each four-drawer filing cabinet would cost a firm $1,500 if not purchased used.
Here are some that have benefited from the switch from paper to digital. Below are some excerpts from some case studies:
East Berkshire Primary Care
East Berkshire Primary Care, a non-profit healthcare agency who services up to 85,000 patients a year in the United Kingdom, was drowning in the amount of paperwork that was being collected by their personnel daily. There was no way for Patrick Rogan, Chief Executive at EMPC, to get an accurate analysis of the all the data being collected or to have a proper grasp of how the agency was performing.
The first step for Canvas was to fully understand the different processes and operations that encompassed EMPC facilities. After understanding the processes, the second step was to identify the holes and speed bumps that were inhibiting the efficient sharing of data between the field and office. After working through and evaluating EMPC’s processes, Canvas identified that the simple sheer volume of data being collected by the various groups within the agency, along with the manual/time-consuming nature of filing paper forms, was to blame for many of their issues.
Their first two mobile forms they deployed included a Crash Bag Checklist and Vehicle Checklist. After a few weeks of testing and seeing a major improvement in data visibility, Patrick and his team began building out additional operational mobile forms to streamline their front-end data collection further.
Since deploying Canvas in February, Patrick and his team have built an additional ten mobile forms and counting. Every mobile form they build is used to increase their operational efficiency and keep them compliant under Quality Compliance Commission standards. Additional mobile forms they have created include CQC Vehicle Supervisor Checklist, Controlled Drugs Checklist, Nurse Cleaning Schedule, and Infection Prevention & Control Audit.
Garden Grove Landscaping
David Lammers, President of Garden Grove Landscaping, approached Canvas looking for a solution to their “data overflow” needs. Garden Grove was beginning to scale as a business, acquiring new clients and more paperwork, but this explosive growth was also hurting them as well. David knew that Garden Grove needed a better way to collect, share and learn from their data and that a platform like Canvas could provide the tools for his employees.
The Senior Mobile App Consultants worked with David and the team at Garden Grove Landscaping to ensure they understood which processes were the most inefficient, and what key areas of the business were most affected. The goal was to have a single place where their employees could go to collect data, review reports, or share information in real-time.
This has ultimately led to the creation of over ten diverse types of mobile forms across five different operational departments. It has also led to the implementation of the Canvas Dispatch and Workflow tools, which allows for the Garden Grove office staff to conveniently create, track, and assign tasks to their mobile field workers.
Here are some examples of the types of mobile forms that Garden Grove created and is implementing:
- Heavy Equipment Inspections
- Fuel Logs
- Vehicle Checks
- Incident Reports
- Expense Reports
- Quality Control Reports
- Site Evaluation
After just a year of creating, testing and deploying the Canvas platform to their team, Garden Grove Landscaping has already seen amazing results. “(Today) We can complete worksheets in 30 minutes. Before it took us 3 hours. It’s saving us about $1,000 a month in time and paper costs,” said David Lammers, President of Garden Grove Landscaping.
The two case studies above are a notable example of that no matter the size of business, whether it be a large a non-profit healthcare agency or a growing landscaping company, every business can benefit and save by switching to mobile digital forms.
Mobile forms can be used for everything and reduce the consumption of paper (which reduces the number of trees that are cut down and reduces the ever-growing global carbon footprint).
Evolution Business Media Group and Canvas can help small or large businesses turn around the wasted time, money, and work with them to get further into the profit margin. No matter the size, mobile forms can improve one’s business or help peak even faster than ever imagined.
