TURBOCHARGING LABOR
CUSTOMER STORY
MARKET REFRIGERATION SPECIALISTS
Market Refrigeration Specialists (MRS) install and repair commercial refrigeration systems for WalMart, Target, Whole Foods, and other large grocery outlets. It’s their job to ensure that food items contained in refrigeration and freezer units stay cold and keep food safe.
PHASE ONE CHALLENGES
Addressing immediate needs.
HOW IT STARTED
When Market Refrigeration Specialists met Angel City data, they were a small company, swimming in paper. Inches of paper-based inspection forms sat on bulky clipboards. This old-school workflow required a pallet of paper, costing over $3,000 each month(!). There were the added headaches of purchasing, receiving, and storing all this paper, plus toner costs, printer wear-and-tear, and other intangibles.
And that was just the tip of the iceberg.
Check, please.
On most jobs, the field techs work with refrigerant and other controlled substances, requiring EPA inspection forms be carefully completed and submitted. Missing one critical checkbox on a form could cost the company up to $10,000 in fines.
Ctrl + C. Ctrl + V.
Once a job was completed, the tech would bring the forms back to the office where admin staff would re-enter all that inspection data into administrative systems, where jobs could be updated.
PHASE ONE SOLUTIONS
Elegant solutions bring immediate relief.
Clipboards replaced with iPads and an intuitive mobile app.
Inspection data goes right into a central system, in real time.
Careful programming ensures forms are completed correctly.
Paper reduction and productivity gains delivered a quick ROI.
How we helped.
The Angel City team met with MRS and identified several key forms that could be easily adapted to a mobile app employed on iPad tablets. After a series of design and development sessions, we deployed the system with great success. Field techs could now enter their data digitally into a central system with mere taps. Thoughtful inspection “wizards” walked the techs through simple questionnaires that collected all required questions, eliminating costly government fines.
Those pallets of paper and other monthly costs? Slashed.
That $3k/monthly paper allowance quickly shrunk, and those profits helped recoup the cost of the mobile app in a matter of weeks.
As is often the case with ACD customers, these initial benefits exposed other opportunities to further improve things.
PHASE TWO CHALLENGES
Initial relief reveals administrative drag.
Work orders. Extra work.
Though inspections had seen a digital transformation, paper work orders were still being delivered to the office and re-entered by administrative staff. This bottleneck slowed many downstream processes, including client invoicing and reporting.
Only part-way there.
Ordering parts from a job site was also cumbersome. A tech would grab a slip of paper and carefully write down the desired part number. Then walking back to the truck, they would thumb their way through thick catalogs to find the replacement piece. Finally, a paper purchase order was written by hand and manually faxed back to the office for ordering.
PHASE TWO SOLUTIONS
Set phasers devices to scan. And order. In real time.
Digital work orders now completed onsite, increasing efficiency and slashing paper usage.
Replacement parts could be scanned and ordered instantly, closing jobs in record time.
Billing could take place almost instantaneously, reducing times-to-close dramatically.
How we helped.
Seeing their previous success, MRS were believers that additional investment in their mobile app could improve things. It was now time to fully embrace this workflow renaissance. By contracting ACD to add digital work orders into their mobile app, the techs could update and close work orders in real time.
Their new parts ordering also became a dream in efficiency. Using their device’s camera, they could quickly scan a part’s barcode, identify it visually from their digital catalog, and tap a few buttons to create a purchase order for that part.
These real-time job updates also delivered a hidden benefit:
Faster billing and improved cash flow.
RON YORKMAN
Operations Manager, Market Refrigeration Specialists
“With Angel City Data building our iPad solution we can submit work orders, time cards, and inspections more efficiently. We’re able to get our processes rolling 100 times faster than we were three months ago. If we do a service call this morning we can bill it this afternoon!”
Release the secret bottleneck.
As the above improvements continued, the company began to prosper. They estimated that their new systems were saving an average of 120 administrative hours a week. Office data-entry personnel were turned into salespeople, and revenue, profits, and company continued to grow.
REDUCTION IN ADMINISTRATIVE OVERHEAD
INCREASE IN SALES STAFF & OVERALL VOLUME
At this point, you’d think that Angel City Data couldn’t possibly extract more value for Market Refrigeration. Right?
WRONG.
PHASE THREE CHALLENGES
Tapping out time tracking.
Notification inflation.
Due to their continued growth, MRS’s field personnel exploded from the original 20 to over 100. This introduced new tracking challenges. They needed to collect accurate time-entries from their tech staff and get this info into payroll and other downstream systems. They started tackling this with time-entries submitted via email.
Copy. Paste. Combust.
Administrative personnel would then copy/paste each time-entry into downstream systems that tracked overtime, payroll, and other necessities. Do the math: 100+ techs x 15 time-entries each day. That’s typing and then hand-copying over 1,500 email entries every day. Yikes! Understandably, they found this ridiculous workflow...well, ridiculous.
PHASE THREE SOLUTIONS
Little things. Massive difference.
Friendly and efficient time card portal added to mobile app streamlines data entry.
Time entry data seamlessly delivered in real-time to central system.
Relevant data flows into payroll and union-compliance software packages.
How we helped.
After their latest plea, we worked with MRS to uncover several challenges related to the timecards, including calculating complex overtime and other payroll rules.
Angel City Data was able to capture all time entries via mobile device with a simple, inviting interface that techs actually enjoy using. The app allows techs to enter their time quickly and accurately and ensures that administrative staff have ZERO copying/pasting to get this precise data tucked into their job and payroll systems.
This careful approach and meticulous attention to detail has produced a system that saves MRS
every. single. year.
The overall impact of this system has left Yorkman ecstatic.
“Our ACD solutions have saved us a tremendous amount of time and money. But more importantly, they have helped us expand our business and serve our customers faster and more responsively.”
FUNCTION MEETS FORM
Works great. Looks great.
AWARD WINNING DESIGN
FileMaker Excellence Award – Design of the Year
Not only was the system a whopping success for the client, but also for Angel City Data, who received a Claris Excellence Award for “Design of the Year”, signifying the best interaction and visual design for an exceptional user experience.
