How Clear Water Products Streamlined Communications and Saved 200 Hours

Overview 

  • $66,684 Annual ROI
  • Standardized language for records
  • Saving over 200 hours a year
  • Improved customer communication
  • 700% increase in productivity 

Apps Used

  • Dewatering Quality Testing Form
  • Daily Report
  • Maintenance Request Form
  • Extra Technician Request Form
  • Materials Request Form
  • Testing Completion Confirmation

The Background

Clear Water Products, LLC offers 27 years of oilfield experience along with cutting-edge solids control services. Offering the most effective solids control equipment available on the market today to satisfy the ever-changing needs of the oil & gas industry.

Clear Water Products is dedicated to customer satisfaction. The company understands that each rig and each project is different and work closely with each rig to optimize their solids control program to minimize costs to the drilling companies

The Problem

Yet Clear Water Products struggled with internal communications. While they enjoyed the speed of sharing information via group text, it was difficult to sift through, and often missed important information for reports.

The end result? Managers back at the office would waste time sifting through text messages for pertinent information. There was no standardized language for reporting. Information would be missed as the rigs locations are incredibly loud and made it easy to miss text messages.  

Jay Ziesler, an Engineer with the company, knew they could do better. “Our company was growing” Jay said. “We needed better communication between the office and various locations and between locations.”

So Jay reached out to his Verizon rep for a technology fix that would make their reporting easier and clearer.

The Solution

In November 2014, the company’s Verizon representative helped Clear Water Products switch to GoCanvas, the global leader in mobile apps for business. Thousands of organizations leverage Canvas’s cloud-based, “Software-as-a-Service” mobile app platform to replace cumbersome paper forms with highly customizable mobile business apps.

Businesses can search from over 16,000 ready-made apps in the GoCanvas Application Store that can be customized to an individual business user’s needs. In addition, GoCanvas offers a do-it-yourself app builder that enables non-technical users to build apps in minutes.

The Outcomes

Over the past fourteen months, the company’s employees have stopped using group text messages and started to use tablets and GoCanvas mobile apps. The company has discovered measurable results, including:

Uniform Record Keeping

Previously, employees used multiple names often for the same chemical compound. The office manager would simply write down the name used in the communications from the field. The various names made it difficult to track chemical use and understand work occurring at various locations.Today, Clear Water Products now uses a drop down menu for chemical inventory. With one click, reporting is easier for employees on the rigs. At the home office, management enjoys better understanding of what is going on in real time. 

Improved Response Time

With group text messages, it was difficult to respond quickly. Everyone received a text on a technical issue, not just those who needed to know. This made it easy to ignore the stream of messages, and harder to know what employees did or didn’t have to respond to.With GoCanvas, these reports are now separated. The company now has multiple apps it use inside of GoCanvas, each submission going to the appropriate manager. “I don’t have to go through 30 messages to look for something important” Jay explained, “the reports I need come straight to me.”

In addition, working with oil rigs meant projects were often moving in remote places. “If someone got sick and needed a replacement,” Jay said, “it was easy for the person traveling to the new location to get lost.” He estimated that this was a problem they faced at least once a month.A trick with GoCanvas has removed this issue: geo-tagging. All GoCanvas submissions include a location tag. Now if an employee needs to get up to a remote site, they can take the tag from a recent submission. This will automatically open in Google map and give the driver directions straight to the site. Getting to remote locations has never been easier for Clear Water Products. 

More Robust Data Sharing with Customers

While using group text messages, it was incredibly difficult to share information with their customers. Jay explained, “It was too much information for customers to get the big picture. With drilling operations 24/7 all year round, it wasn’t feasible to share.”GoCanvas mobile apps make it easy to share specific reports with customers via email. Even if the report is in the middle of the night, it won’t cause a disturbance like a text message. As a PDF, all the information is easy to read and understand.Now customers can stay in the loop without being dragged down by unnecessary details.

Enhanced Data Collection 

Clear Water Products also receives stronger and more accurate information with GoCanvas. Previously, reports would be inconsistent in both language and what was reported.“I had to reread text messages multiple times to get all the information.” Jay said. “If someone missed something in their message, I’d have to call them to find out the answer.”

Now, all the information Jay needs returns with every submission. GoCanvas does this with the option of required fields. An employee can skip a field in the GoCanvas mobile app, but if a field is required, they won’t be able to submit the app until the required field is completed. Jay no longer struggles with missing information or searching through whole series of text messages.

Real-Time Savings

Previously with all messages in the same long chain of text messages, Clear Water Products struggled to create reports. “It used to take me an hour and half to do one report” Jay said of their old system. With all submissions immediately available in the cloud, Clear Water Products enjoys easier reporting with real-time access to information. “Now it takes me just ten minutes to create a report.” Jay said. He estimated that moving to GoCanvas will save him over 220 hours in 2015 on creating his reports alone. 

Flexibility to Meet Evolving Business Needs

As a cloud-based, mobile platform combined with an easy-to-use mobile app builder, GoCanvas provides Clear Water Products the flexibility to add new features and functionality to any of their mobile apps. As needs evolve and change, GoCanvas makes editing apps a frictionless process. For instance, as the materials change, it’s easy for management to upload a new materials list into their GoCanvas apps. Clear Water Products doesn’t need to rely on IT support or have any knowledge of coding. With GoCanvas, it’s a simple drag-and-drop interface that anyone can use. Other mobile app alternatives make this process cumbersome or costly, weakening the effectiveness of their platforms. With GoCanvas it is a frictionless process at no additional cost. Today, Clear Water Products has ditched group messaging for mobile apps. With more time in their workday, they can focus on providing the best in solids control services. 

Ready to Rethink How You Work?

GoCanvas has helped a variety of businesses across multiple industries transform their safety processes and rethink their efficiency, ultimately saving them money. Why not do the same? Reach out to one of our experts today to kickstart your process revolution.

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