By Jason Good on August 10, 2015
Tags:
Case Studies
Case Design/Remodeling is a family-owned, award-winning firm based in the Washington, DC metro area. Started in 1961, Case has always been a company of innovation. Whether that is the work it does or the company’s process for getting it done, Case has pushed the envelope in improving the results it delivers for its customers.
Case offers a range of services from full additions, kitchens, baths, and handyman services. Case’s innovative twist around its handyman business was to launch a separate brand and business called “fred” (www.schedulefred.com). This slick, contemporary offer required some slick, contemporary technology.
Multi-part carbonless paper forms don’t scream “innovation”. They take time to fill out when you’re calculating job costs and margins. They are hard to read and easily lost. And they need to be driven back to the office before anything can be done with them. A truck is definitely a slow way to transmit work instructions.
At Case, the craftspeople were supposed to fill out the top section of the paper form first and get a signature from the client agreeing to the work. Then they were supposed to start the job. After the work they would add in and calculate the materials, labor, travel fees, and mark-up. “Calculations for the mark-up on materials was left to the craftsperson. This led to calculation errors”, says Karen Eckert, Sr. Director of Technology for Case.
A credit card number was collected from the customer and written onto the paper form. Another signature was collected. And then it was driven back to the office. “In the past”, says Karen, “The paper forms required the craftsperson to return to the office before the invoice could be processed.”
In March 2014, Case addressed this business challenge by turning to Canvas, the global leader in mobile apps for businesses. Thousands of organizations leverage Canvas’s mobile app platform to replace cumbersome paper work order templates with highly customizable mobile forms (We call them apps!) that improve their data collection and productivity.
Businesses can search from over 21,000+ mobile app templates in the Canvas Application store that can be completely customized with the online, drag-and-drop App Builder tool. Using that same tool, many businesses elect to build their own from scratch. Factor in features like Dispatch, Workflow, uploading your price and customer lists, and integration with other systems and Canvas changes the way work gets done.
Karen built Case’s work order using Canvas’s powerful App Builder tool herself. Canvas’s professional services team then customized the PDF document that the Canvas platform generates to match fred’s paper work order.
Case also leveraged Canvas’s Professional Services team to connect Canvas to Microsoft Dynamics CRM in order to further automate the process.
According to Karen, “Building out the work orders and getting the integration with our CRM system went very smoothly. The team at Canvas was wonderful to work with. They created custom PDFs that look just like our paper form. Canvas was also very responsive to assisting me in building the work orders.”
Case now has one cool team of craftspeople out in the field each with an iPad mini, and their fred business is more streamlined than ever. Now what does their process look like?
After the craftsperson complete their work, the process looks like this:
A number of things have been dramatically improved for Case since moving this process over to Canvas.
Karen’s advice for going mobile?
Interested in going paperess? Browse our collection of Construction, Repair & Improvement mobile templates, or send us your form and Canvas will convert your first form to a mobile app for free.