Business Operations

Business Operations | Analytics and Data Collection

How Work Order Apps Streamline Operations

Posted on March 4, 2021July 28, 2025 by GoCanvas Team

How Work Order Apps Streamline Operations

Work order management is the process of ensuring that a work order process is in place for organizations. This entire process begins with work requests and ends with either a denial or approval and the subsequent work that happens.

The workflows surrounding work orders leave many opportunities for errors and inefficiencies. But with the use of fire work order apps, organizations can easily streamline the work order process to improve maintenance teams’ performance and improve overall workflows for their business.

This article will highlight some of the top challenges with work orders using paper-based forms and we will explain some of the top reasons why companies are switching to mobile apps instead.

Problems with traditional work orders

The standard work order has typically been a paper-based form, but there are several pitfalls and problems that can arise with paper-based work. Here are some of the problems that exist when using paper-based work orders:

Lost work orders: Losing work orders can become a real problem when you are dealing with paperwork orders. It’s common for papers to get lost, they can also be misfiled by accident, or they can sometimes even be thrown away inadvertently. These potential problems can lead to the need for multiple copies or submissions of work orders, ultimately delaying maintenance tasks and impacting metrics that matter to organizations focused on responsiveness and efficiency.
Illegible handwriting: Illegible handwriting can be a significant problem with all sorts of paper forms. This can happen if workers are at a job site and they happen to be holding a tool bag while trying to write up a work order or if the worker is in a hurry to get to their next appointment. No matter the excuse for the messy handwriting, this seemingly minor issue can lead to real problems. For example, if a field technician is filling a work order, messy handwriting could lead to misunderstanding the intent, overlooking important details, or struggling to find the correct location.
Calculation errors: For work orders with integrated pricing and parts costs, field service technicians or maintenance workers may need to calculate costs for supplies quickly. Not everyone will have the time to check their math and paper work orders that require manual calculations can create cost overruns for companies or cause the ordering of the wrong quantity of supplies.
Misinterpretation of information: Intent can sometimes be difficult to convey clearly. If a work order requires information in a narrative or long-text form, then misinterpretations can easily occur. Likewise, paper-based work orders do not allow users to attach annotated photos without physically printing images, which hinders the real-time fulfillment of a work order.
Increase in downtime: Paper forms require users to either scan them in and email them or physically deliver them. In the work order management process, this can be a significant hindrance to efficiency.
Inability to automate: Businesses cannot integrate paper forms into software applications without additional steps, which makes incorporating automation into the work order process difficult. Without automation, the submission of work orders cannot kick off specific steps such as scheduling maintenance follow-ups, invoicing parties that may be required to pay for work performed, or changing maintenance schedules as a result of escalated maintenance work.

Benefits of using work order apps

For mobile apps used to generate work orders, there are many benefits that maintenance teams and workers can realize. Here are some of the top benefits of using work order apps:

Expanded functionality: A mobile app that works on iOS or Android platforms can create robust and detailed mobile work orders, by utilizing the native functionality of the phone, such as its camera, GPS, accelerometer, and touch screen. This functionality also allows users to include photos of areas that require maintenance or work and users can even annotate specific regions on an image to show exactly where work is needed. GPS also allows for location-based service requests to be issued and provides evidence that a service request has been fulfilled. Additionally, software on mobile devices that allow for push notifications means that service personnel can immediately see work orders in real-time.
Improved workflows: Efficiencies in work order management or field service management can create significant cost savings for organizations. Through the use of work order apps, users can submit work orders through the mobile device, which then triggers a series of automated events, resulting in the dispatching of a maintenance team without any human intervention.
Standardized work orders: Apps used to submit work orders can utilize standardized templates so that work orders are consistent. This consistency reduces the likelihood of errors such as missing a critical field.
Ease of use: Mobile devices are relatively ubiquitous, and most people are comfortable with using them. Facility managers or maintenance departments can customize a mobile work order app to be incredibly user-friendly and intuitive. Ultimately, this ease of use improves the completion rate of work, while also making the entire workflow surrounding a service request much more efficient.
Improved asset management: Organizations with assets requiring regular maintenance can use work order apps in conjunction with work order management software. This combination allows users to schedule preventive maintenance automatically, maintain upkeep of equipment, and generate warnings if maintenance requests to mission-critical equipment or assets are submitted.

How work order management impacts different industries

Many industries can benefit from improving work order management by using apps for submitting maintenance work orders. Some examples include:

HVAC companies can use work order apps to escalate problems or broken systems so that technicians can more rapidly complete work on HVAC systems, which can be a matter of public safety in very hot or cold climates.
Small businesses can benefit from efficiencies usually reserved for larger companies through a robust and scalable work order management system coupled with work order apps.
Property management companies can ensure that the proper scheduling of preventative maintenance occurs and that tenants receive status updates related to the work performed.

Ultimately, the benefits of using a work order app and management software can be significant and highly beneficial for organizations that need to streamline their operations and reduce their reliance on paper-based forms for collecting data.

About GoCanvas

Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

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Business Operations | Analytics and Data Collection | Compliance and Safety

Safely Returning to Work After COVID-19 Vaccinations

Posted on February 25, 2021July 28, 2025 by GoCanvas Team

Safely Returning to Work After COVID-19 Vaccinations

Now that the rollout and administration of various COVID-19 vaccines are underway throughout the country, employees are slowly becoming able to return to work as governments lift the stricter lockdowns and people, communities, and businesses try to get back to some semblance of normal. As companies can secure employee vaccinations, different policies and procedures are vital for keeping employees safe. Regardless of the type of COVID-19 vaccination received by an employee (Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna, etc.), having employees who are unlikely to suffer severe illness or symptoms if exposed to the coronavirus makes conducting business during the pandemic much easier.

As more and more employees return to work following vaccination, employers may wonder how they can keep their staff safe?

Safety While COVID-19 Vaccination is Underway

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is currently approving various vaccines through an emergency use authorization. While vaccination policy is determined at the state and local level by public health officials, vaccination priorities typically include health care workers, frontline workers, long-term care facility workers, and others with a job-related direct threat to the virus given priority to vaccinate over the general public. Many workers have received the first dose of the vaccine, while some are starting to receive their second dose.

Authorities and vaccine manufacturers currently do not know if the vaccine will prevent the spread of the virus from those who are vaccinated or if vaccination provides immunization to the vaccine recipient. Accordingly, businesses and their employees must follow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines related to social distancing, hand hygiene and handwashing, the use of face coverings, and other safety measures. Only until a significant percentage of the population receives their vaccination against the coronavirus and achieves herd immunity can we return to pre-pandemic activities and behaviors.

To keep employees safe, Human Resources departments should work with their state governments to include employees in vaccination programs. At the same time, businesses should establish policies such as requesting proof of vaccination for entering a workplace or worksite, offering reasonable accommodations for working from home, and requiring mandatory vaccinations subject to certain conditions. For example, a valid exemption from the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) or Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidelines such as a high-risk medical condition, religious belief, or other undue hardship vaccination should all be valid reasons for an employee to have an exemption from immunization. EEOC guidance related to vaccination during the pandemic is available on their website.

A business should not consider employees to be fully vaccinated until they receive their second dose of any two-dose mRNA vaccines (e.g., the Pfizer and Moderna Vaccines) and have waited the appropriate time for maximum immunity to take effect (clinical trials indicate this to be about two weeks following the second dose).

After Herd Immunity with the COVID-19 Vaccine

The administration of the COVID-19 vaccine should eventually provide herd immunity to the coronavirus as we end up with enough vaccinated people to disrupt viral transmission. While debate exists about whether or not COVID-19 is here to stay (a situation where people would receive a COVID shot annually, similar to a flu shot), we know there are many ways to maintain employees’ safety after the widespread administration of the vaccine. While face masks and face coverings may eventually become less ubiquitous, businesses should determine how employees interact with each other and with visitors, clients, or customers in the future. If it is not a business necessity to have physical contact with visitors or other employees, companies should consider minimizing such contact. Occupational safety measures such as availability of hand hygiene products and hand washing stations, plexiglass, glass, or plastic barriers, more tolerant sick leave programs, and more flexible work from home infrastructure can help to minimize the future spread of the coronavirus, as well as other airborne viruses and infectious diseases such as the flu.

Ongoing Threats

Despite the positive news about the vaccine, there are ongoing threats related to COVID-19, the most notable being emerging variants. Several vaccines appear to protect against viral variants; however, the degree of that protection fluctuates depending on the variant. While vaccination is underway, there is an ongoing and asymmetric level of protection against the virus. It is essential to slow the spread of the virus to suppress the opportunity for new variants, any one of which may not be susceptible to existing vaccines or treatments.

GoCanvas has multiple tools that businesses and human resource departments can implement to help companies more effectively combat the coronavirus. By using a combination of apps such as Daily Employee Screening Logs, Office Cleaning Checklists, and other apps in the COVID-19 toolkit, businesses can operate in the pandemic with customers and employees feeling safe and healthy.

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Construction Companies Need Disruption More Than Ever

Posted on February 24, 2021July 28, 2025 by GoCanvas Team

Construction Companies Need Disruption More Than Ever

Business Operations

Industry disruption entered the global lexicon in 1995 and shaped the way we think about innovation in various industries. Startups, new technologies, digitization, and other digital disruption are incredible agents of change for many business models. In the construction industry, disruption comes in many forms, some of the most impactful may not be a reinvention of the wheel but rather a reimagining of how to use the wheel. But there is still room for significant industry disruption, whether it be at the project management level, incorporating automation into the construction process, changing the management of construction sites, and in other ways construction technology meets digital transformation and emerging technologies.

It is essential to take a step back and understand what disruption is to understand why companies in the construction sector need disruption. Only then can we know how it changes the landscape for various businesses and industries. Disruption typically takes the form of a new way of doing something that was often esoteric, complicated, or expensive that was not accessible to smaller players. For disruptive technologies to work, they must be effective from the bottom-up – companies or businesses without vast resources must be able to capitalize effectively on high-market solutions that are made accessible. The characteristics of genuinely disruptive technologies include:

They are accessible with few barriers to adoption;
They serve an expanding market set;
They may not be evident in how they are immediately impacting an industry, but slowly and stealthily, they gain traction and then change an industry’s landscape.

Without being industry-specific, disruptive technologies include changes such as video streaming, online reference guides and encyclopedic knowledge (such as Wikipedia and other wikis), digital photography, LED bulbs, services such as Skype, and many more. These have in common that the technology was already there – it was just improved and used in a new and different way. So why do construction companies need disruption, and what new technologies or processes are on the horizon that can provide that disruption?

Why the Construction Industry Needs Disruption

The global construction industry is vast – it is a multi-trillion dollar industry accounting for significant global GDP share. It is also an impactful industry in multiple ways – construction creates and improves infrastructure and buildings that drive the economies of the world, while upstream markets generate significant global emissions. The industry also has many challenges it faces. For example, the pandemic is continually changing the way construction sites and businesses operate, the increasing cost of materials puts more pressure on companies, safety regulations and a prominent focus on safety require increased internal controls, and labor regulations require additional HR requirements and compliance measures. Unfortunately, disruption in the industry is limited.

Generally speaking, the construction industry relies heavily on existing technologies as there is little internal investment in developing new technologies. The industry is also highly fragmented, with industry operators filling specific niches that they are contracted or subcontracted to execute. Given these industry characteristics, a fundamental change in how the industry operates is not always a priority.

While the construction industry seems to do fine without significant disruptive changes to its business model, the unrecognized improvements are substantial. There are risks associated with not innovating, including losing market share to competitors, becoming less competitive in compensation and offerings, and more.

Disruptive Technologies and Services on the Horizon

There are many technologies and services currently available and in use by construction companies that are poised to fundamentally change construction processes and the construction industry as a whole. Startups such as Katerra, Fastbrick, Fetch Robotics, ClearPath Robotics, FBR, Sarcos, SuitX, and others aim to introduce either new equipment, new ways to access equipment, and entirely new processes to the industry, including robotics and exoskeletons, on-demand and niche-specific integrated construction services, modular construction, automated systems, and more. Service providers also are poised to change how the construction industry works. For example, Autodesk’s early disruption changed how Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) companies designed buildings – the integration of Building Information Modeling (BIM) by Autodesk and other providers is further changing the industry. There are also some innovative construction companies currently changing the construction methods for buildings or homes – some of these companies include: Apis Cor, which 3D prints buildings with on-site technology; Holobuilder, which offers 360-degree reality capture for construction collaboration; Kespry, which uses drones for progress tracking and job site mapping; and many others.

There are also new opportunities where disruptive technologies can transform the construction industry. New work processes, the adoption of technology, and supply chain diversification represent a few areas where digital disruption can create opportunities.

GoCanvas as a Disruptive Technology in the Construction Industry

GoCanvas is an excellent use-case highlighting the use of existing technologies to transform and disrupt industries, with the construction industry being no exception. GoCanvas takes relatively simple concepts present throughout the construction industry and changes their utilization in novel and impactful ways accessible to many customers.

Construction companies are leveraging GoCanvas to gain real-time insight into the entire construction process while increasing profitability on construction projects and maintaining high stakeholder satisfaction using highly accessible digital technologies. The various apps currently deployed in the GoCanvas store and custom apps that can be built in-house by clients or with help from GoCanvas reshape how companies evaluate job site performance, address safety issues, and meet project management requirements, and much more. The disruptive factor with GoCanvas is evident in the range of ways companies can use it – companies with limited resources can use daily reporting features, checklists, work orders, and more to streamline their processes and create efficiencies, while companies with more resources can integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning to develop novel insights based on data collected through GoCanvas on construction sites ranging from the anticipation of delays to identifying cost savings through supply chain modification and resource allocation. Regardless of how the end customers use it, GoCanvas is ready to revolutionize construction companies’ business models in impactful and meaningful ways.

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Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

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Calamar Ensures Safety of Employees with GoCanvas

How Calamar Ensured the Safety of Employees, Residents, and Visitors with GoCanvas

The Background

Calamar is one of the largest active senior housing real estate developers in the United States, consisting of several vertically integrated companies. Within this core space exists property management services, in-house and third-party construction services, and capital fundraising services. While Calamar’s corporate office is located in the State of New York, its footprint is distributed across multiple states and time zones.

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the majority of Calamar’s services were deemed “essential” business. They were required to manage operations through a complex and ever-changing environment consisting of federal, state, and local mandates that affect operations, employees, and the communities that they manage across the U.S.

Challenges with COVID-19

In response to COVID-19, maintaining employee and resident health was one of Calamar’s paramount concerns. It was important to keep their senior residents safe and active, while sharing vital information to staff and community members so they could make real-time decisions to maintain best practices for personal and group/building safety measures.

To aid these efforts, Calamar temporarily shut down and modified a significant part of their community programming and activities and purchased and distributed personal protective equipment (PPE) for their teams throughout the U.S. in the fastest and most economical manner possible. Calamar also made significant changes to the volume and locations of employees in office workspaces, while establishing novel policies at their construction sites to comply with various local, state, and federal regulations.

With distancing precautions and PPE in place, Calamar also needed to find a way to perform a daily health assessment that was readily available and reliable for all employees. The varied offices, construction site locations, and active senior communities made this a difficult challenge to manage. Calamar sought out a survey with a self-assessment option to serve their needs that would meet the stringent regulatory requirements while also allowing for a seamless company-wide policy.

Managing the company policy and following mandated and ever-changing regulations without a digital solution for their numerous locations across the U.S. would been extremely time-consuming and inefficient for Calamar. They found that the GoCanvas solution, which they customized to meet the regulatory needs across its national platform, met its needs and saved time and manpower that would have otherwise been excessive and costly.

The Results

Using GoCanvas for its COVID-19 health screening, Calamar ensures that its corporate policy is being managed in accordance with best practices throughout its multi-state platform. The automatic notifications from GoCanvas have helped Calamar address potential risks and noncompliance issues quickly, helping their staff take comfort in knowing that they are uniformly following all of the same measures to maintain the health and safety of each other and our residents.

‘GoCanvas has been an instrumental and invaluable tool in assisting Calamar to manage and monitor our employee health across the country while simultaneously ensuring the safety of our residents and others in the community,’ says Kim Stahura, Executive Assistant to the Chairman & CEO. ‘It allows us to comply with mandates and includes tracking needs should a COVID-19 case develop. The ease of use by our employees has been most beneficial and is a significant reduction in time and labor that we would otherwise have had to incur. In many locations, we would not have someone available to administer and to screen employees.’

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Three Key Benefits of Near Miss Reporting

Posted on November 13, 2020July 28, 2025 by GoCanvas Team

Three Key Benefits of Near Miss Reporting

Business Operations | Inspections | Reporting

Identify and Control Risks Before Incidents Happen

Near miss reporting is often described as a free lesson because it enables companies to proactively resolve hazards before a tragic or costly incident occurs. When a worker discovers a potentially dangerous situation, completing a near miss report means the risk can be resolved before it causes harm to their teammates.

Additionally, safety managers can use data from near miss reporting to improve training programs, develop safer work processes, and fix any faulty equipment that could lead to an accident. Proactive safety programs can be developed from compiling near miss data, giving employers the opportunity to resolve systemic risks and provide their crew with the latest safety measures on a daily basis.

Empower Workers and Promote Safe Habits

When your crew knows that their safety is a priority within your business, morale inevitably goes up. Providing your workers with the resources and training to identify and report near misses helps them know that their well-being is an important aspect of daily operations.

It is important to train your crew on what defines a near miss, why it is important to report such hazards and to lay out a clear reporting process. Many organizations streamline the reporting process with safety management software that includes established checklists and forms for near miss reports. Using a digital solution also gives workers the opportunity for anonymous reporting and saves time that would be spent filling out and delivering paperwork.

As you establish safety programs, remember that the goal of near miss reports is to keep your workers safe and get them looking out for possible risks. This could even include making the narrative around reporting to focus on learning lessons and good catches, rather than a blame game and punitive measures. So many workers may feel uncomfortable reporting near misses for a variety of reasons. You’ll want to change the outlook to recognize their efforts and celebrate the fact that you’re growing safer at your company every day.

Increased Compliance and Worker Safety

Reporting a near miss can ensure that future incidents and injuries are avoided. It keeps your workers safe and helps companies reduce the costs associated with workplace incidents, such as medical expenses, time lost due to injury, accident investigation, and equipment replacement.

Preventing accidents before they happen also means that your worksites can naturally keep up with the latest OSHA regulations. Potential hazards and risks will be removed as they are reported, which means a safer worksite that meets compliance requirements.

Looking for a safety solution that will provide the benefits of near miss reporting to your team? GoCanvas Safety includes pre-built digital forms so you can streamline your reporting and resolve hazards before incidents occur. Customizable reports and turn-key dashboards mean you can regularly audit and update your safety program, so you can focus on the human factors to keep your team safe. Learn more here.

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Business Operations | Analytics and Data Collection

Saluda Hill Landscapes Increases Communication with GoCanvas

How Saluda Hill Landscapes Increased Communication and Visibility with GoCanvas

The Case for GoCanvas

Saluda Hill Landscapes provides multi-level landscaping to Lexington, SC, and the surrounding areas. With multiple divisions covering both commercial and residential work, they stay busy all year round.

When Bryanna Wooley came onto the team as the Marketing Coordinator, she was given the task to find a replacement to their stacks of paperwork. More than 45 work orders were being completed on paper weekly. With multiple departments, an abundance of forms, and managers in different locations, Saluda Hill needed a way to streamline the delivery of information to the right people.

When Bryanna was first tasked with finding a mobile solution, she felt completely overwhelmed until she came across GoCanvas, where she said she was amazed by how comprehensive everything was. Before GoCanvas, communication and organization was a challenge for Saluda Hill. Production managers were keeping track of information on notebooks they carried with them. To find pricing, production managers referenced a typed list kept in their trucks, used their memory, or made calls to the office. Their scheduling coordinator made a lot of phone calls to production managers and superintendents to get pre-site information and determine which lots were in fact ready to be on their schedule. Sometimes it was a hassle to track down forms due to them being misplaced or because they remained in the possession of a team member out in the field.

Benefits of Improved Communication

By working with a dedicated account manager and onboarding representative at GoCanvas, Bryanna was able to create the perfect solution that fits the business needs across all departments. Today with GoCanvas, production managers can complete forms on-site with the customers, send the information back to the office in real time, and immediately have the job go on the schedule. From there, pre-site variances, purchase orders, and post-sites were all completed in the same application for a smoother process.

Saluda Hill Landscapes implemented GoCanvas this past Spring and is on track to see around $30,000 in savings. These savings have allowed them to avoid hiring another person whose main responsibility would be to perform the actions that can now be done with their current staff and GoCanvas. Production managers have also noticed several hours being saved each week with GoCanvas. On the admin side of the business, the scheduling coordinator has a clearer insight into the jobs to be scheduled and can easily access all information pertinent to doing her job.

Bryanna also mentioned that “we felt our managers were being spread too thin. But in reality, what they needed was a software like GoCanvas that increased communication and productivity, and allowed them to capture and send detailed reports right on their device.” Saluda Hill has plans to streamline their processes even further in the future through integrations and dispatch.

Saluda Hill Landscapes Case Study from GoCanvas

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Four Keys to a Successful Incident Report

Posted on October 1, 2020July 28, 2025 by GoCanvas Team

Four Keys to a Successful Incident Report

At every construction worksite, it is vital to report any injuries, near misses, and accidents. Incident report forms are used to document any event that could cause injury to your team, as well as capture details on safety hazards, security issues, and damage to equipment or property.

As an important part of any safety program, an incident report form should state all the essential information about an event or issue. It should include the following key components to ensure all necessary details are collected and properly documented.

1. Accurate Data

All data collected on an incident report must be easy-to-understand and specific. Having clear and accurate information ensures that the proper corrective action can be efficiently implemented to keep your crew safe.

This means making sure that the correct details are captured as each report is completed, including worksite location, date and time of the incident, contact details, and more. Using digital forms with established checklists and worker information can reduce most potential inaccuracies from the process. Plus, it means your safety manager doesn’t have to decipher handwritten reports as they arrive.

2. Complete Details

It is important that all essential questions are covered in the incident report. Basic details such as incident location, hazard type, and if anyone was injured are all necessary, but you should also include contact information for workers who witnessed the incident and if a police report was required.

These comprehensive details will help the safety manager take any future investigation steps without wasting time trying to track down further information.

3. Supporting Images

Photos, blueprints, and diagrams should be included as supplemental materials for incident reports. Making sure to take photos of any injury or damage, as well as capturing images of the surrounding environment, provides more clarity and detail to those who need to review any incident reports.

4. Signatures and Validation

After completing any report, those who are involved in the incident should sign to validate all of the included information. In most cases, this will be the crew member who witnessed the incident, as well as the supervisor on duty. It is important to capture these signatures for liability purposes and for accountability as the safety manager takes corrective action.

Looking for a safety solution that includes the key components for incident reports? GoCanvas Safety includes pre-built digital forms so you can collect accurate and complete information for every incident. Built-in photo and signature capture means that you get the vital details every time, so you can focus on taking the appropriate actions to keep your team safe. Learn more here.

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Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

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Business Operations | Analytics and Data Collection

Five Ways to Take your Toolbox Talks to the Next Level

Posted on September 24, 2020July 28, 2025 by GoCanvas Team

Five Ways to Take your Toolbox Talks to the Next Level

Use toolbox talks to refresh and reinforce

Daily safety meetings should not just be a means to share new OSHA regulations and compliance issues. They are a great way to remind your team about safety measures that are not always at the front of their minds.

Toolbox talks provide an opportunity to reinforce ongoing safety initiatives, refresh important worksite concepts, and even give your workers a place to discuss and practice new skills.

Utilize digital tools for planning and accountability

Toolbox talks are a vital component for every safety program, and their planning should be treated as such. Digital forms provide structured checklists to ensure that every necessary topic is covered, along with the means to collect important details and notes from your meeting without being limited to a small space on a paper form.

Plus, any information collected from the daily briefing can be quickly and securely stored, which means no more jotting things down on a notepad that can be easily lost.

Audit your daily safety meetings

It is important to regularly debrief with your workers, asking what did/didn’t work, and make adjustments to ensure the vital details are being retained by your crew.

This doesn’t have to be a difficult process. Asking your workers a few simple questions at the end of a talk and taking short notes can be plenty. The feedback can be quickly reviewed to make changes to your format as needed, so your daily briefings are effective and make for a safer worksite

Keep your talking points fresh

In addition to updating the way you deliver safety information based on worker feedback, you should mix up your toolbox talk topics on a regular basis. This can be as simple as updating your briefing to include the latest OSHA regulations each day, approaching a well-worn topic from a different angle, or just sharing new stories to reinforce the importance of current safety initiatives.

Remember, the goal is to engage your workers and get them thinking about possible risks. Regularly changing your talking points can get them focused on your worksite’s specific safety challenges.

Don’t forget the human element

Even if all of the latest regulations, rules, and compliance issues are covered in your toolbox talks, there are human factors that cause people to take their mind off of tasks. When workers are frustrated, distracted, tired, or even just complacent, they are more likely to overlook important safety measures.

It is so important to remember that nobody is ever trying to get hurt. When an incident occurs or a rule is broken, it is most often due to a worker’s state of mind. Your toolbox talks are a perfect opportunity to address these human factors. Providing good habits and reminders, disrupting complacency in your company, and creating a space where your crew can share their concerns are all pieces that can work against rule violations and keep your workers safe.

Looking for a safety solution that will take your toolbox talks to the next level? GoCanvas Safety includes pre-built digital forms so you can streamline your planning and ensure that every important detail is captured at your daily briefings. Customizable forms and turn-key dashboards mean you can regularly audit and update your toolbox talks, so you can focus on the human factors to keep your team safe. Learn more here.

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Cumberland Farms Decided to Ditch Their Paperwork and Saved Over $400k by Going Paperless

Cumberland Farms Decided to Ditch Their Paperwork and Saved Over $400K By Going Paperless

Overview

Background

Industry: Retail
HQ Location: Framingham, Massachusetts
Website: Visit Here

Quick Facts

Saving 845 hours annually in productivity
Recovering $81,900 in annual time savings
Seeing $408,816 annual Return on Investment

The Background

With over 500+ retail stores and gas stations located across the Mid-Atlantic, Cumberland Farms today is one of the largest privately held companies in the world with revenues of over 16+ billion annually.

The Problem

With so many locations and over 6,000+ employees, trying to compile and organize the data from each store in a timely manner was becoming almost impossible. Each location was filling out any combination of paper time sheets, work orders, facility inspections, store inventory sheets, and more.

In addition to the mounting piles of paper forms and slow collection times, Cumberland Farms was motivated to reach out to GoCanvas about switching to mobile forms in order to reduce operational costs, increase revenue through greater productivity, and increase the visibility/accessibility of data within the organization.

Across the Cumberland Farms organization, the Operations, Safety, and Maintenance departments shared the same issues when it came to paper. They weren’t able to easily collect, share, and learn from the data that was being captured at their hundreds of locations across several states. Nothing was being processed in real time, and their paper process was only getting slower as their business scaled larger and larger.

The Solution

Given these issues, GoCanvas Senior Mobile Consultants worked with the team at Cumberland Farms to start developing a successful plan to transition their locations from paper forms to mobile forms. The first part of the plan consisted of identifying which forms were a critical part of the data collection process at Cumberland Farms, and to begin transitioning these forms into the GoCanvas mobile platform. The first couple of forms consisted of Part Inventory, Guest Experience, and Parts Request reports.

Once these mobile forms were completed, Cumberland Farms identified a group of “pilot users” to test out the new paperless process and compile all feedback — positive and negative. This feedback was then incorporated into each mobile form using the no code, drag and drop GoCanvas app builder. The forms were so easy to create and edit for Cumberland Farms that they have since built out over 20+ different types of mobile forms!

“Coming from a company where everything was on paper, GoCanvas is easy to pick up and very efficient to expedited work orders, parts, and time sheets.”

– Mike Krizan, Cumberland Farms, Inc.

With the mobile forms finally tweaked to their ideal usability, Cumberland Farms focused on making the back-office process even simpler. This included incorporating the Dispatch feature of Canvas, which allows staff to manage and assign tasks from the office to personnel in the field. This allows the office staff to track and review results in real-time, as well as re-assign inspections or reports that weren’t completed on time. This has contributed to their reported 28%+ increase in productivity since deploying GoCanvas.

The Outcomes

Since fully deploying GoCanvas over 5 years ago, Cumberland Farms has collected well over 145,000 digital reports and reduced its paper costs by $11,000 per year. They also saw a full return on their investment within 6 months of fully deploying GoCanvas to their field teams. All of this, as well as their dramatic increase in productivity, led to their recurring ROI of over $400,0000 with GoCanvas.

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