3 Ways to Automate Data Approvals & Increase Accountability with Workflow

3 Ways to Automate Data Approvals & Increase Accountability with Workflow

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Workflow with Canvas

Collecting data is an essential part of every business on the planet, but it’s only half of the equation.

Sharing data with the right people, at the right time, is often more important than just simply writing it down. But often when companies collect data with paper forms, it can take hours, days, and sometimes weeks for the information to reach its final destination! This isn’t even taking into account the other complexities that can make the paper-based data collection process even more difficult including multi-department approvals, out-of-state projects, and more!

Workflow with Canvas

Read below how mobile process improvement platforms like GoCanvas are changing the way that companies look at the collection and transmission of their data, and how a simple changes like using Workflow could help your business recover 100’s of hours in productivity every year. 

The GoCanvas platform is not only a great way to combine all your paper forms into a single mobile app, but it’s also a means of controlling how and when your company’s data is collected.  Read below to learn about three popular use cases for the mobile Workflow feature of GoCanvas and what kind of impact it could have on your business.

Review & Approve Timesheets: Collecting employee daily or weekly timesheets is always a pain, but with GoCanvas it can almost become a pleasure. Instead of your crews having to fill out a piece of paper on every job site at the end of the day or week, they will instead simply log their time right on their phone. Once complete, those times will be sent automatically to their site supervisor who will receive a notification on his or her GoCanvas mobile device. The supervisor can then access and check each employee’s time, add comments, and reject if necessary. If everything looks good, the supervisor can sign off on the timesheet and send it to the company’s cloud database so that it can be digitally filed and processed by the office accounting team.

Safety Violation Tracking: For the Construction, Field Service and Manufacturing industries, employee safety is always a top priority. Due to the nature of work that is involved in these industries, having an efficient system for reporting and reviewing safety violations is essential.

By using Workflow with GoCanvas, a safety supervisor can now do his/her rounds at each project site, fill out the safety reports, and send the results to the office manager for review in real-time. The best part is that reports can be conditionally triggered to be sent for review if, such as, an item is marked as “Failed” or “Requires Correction”. This ensures that the office is only being sent notifications about the most critical reports, which allows them to focus on implementing real-time corrective actions to improve specific site safety situations.

Multi-step Construction Tasks: No matter what you are building or producing, it usually takes a group of people to get the job done. With paper forms, this involves each person who works on a particular task filling out a report. This usually leads to there being folders and upon folders worth of unorganized paper documentation.

With Workflow from GoCanvas, the data collected from start to finish of each task is kept neatly together in a single report. Once “John Doe” completes his part of the task, he can pass or “hand-off” the digital report to “Jane Johnson” so that she can complete her part of the report and continue this process in a dynamic chain of data collection until the report is complete! There will be no more swimming through filing cabinets to find that report from last year since now every completed report will be stored neatly in the cloud for you to easily search through using a simple keyword search. You can even track the status of “in-progress” reports to see why a certain report hasn’t be turned in yet!

And remember, each workflow can be easily setup and customized based on the different types of work processes being conducted, no matter the length. If you’d like to learn more, check out this amazing Workflow eBook on how real companies are making the switch from paper forms to GoCanvas!

About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

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

Check out even more resources

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National Safety Month: 3 Ways to Create the Perfect Paperless JSA Report

National Safety Month: 3 Ways to Create the Perfect Paperless JSA Report

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When it comes to properly reporting and tracking safety data, there are many important processes that come into play.

One standard practice that is completed across thousands of worksites on a daily basis is a Job Safety Analysis. This procedure helps companies both large and small interconnect their health and safety principles to the tasks that their employees are completing. The JSA process, sometimes also known as a Job Hazard Analysis (JHA), is most often associated with tasks that involve the potential for injury or accident. JSAs are often modified and assigned to specific types of work processes, but ultimately the data being collected is focused on identifying and reviewing all the necessary steps to ensure safe work procedures are met before any job is performed.

With the good that comes from the Job Safety Analysis process, also comes the bad. When a JSA is filled out on a piece of paper like it is done within many companies today, the data that is collected is only as good as how it was captured and when it was turned in.  But what does this really mean?

The basic premise of filling out a JSA is to capture the basic steps of a job or task, the potential risks of performing it, and the actions that can be taken to mitigate the potential danger as well as increase safety. The problem with filling out a JSA on a piece of paper is that the process begins to take on the negative attributes of paper data collection.

The functionality that is missing from a paper-based process and makes it so inefficient includes:

  • No advanced data collection fields including Photos, GPS, Integrated Drop-Down Menus, Time Stamps, and more
  • No automated review or approval workflow functionality
  • No real-time data reporting or storage in your backend database systems
  • No data field requirements to ensure fully completed JSA reports

As you can see from the list above, paper JSAs are likely only being half as effective as they should. With a mobile form platform like GoCanvas, you can transform your JSA or JHA process into something that runs in real-time and collects data that includes dynamic info like site photos and GPS stamps. The data that your field personnel collects with GoCanvas instantly becomes actionable data that you can use to make decisions, instead of having to wait hours or days to receive paper-based forms.

The ability to make proactive decisions about safety is often the difference between an accident being prevented versus it actually happening.

The process of getting started with your own mobile JSAs for your various worksite projects is not difficult at all!

Our Application Store is a great resource to get started. With over 23,000+ pre-built mobile form templates including JSAs and JHAs, you’ll be sure to find something you can download into your account and start using right away! These templates can even be edited to fit better into your current process using the GoCanvas App Builder.

JSA Mobile Apps

Another great option for you is to take a picture of the paper JSA or JHA that you use today and we will convert it into a mobile form for free! Simply click here to upload a photo or a copy of your JSA and we will have it converted within 24 – 48 hours! That means that you’ll be able to start seeing the benefits of a mobile JSA versus a paper form within just a day!

Convert paper form to mobile form

About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

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

Check out even more resources

Three inspection workers on job site.

The Ultimate Guide to Quality Control Inspections

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A electrician inspecting equipment.

See how VIP Lighting optimized efficiency with GoCanvas

VIP Lighting is a retail lighting and electrical maintenance business that services over 10,000 retail locations all over Australia and New Zealand. Before GoCanvas, VIP Lighting had two separate systems that were impossible to integrate, leading to inefficiencies. GoCanvas made it easy to integrate their systems into single, centralized platform…

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Metro Caulking & Waterproofing Increase Productivity by 34%

A man looking at phone in job site operations industry.

How Mobile Forms Helped Metro Caulking & Waterproofing Increase Productivity by 34%

Overview 

  • Industry: Construction
  • HQ Location: Pompano Beach, FL

Quick Facts

  • Increased productivity by up to 34%
  • Recognized full ROI within 3 months
  • Saved over $32K since implementing

The Background

Change is never easy, especially for small businesses who are used to doing things a certain way. The same was true for Metro Caulking & Waterproofing. For over 25 years MCW had been using paper forms to service and complete construction jobs in South Florida but found as their business grew, it became increasingly more difficult to maintain their high standards of efficiency and productivity.

The Problem

Paper forms become an issue for any small business as it begins to scale and take on more projects, and that is exactly what happened to MCW. As they started to expand outside of their general South Florida region, MCW began having issues with the visibility of the data being collected. This was primarily caused by paper reports not being returned on time, being lost during transit, as well as the increase in time spent on manual reporting. MCW couldn’t afford to wait days or weeks in order to know the status of a project. These delays would effect the proper billing of projects and ultimately cost the company money.

These reasons and more are why Johnny Raffio, IT Specialist at MCW, sought out a solution to streamline the way his field users collected, shared, and analyzed project data.

The Solution

The start of making the transition from paper to mobile forms began with thoroughly understanding Metro Caulking & Waterproofing’s processes, and locating where the biggest speed bumps resided. Once understood, converting the most used daily inspection reports was key to gaining early adoption by MCW’s field users. It was extremely important to show MCW’s field users the instant impact that GoCanvas could make on their daily data collection process in order for them to embrace this new technology. Fortunately, thanks to GoCanvas’s no-code App Builder, MCW’s technicians were using the new mobile versions of their original paper forms in just a few days. The feedback, to say the least, was amazing.

“I’ve been able to make new reports that would never be able to happen on paper.”

It quickly became obvious to Johhny and his team from the beginning why mobile forms would make a huge impact on their growing small business. The ability to capture and attach photos directly to their site reports, the integration of project and cost codes directly into their mobile forms, and the backend connection of their GoCanvas Database to their 3rd party cloud software are just a few of the reasons why MCW has never turned back to using paper. Johnny Raffio commented that GoCanvas has allowed him to “make new reports that would never be able to happen on paper. Using GoCanvas has sparked new ideas, made employees aware of safety regulations, (allowed us to) easily find and view all reports, and automatically import payroll.”

The Outcomes

Since implementing GoCanvas to their field staff just over 2 years ago, Metro Caulking & Waterproofing has seen a dramatic shift in the way they collect and share data. Instead of spending hours every month on data lookup, manual re-entry, and report creation, MCW now focuses this time on acquiring new clients and completing more projects.

Going paperless has allowed MCW to:

  • Recover close to $3K worth of paper costs annually
  • Streamline client billing via automated data exports to their accounting systems
  • Increase job site safety through digital documentation and verification of training/education
  • Improve decision-making via universal visibility to daily job performance data
  • Increase overall productivity by 34%

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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Three inspection workers on job site.

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A man using GoCanvas for the digital transformation of his workflow.

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A electrician inspecting equipment.

VIP Lighting Gains Business Efficiencies with GoCanvas

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Release Notes: GoCanvas Windows App

Release Notes: GoCanvas Windows App

At the very end of 2015 we made a strategic decision to support 3 platforms for filling out GoCanvas apps.  Android, iOS and the Windows operating system. We decided to NOT support Windows Phone and Blackberry any longer.  Our goal with these 3 platforms is very simple: To 100% support them. This means that all GoCanvas features (Unless not applicable) would be available across them and the design of the interface would be simple and easy to use.

We are now happy to announce that our GoCanvas Windows App is now available!

You can install this version of GoCanvas on any laptop/desktop/tablet that is running Windows 7, 8 or 10. For those of you that have been using the GoCanvas Desktop Client, this will be a massive improvement for you.  There are tons of new features availabe on this version that were previously only available on iOS or Android. Here they are!

  • Folders
  • Table of Contents
  • Grid view for loop screens
  • Viewing and editing past submissions (History tab above)
  • Receive dispatched Loop items
  • Draw on an image you captured or pulled from your gallery
  • View PDF after sync
  • Departments
  • Web link field
  • GPS field
  • Sync after tapping submit
  • Blank date and time fields

Now your team members that have Windows laptops/desktops/tablets can use GoCanvas just like your Android and iOS users and get the same experience. This opens up a world of additional opportunity for your organization to save even more time using GoCanvas.

  • Complete submissions on Android or iOS and edit them later with the Windows App.
  • Better incorporate your office-based team members into your GoCanvas processes.
  • Office-based team members can consider GoCanvas for their processes now. Human Resources forms, approval forms, request forms and more can all be filled out with the Windows App.
  • Mobile users that have laptops or Surface tablets (We do NOT run on Windows RT, which is used by older Surface tablets) can now use those devices instead

About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

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

Check out even more resources

Man inputting digital work order into a tablet from a work site.

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Feature Focus: Create, Assign & Manage Tasks More Efficiently with Dispatch Calendar

Feature Focus: Create, Assign & Manage Tasks More Efficiently with Dispatch Calendar

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In many businesses today, the daily organization and management of a mobile workforce can be extremely time-consuming.  It often involves the creation of complex spreadsheets and/or using of multiple calendars in order to accurately track assignments. The organization of these tasks can easily take 1-2 hours per day and result in the office staff having to work overtime in order to ensure the proper completion of every activity.  In addition, Office Dispatchers often have to deal with manual processes including: 

  • The creation, printing, and distribution of daily dispatch schedules
  • Call, texting, or emailing of tasks to field employees
  • Creation of spreadsheets and reports to measure productivity

Does this kind of inefficiency sound familiar within your company? If so, you need Dispatch Calendar!

With the release of the brand-new Dispatch Calendar, GoCanvas users now have the ability to quickly create, manage, and assign 100’s of weekly tasks from a single screen. There is no more navigating between different screens, software programs or employee calendars; Dispatch Calendar conveniently places every task right at your fingertips. 

When evaluating whether your company should implement Dispatch Calendar, you should first take a look at how you process and assign daily tasks today.

Dispatch Calendar Animation

Does your office staff have to manually write out the details of daily or weekly appointments? Do they have to reproduce these details across various systems? Do you have to wait until the end of the day or week to receive reports and view whether or not all appointments and tasks have been completed?

If you answered “YES” to any of the above questions, then Dispatch Calendar is a feature that could have a major impact on the daily productivity of your business. It is as simple as using Google Calendar but with the additional benefits that come with using a mobile data collection platform. You are now able to easily manage a single calendar of all your employees’ tasks that connects to both your data collection solution (GoCanvas) as well as their personal calendar programs (Gmail, Outlook, etc). 

This is also a feature that can work across various use cases and is not just for those who already utilize dispatching software.  Additional industries that could benefit from this feature include:

  • Field Service – Electricians, Plumbers, HVAC technicians
  • Moving / Shipping / Logistics
  • Inspection
  • General Contracting
  • And more!

It is super simple to enable Dispatch Calendar for your GoCanvas account!

Anyone on a GoCanvas free trial will instantly have access to the feature and simply needs to navigate to the “Dispatch/Workflow” section of their account. By simply clicking “Enable” on the banner, the old GoCanvas Dispatch tool will be transformed into the more intuitive, Google-like Dispatch Calendar.  An example of the banner message you will see is below. 

For paid GoCanvas subscribers, the process works the same way. If you’re a current GoCanvas subscriber on the Professional subscription plan, this feature is readily available and can be enabled the same way. If you are not on the Profession Plan, but would still like to try out Dispatch Calendar.

About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

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

Check out even more resources

business people discussing project

Gown Your Business with GoCanvas Partner Program

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How Checklists Can Boost the Performance of Retail Businesses

How Checklists Can Boost the Performance of Retail Businesses

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The retail industry is much more complex then it seems to the outside world. The ability to efficiently manage a mid to large scale retail business in today’s marketplace is almost impossible if you don’t have the right tools. Luckily for business owners in this industry, the current tech boom has led to a variety of tools and platforms that allow for the quick collection and analysis of data in mere seconds. 

So what’s the problem?

Many retail business find themselves in situations where they either can’t afford to invest in high priced pieces of software, have staff that don’t embrace mobile technology, or are afraid of changing their internal processes after decades of doing things a certain way. A combination of all three of these factors is usually why a retail business will recognize that things aren’t running as efficiently as it should be, but don’t do anything about it. 

The key to truely embracing technology within your business is to select a platform that compliments and enhances what you are doing today. 

Canvas mobile checklist

In the Retail Industry, this means selecting a platform that helps increase your daily visibilty into the operations of your business. By selecting a solution that helps reduce the time you spend walking around checking up on things or waiting on reports to be generated, you are instantly recouping hundreds of hours every month that can be refocused on other areas of your business that need improvement.

Also, what would happen if you were able to receive a real-time report after every failed checklist? It would mean that issues would no longer go unnoticed or unresolved for days, weeks, or even months at a time. A single small issue doesn’t snowball into many big issues. And with real-time data reporting, you are able to make proactive decisions within your retail business that can have a huge impact on your employees’ productivity. 

The easist, most efficient way to get started with technology in your retail business is to analyze the different parts of your organization and identify which are most involved in data collection. The reason being is that these areas involve the most paperwork and employee time, and are most likely to be dramatically affected if a mobile data collection solution is implemented. That is why implementing mobile checklists with GoCanvas is one of the most popular ways for retail businesses to go paperless. 

GoCanvas offers a variety of mobile retail checklists that cover everything from retail store audits, cleaning checklists, daily store opening/closing checklists, and more! 

Canvas Mobile checklists

The best part about implementing the GoCanvas platform to your retail employees is that there is no IT involved,  zero coding, and is something easy for you to manage on a daily basis. When your business uses GoCanvas, it instantly allows you to convert your outdated paper processes into mobile checklists. This eliminates the need for all manual reporting on the backend since all the data collected with GoCanvas is instantly uploaded to the cloud and available for review. And since all reports can be sent to you in real-time, business decisions can be made immediately and without hesitation. 

Additional benefits and features for retail businesses include:

  • Field requirements to ensure that employees always complete their checklists
  • GPS and Image Capture allow employees to create incredibly detailed reports
  • Dropdown lists and checkboxes allow for the quick capture of accurate information
  • Schedule, assign, and manage 100’s of tasks with the Dispatch Calendar
  • GoCanvas Workflow allows for the creation of custom report approvals from employee to supervisor
  • And much more!

Mobile checklists aren’t the only form that will help improve your efficiency. Check out the basic order form app today!

Interested in learning more on how GoCanvas can give your retail business an edge in the marketplace? Click the button below!

About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

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

Check out even more resources

business people discussing project

Gown Your Business with GoCanvas Partner Program

Join our Partner Program and gain instant access to our global network of thought leaders and industry experts enjoying shared collaboration and collective success.

Forte Supply Chain Solutions Partner Video

Partner Snapshot: Forte Supply Chain Solutions

Explore how Forte Supply Chain Solutions partnered with GoCanvas, combining in-house industry expertise with our white-label mobile forms to revolutionize their processes.

Closeup of a handshake.

GoCanvas Integrations: Streamline your Workflow

Integrate with over 1,000 software applications. Enhance your GoCanvas experience by syncing real-time data to one or all of your business tools.

Connect with an Expert Today.

We’ll help you put together the right solution for your needs.

What’s the Cost of Paper at Your Business?

What’s the Cost of Paper to Your Business

More and more businesses are switching from paper forms and documents to digital for their company needs. Why are they opting for digital? The answer is clear – the environment and cost savings. 

It is true that overall the paper industry has become more environmentally responsible in the paper production process. Today, 39 percent of papermaking comes from recycled paper, which is a noteworthy improvement from the past. But, that does not entirely take away from the fact that papermaking still accounts for a considerable amount of deforestation in the nation. Each year, $18 million acres of trees are cut down and more than one-third of the timber harvested in the U.S. is harvested for paper. The amount of timber harvested each year in the United States continues to exceed the forest growth. The negative impact on the environment could be reduced in many cases by choosing digital alternatives. 

In addition to digitizing for environmental reasons, businesses have begun to move away from using paper for another reason: cost savings. Businesses care about the bottom line, and therefore more businesses have opted for digital versions of the everyday documents they were once using. Paper itself may not be very expensive, but the costs add up as you factor in storage, copying, printing and postage. When people are finished using paper, you must also spend money to dispose or recycle it. Studies estimate that associated paper costs such as these total to roughly 30 times the actual purchasing cost.

The Bank of America reduced its paper consumption by one-fourth by merging to digital for forms and reporting, by copying and printing on double-sided paper and by using lighter-weight paper. By digitizing, businesses are also able to free up space that would otherwise be used for filing cabinets and storage and save time that employees would typically be spending on searching for documents. 

There will continue to be situations where paper is the best option, but for those looking to reduce spending, the switch to digital could pave the way to a greener future, save businesses money, as well as free up space and time in the office which translates into saving money as well. 

Check out even more resources

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Connect with an Expert Today.

We’ll help you put together the right solution for your needs.

Text Version

The Cost of Paper

Many companies have switched to digital, opting for e-billing, apps, mobile forms, and similar solutions to run their businesses. Why are they making the switch?

The top two reasons are to: reduce Costs and be more environmentally friendly.

PAPER COSTS IN AN OFFICE

Paper costs involve more than the purchase cost of the paper. Recycling, storage, and other associated costs are around 30X the paper purchase costs.

  • $20 – Average spent on filing each month.
  • $1.500 – Average filing cabinet costs each year.
  • 9 sq. ft. – Area of space a filing cabinet takes up.

In addition to monetary savings, reducing paper consumption at an office can:

  • Improve productivity
  • Increase efficiency

According to research, 35 percent of an employee’s time at
work is time spent locating information and documents. By having documents in a central place and digitizing, time can be cut down.

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS

  • 18 Million forecasted acres lost each year
  • 60 percent of timber is harvested for paper and pulp each year.

INDUSTRIES GOING PAPERLESS

According to Canvas, a tech-based company that provides mobile apps and forms for data collection and sharing, the top industries going paperless are:

  • Construction
  • Repair and Improvement
  • Transportation and Warehousing
  • Retail, Sales, and Wholesale Distribution
  • Repair and Maintenance
  • Professional Service

Top Departments that use GoCanvas: Operations 62%, Sales 25%, Safety 27%.

Most used types of Apps & Forms: Work Orders 35%, Inspections 54%, Checklist 43%.

THE FUTURE OF PAPER

“Personal printing, such as printing out boarding tickets
or directions, is on a downward trend, but commercial
printing is maintaining its pace.”

The switch may be taking longer to catch on than anticipated but companies are very much interested in digitizing and the popularity of digitizing is predicted to continue to increase.

“While some businesses have moved away from the use of paper, sectors like education, government, and health care remain extremely paper-intensive.”

Many organizations have experienced firsthand the benefits of digitizing and have accepted a new mindset of using digital means day-to-day for what they were previously using paper for. There continues to be a strong interest in organizations to replace paper records.

GoCanvas Growth. Your Opportunity.

GoCanvas Growth. Your Opportunity.

Partners have always been an integral part of the GoCanvas journey and this month GoCanvas has deepened its commitment to reaching new markets and clients through an expanded partner program. We’re actively looking for Technology Consultants, Value Added Resellers, and IT Solution providers to team with us and bring the GoCanvas mobile data collection platform to their customers. Fully supported and enabled, GoCanvas partners will unlock industry-leading commissions through attracting and on-boarding new GoCanvas customers while also deepening their consulting relationships with those clients by executing transformational integration projects, migrating client data and processes to the cloud.
 
People's Faces - TriangleThe most successful GoCanvas partners tend to have deep industry knowledge that they use to solve real business problems, introducing GoCanvas to replace outdated processes and eliminate expensive paperwork.  John Hamilton, President of JOTS Computing, who leverages his knowledge of Public Safety and GoCanvas to change the way police and firefighters capture data in the field, offered this on the GoCanvas Partner Program, “Canvas has been our number one partner in helping our men and women in Public Safety do their jobs more efficiently…It’s Click, Submit and Done!. I rarely engage with state, county or city public service executives where I can’t describe ways that GoCanvas could be deployed to streamline their existing processes.” 
 
Construction and engineering software expert, Sandrah Vittands, a founding partner of S&B Systems, a firm that provides services to clients in both the United States and Canada, has several active and prospective GoCanvas projects running today, “We’re ‘hands-on’ with the top construction software systems in our industry, and we continue to introduce GoCanvas as the optimal solution to capture data from the field and integrate that information into our clients’ existing systems.”

If you’re interested in employing your industry-based expertise in new and profitable ways, we’d love to talk to you about the GoCanvas Partner Program, click here to learn more.

About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

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

Check out even more resources

Man inputting digital work order into a tablet from a work site.

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Woman reviewing data via her mobile phone.

See How Centurion Got Amazing ROI from GoCanvas

Centurion is the largest heavy haulage provider in Australia. They deliver national supply chain solutions to the resources, energy, construction & retail sectors throughout Western Australia, Queensland & the Northern Territory…

A man reviewing data on tablet collected by GoCanvas solutions.

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Companies rely on collecting data in order to operate. In a fast-changing world, companies that focus on streamlining and improving their data collection processes will be able to do more. The good news is that it’s become easier than ever for businesses of all… 

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We’ll help you put together the right solution for your needs.

How Home Builder, True Homes, Streamlined Inspections & Increased Sales by $1M

How Home Builder, True Homes, Streamlined Inspections & Increased Sales by $1M

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Building - Quote -

Background

  • Industry: Construction, Home Building
  • HQ Location: Monroe, NC
  • Website: Visit Here

Quick Facts

  • Recover $22,880 in paper costs annually
  • Recognized 19% increase in customer referral rate
  • Return on investment of $1,000,000+

Being a home builder within the Construction industry, completing and/or starting 4 new homes per day, was inherently causing paper forms to pile up. The main source of the pile up revolved around their inspection process at each construction site. These multi-page packets of paper that covered every section of the house could take hours to fill out, all while the new home buyer is just wanting the entire process to be over. This led to some home buyers to become frustrated and dissatisfied, which eventually led to a decline in True Homes’ customer referral rate.

On the backend, it was taking the staff in the office a minimum of 6-7 minutes to extract information for reporting purposes. And with over 45 project managers filling out 5 to 10 forms per day, this was equating to an average of 450 hours per month spent on just extracting data from paper forms.

True Homes reached out to GoCanvas to begin the process of streamlining their entire walk-through inspection process.

The Senior Mobile Consultants at GoCanvas began working with the Field Operations Manager at True Homes to develop an 117 question mobile inspection that included built-in scoring. The new mobile inspections, being used on a mixture of iOS and Android devices, were pushed out to project managers of all ages and tech knowledge. While many embraced the new way of doing things on mobile devices, a few were resistant to change after many years of using paper. But after a couple weeks of using the new system, they realized that the benefits far outweighed the initial learning curve.

“At first I was not happy about it. But then I saw that it changes how I work” said a project manager. “It makes my job easier, more efficient.” 

The new mobile inspections helped project managers identify issues within the homes and quickly communicate these concerns to the vendors in order to have them corrected immediately. With the GoCanvas mobile forms the inspections could easily be broken down by the different areas of the home, include embedded site photos, and be quickly completed without dragging the homeowner through a 2-3 hour process. This streamlined inspection process led to issues being resolved before homeowners even realized something was wrong, which ultimately resulted in much happier customers.

Ultimately this led to a 19% increase in referrals from customers in just 12 months.

Since deploying GoCanvas out to their project managers, True Homes has already seen dramatic benefits to their business. Not only are they collecting data faster, they are able to view real-time reports and dashboards via their database integration with Microsoft PowerBI. GoCanvas’s connection with Zapier made the process of getting the data they collect automatically pushed out to their business intelligence systems hassle free and done without the need of expensive IT developers.

True Homes has also taken advantage of GoCanvas’s extensive list of project management features including Folder functionality. This allows clients in the Construction industry to easily sort and organize the various types of mobile inspection forms they have created. This makes extracting information by location or home section a breeze, eliminating much of the 7 minutes it used to take to extracting information from EACH paper inspection.

Overall satisfaction among their customers, employee production, and data reporting were all positively affected by going mobile with their inspection process. This transition from paper has ultimately led to their $1M+ increase in sales in just 12 months of deploying GoCanvas.

About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

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

Check out even more resources

Three inspection workers on job site.

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A electrician inspecting equipment.

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We’ll help you put together the right solution for your needs.

3 Ways to Create a Mobile Work Order Form in Under 10 Minutes

3 Ways to Create a Mobile Work Order Form in Under 10 Minutes

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Choose a template

The secret to setting up the right mobile platform for your business is not by searching for the cheapest tool, but finding the one that you are able to customize, deploy, and manage yourself without the need of IT. This is why more and more companies from the Construction, Inspection, and Field Service industries are choosing GoCanvas for mobile construction work order and document management.

Still wondering if your business should make the switch to mobile work orders? Take a look at some of these stats from our clients in the Construction industry:

  • 45% of clients use GoCanvas for mobile work orders
  • 72%% of clients reported dramatic improvements in the speed of data collection and reporting
  • 78% of clients increased the productivity of their business by 10-19%+

The reason that close to 75% of GoCanvas users are able to build their first mobile form in less than a day is because of our code-free form builder and template library.

Another option is choosing one of the pre-made mobile work order forms in our Application Store of over 30,000 industry and use-case specific templates. This allows you to take your time as you find the right work order that matches your industry and use case. The best part is that you can download as many templates as you wish, test them out, and even customize them using the GoCanvas App Builder to make sure they are perfect. This option is perfect for people who don’t want start from scratch but also want to be hands-on as they build out the mobile platform for their business.

Canvas Mobile Form Builder

The last option (but best in my opinion) is to create a custom work order using the drag-and-drop, no-code builder.

This option gives you the ability to customize everything from the features, user experience, and the reports of your work order. You are able to make the work order as simple as a two screen mobile form with simple data entry fields to as complex as a 15 screen mobile form with automated calculations and conditional fields. This option allows you create a data collection experience that matches the specific job or project that your employees are undertaking.

The best part about all of these options is that there is NOT a huge time or cost investment. Your business is able to design, create, and deploy a mobile platform under a week without the need for involving IT or outside consulting services. This is ideal for any company who is looking for a boost in productivity but is afraid of investing large amounts of time and money in technology.

About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

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

Check out even more resources

business people discussing project

Gown Your Business with GoCanvas Partner Program

Join our Partner Program and gain instant access to our global network of thought leaders and industry experts enjoying shared collaboration and collective success.

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Explore how Forte Supply Chain Solutions partnered with GoCanvas, combining in-house industry expertise with our white-label mobile forms to revolutionize their processes.

Closeup of a handshake.

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Integrate with over 1,000 software applications. Enhance your GoCanvas experience by syncing real-time data to one or all of your business tools.

Connect with an Expert Today.

We’ll help you put together the right solution for your needs.

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