The Background

This trucking company, which chose to remain anonymous for competitive reasons, has a deep history of providing transportation services for the Oil & Gas industry in the United States. They began the search for a mobile solution due to their overall lack of real-time reporting and inability to track the 24-hour activity of their trucks on the road.

The Problem

Prior to GoCanvas, the trucking company suffered from many of the same issues that plague others in this industry. Slow, lost, untraceable paper forms were making their day-to-day operations a nightmare. Paper forms were not reaching the office 2,3, or 4+ days after the driver had filled them out. Sometimes drivers would neglect to fill out certain forms because they were so time-consuming to complete and turn-in. This resulted in the managers at the trucking company having very little visibility into the status and condition of their trucks, as well as the inability to make proactive decisions within their business because the information was being transferred so slowly with paper.

The Solution

When the trucking company approached GoCanvas almost three years ago, they were looking for a solution to their data collection and sharing needs. A Senior Mobile App Consultant worked with the trucking company to identify the holes in their current process and create a success plan to address those issues.

“We are able to constantly adjust to our environment with GoCanvas”

Trucking companies, big and small, that operate in almost every industry can search from over 20,000 pre-built mobile form templates in the GoCanvas Application store, or drill down further and look specifically at mobile form templates for Transportation and Warehousing. These can be completely customized with the online, drag-and-drop App Builder tool to fit an organization’s specific processes.  Using that same tool many businesses, like the trucking company, elect to build their own mobile forms from scratch. They decided to incorporate features like checkboxes, digital signature capture, integrated truck/parts lists(via Excel), and auto-calculations. Other features include GPS capture, image capture, barcode scanning, and more. The trucking company ultimately chose GoCanvas because of the platform’s design flexibility and quick deployment. “We are able to constantly adjust to our environment with Canvas” commented an office manager at the trucking company.

After signing up for a free trial of GoCanvas, a Senior Mobile App Consultant got to work tailoring the GoCanvas platform to fit the trucking company’s needs. Without the help of any IT resources, the trucking company was able to develop a new safety program based around the GoCanvas platform. This included the implementation of:

• Safety & equipment based audit forms for specific departments
• Pre-populated dropdowns for projects and employees to prevent reporting errors
• Integration of their GoCanvas database to Quickbase

The best part is that this implementation took weeks, not months. With the use of Canvas’ powerful App Builder tool, which allows “citizen developers” to create their own apps to meet their specifications without any coding or techy language, the trucking company was able to create, deploy, and field test in just a couple weeks.

“Before GoCanvas, we relied on managers and mechanics to tell us how the trucks were performing. Today, we can report 24/7 on the conditions of the trucks.”

The Outcomes

Since fully implementing GoCanvas over three years ago, the trucking company has been able to totally change the way they do business. “Before GoCanvas, we relied on managers and mechanics to tell us how the truck was performing. Today, we can report 24/7 on the conditions of the trucks.”

With their new mobile forms, the company supervisors no longer have to chase down trucks to retrieve vehicle inspection reports. Every crew is now able to submit their daily field and truck audits from wherever they are, and their supervisor gets alerted in real-time. Their integration with QuickBase then pulls the information that was submitted from the field and quickly analyzes it to start identifying trends within the safety data. This ability to see and create reports in real-time has allowed the company to become more “proactive” when it comes to safety, instead of waiting for a major accident to happen and reacting to it.

Overall, the trucking company has seen an amazing return on its investment in GoCanvas. Their returns have not only shown up on the balance sheet but also in their daily productivity as a business.

“No longer are we waiting for the drivers to come in to report an issue. We now know ahead of time and have a solution ready to go. We went from being reactive to proactive.”

Major benefits include:

• Improved Job Performance – Since implementing the GoCanvas platform, the managers at the trucking company have seen a 100% increase in the number of daily audits completed and received. This has resulted in the company being able to have full insight into how their drivers are performing, the real-time condition of their trucks, and the ability to make proactive decisions regarding maintenance and safety.
• Improved Accuracy of Data  – By implementing mobile forms that pre-populate with driver names and locations, no longer are the days of receiving paper forms that are misspelled, missing information, or are illegible. By eliminating paper from these specific processes, the trucking company is saving upwards of $36,000 annually.
• Rapid Reporting & Integration  – With the GoCanvas platform, the trucking company now receives all their daily audits on time, when they need them. They schedule automatically. CSV reports allow them to easily view what is happening on a daily, weekly, and quarterly basis. They have even integrated their GoCanvas database into their existing QuickBase system to further analyze their data in real-time. A manager at the trucking company commented that “No longer are we waiting for the drivers to come in to report an issue. We now know ahead of time and have a solution ready to go. We went from being reactive to proactive.”

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.