Service Electric Co. Sees $312,000 ROI, Saves 846 Hours with Mobile Forms
Service Electric Company, a longstanding industrial-commercial electrical contractor that has operated nationwide since 1945, faced increasing inefficiencies due to its outdated paper-based processes. Its technicians were burdened with completing and submitting paper forms—causing delays, lost paperwork, and hundreds of wasted hours—while office staff struggled with manual reporting. Recognizing the need for a change, Service Electric partnered with GoCanvas® to digitize its data management, streamline operations, and eliminate paper-related issues, ultimately leading to significant improvements in productivity and cost savings while unlocking the ability to generate real-time reports.
For a business like Service Electric, time is money—and every moment spent manually filling out paper forms or waiting for paperwork to be turned in is money left on the table. That’s why Service Electric began exploring solutions to speed up and streamline the daily cycle of assigning jobs and creating and submitting reports.
In addition to affecting technicians working on electrical transmissions and switchyards in the field, Service Electric’s paper-based processes were complicating the jobs of back-office staff. Manual reporting was causing the company to lose hundreds of hours to inefficiency, making it impossible to generate real-time reports. Tommy decided to look at digital solutions to replace his paperwork-heavy processes.
Highlights
846
productivity hours saved annually
$59,475
in annual time savings recovered
$312,195
annual ROI
When GoCanvas first met Service Electric Risk Manager Wendy Nelson in 2010, the goal was to identify the biggest inefficiencies in the company’s processes and develop a success plan to boost productivity while cutting operational costs. GoCanvas worked with Wendy and her team to convert Service Electric’s most time-consuming paper-based processes into streamlined mobile forms—including safety test forms, crew surveys, work orders, and equipment check-in/checkout logs.
Once the success plan had been established, it was time to deploy the solution. The first step was for Service Electric to get its new GoCanvas mobile forms into the hands of the technicians who would be using them on a daily basis. This was a critical part of the process, as it positioned the company to get feedback that could be easily incorporated back into the platform using GoCanvas’s no-code, drag-and-drop app builder tool.
Once the testing phase was complete, Service Electric was ready to deploy its customized GoCanvas platform to its 300+ technicians across the U.S. From the beginning of the full rollout, the benefits were clear: Staff immediately noticed that reports were returned on time and without being lost or misplaced, while office managers celebrated their instant access to data. Since GoCanvas automatically transfers all data from technicians’ mobile devices to the office, there is literally no room for error.
Service Electric was one of the first large industrial-commercial electrical contractors to take the plunge and ditch the paper process it had in place since the 1940s, and its “leap of faith” has been handsomely rewarded. Since fully automating its field and back-office data management processes, Service Electric has seen a dramatic increase in business productivity and a substantial decrease in its operational costs, thanks in large part to the elimination of paper and paper-based inefficiencies.
With GoCanvas mobile forms, Service Electric saves almost $20,000 per year on the cost of paper alone! The cherry on top? The company was able to recognize a full return on its investment in GoCanvas within the first nine months of deployment.
Seven years later, Service Electric is generating an annual ROI of over $300,000 and regaining over 846 hours per year by going paperless!
Ready to Rethink How You Work?
GoCanvas has empowered electricians to transform their worksites and optimize project management, leading to significant cost savings. Why not make the same impact on your electrical projects? Reach out to one of our experts today to kick-start your process revolution.
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