eBook Content: See The Moving Parts in Your Business: GoCanvas Business Insights

See The Moving Parts in Your Business with GoCanvas Business Insights

Introduction: Your data is talking to you – or trying to.

Every day, small and medium-sized businesses generate large amounts of data. Data on customers, inventory, sales, equipment status, and more. Data that could — if it were properly organized and analyzed — yield all sorts of information to assist in decision-making. But because that data is often locked away on paper, the insights from that data too often go untapped.

Fortunately, getting a full picture from your data doesn’t require a large IT staff or advanced technological skills. With GoCanvas Business Insights, you can gain new understanding from your data without a huge team of computer programmers, and put the same power of “business intelligence”— previously reserved for “the big guys”— to work for you.

Businesses small and large are tapping into the power of mobile forms and data analysis to dramatically improve day-to-day operations and strategic planning.

If you start listening to your data, you could be surprised at what it can tell you. 

Are You Having These Issues?

Are you running into these common problems faced by many small and medium-sized businesses? Either you’re constantly struggling to find data you need, because it’s stuffed in an overflowing filing cabinet, or your business lacks that data at all: The information is too cumbersome to collect and process, so staff aren’t even gathering data beyond a  bare minimum.

Or, you may have multiple versions of the same documents, leading to uncertainty about what’s really accurate. All this leads to a lack of understanding of where your business units are at any given time: Is the sales department over- or underperforming compared to this time last year? Is marketing failing to reach a major sector of your business audience?

If this sounds familiar, don’t despair. You are probably among the many small- and medium-sized businesses that struggle with the same issues. These problems stem from not using the power of everyday mobile technology and not coordinating how data is collected and shared.

Gartner, a leading technology research and advisory company, says that the average employee at a small- or medium-sized business still prints 400 pages a month. Many SMBs still collect data using paper forms. And even among those that have transitioned to a mobile app to capture information on the field, many aren’t mining this data to its full advantage.

To take full advantage of the data, you need to do something with it.

Case Study 1: Inventory Management

Like many companies of its size, Environmental Lighting Services, a 100-person lighting and electrical contractor based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, has an exceedingly complex inventory. In addition to all its warehouses, the company has 40 trucks, each of which is a “rolling warehouse” filled with a handful of each type of bulb it supplies. Since the trucks don’t carry full cases, employees performing the company’s semi-annual inventory couldn’t scan barcodes; instead, they were forced to count items manually, one by one.

Now, using the GoCanvas App it automatically populates with ELS’s master item list, employees can easily call up any item and enter in the count and location, reducing a time-consuming, three-week process to under one week.

ELS is preparing to unlock business insights through GoCanvas Business Insights, especially around inventory and forecasting sales.

Having an app-based inventory solution also makes external audits a breeze, and ELS has big plans to do even more. In addition to adding a timecard app and an app that assists technicians with energy-efficient lighting surveys, ELS is preparing to unlock business insights through GoCanvas Business Insights, especially around inventory and forecasting sales.

Company vice president Fred Wolsleger explains, “We’ve done two inventories, one at the end of 2015 and one mid-year 2016. As we approach this year-end, we will have one fiscal accounting year cycle that we’ll have gone through. Now, we’ll be able to do more analytical work. But if we didn’t have all that data in GoCanvas, it would have been impossible.”

Switching to mobile offers some immediate benefits — providing a high level of data integrity, for example, and saving time that would be spent rekeying paper forms into the computer. But to take full advantage of the data, you need to do something with it.

GoCanvas Business Insights makes it easy to import data into Excel to quickly generate charts, graphs, and summaries of your most important information.

We selected Excel because most businesses use the program and people are familiar with how it works. Also, no need to pay exorbitant costs for custom software at $1,000 per screen (something we hear a lot).

After importing your data, it’s easy to see, at a glance, the crucial data that helps you make business decisions. Which employees are charging the most overtime? Who are the most productive? Which equipment has been safety checked? What equipment fails most often, and why? The possibilities are endless and that’s the power of business intelligence (BI).

It’s easy to see, at a glance, the crucial data that helps you make business decisions.

What is Business Intelligence?

Simply, “business intelligence” refers to summarizing the data you capture in the course of doing business, then taking that information and transforming it into easy-to-read charts and graphs to gain insights into your company’s performance.

Originally — in fact even just five years ago — only Fortune 500 enterprises could afford the pricey and complicated tools used to perform this mining and analysis. Today, these tools are within the reach of many small- and medium-sized businesses, and they are much easier to use than ever before.

According to industry expert Dresner Advisory Services, a third of small businesses and more than 20 percent of mid-sized businesses have used BI products in the past three to five years. For good reason: A study by IBM and MIT Sloan found that analytics-and business-intelligence-driven companies outperform their peers by 2.2 times.

Business intelligence software — including GoCanvas Business Insights — can help with:

  • Understanding which pieces of equipment are involved in most breakdowns or incidents.
  • Targeting the top safety issues by location.
  • Aligning daily operations with strategic, long-term objectives.
  • Establishing and monitoring performance metrics.
  • Identifying customers who are cutting back on their purchasing and offering them incentives.
  • Comparing year-to-date expenses for this year with last year, and forecasting sales for the entire year.
  • Learning which category yields the most “immediate action” ratings, by the supervisor.

The Power of GoCanvas Business Insights

Let’s say you’re inspecting your store, work site, or piece of equipment regularly. One inspection by itself doesn’t tell you anything other than “This happened and this is what we did about it.” But the power of data is that information accrues over time. Once you have data from 10, 30, or 100 inspections, patterns begin to emerge, and you can start to be more proactive and less reactive.

For example, a dashboard allows you to analyze employees’ time cards. How many jobs is each employee completing per day or per week? How much time is each employee spending between jobs? Which employees are the most/least productive?

The power of data is that information accrues over time.

Inspections

In any industry, safety is priority number one. Inspection checklists can yield insights on whether any machine is in need of upcoming service and even predict failures before they happen — which can prevent injury, reduce downtime, and help you better plan for future repairs.

Think data can’t predict the future? A team at Carnegie Mellon University — the same group that helped IBM build the Watson supercomputer — built a predictive safety model that is 80 to 97 percent accurate. The model uses a company’s preceding three months of safety inspection data to predict where injuries will occur over the next 30 days.

Software like this is making its way out of the lab now and into the palm of your hand — in your employees’ mobile phones.

Simply tracking your inspections (what happened, when, and what was done to address it) over time gives you access to a wealth of information you wouldn’t have if each inspection existed in a vacuum. You can look for patterns. If a pattern emerges, you know it’s not a matter of if an incident will occur but when. Then you can take steps to fix the problem before someone gets hurt.

Whether it’s an issue with set-up or on-the-job work, you can identify patterns through your inspection data and improve your safety culture.

Case Study 2: Connecting the team

Bernhard Energy is all about saving its clients money and energy.

The Little Rock, Ark.-based firm assesses and designs energy-saving mechanical and HVAC equipment for institutional clients like hospitals and universities. That’s good news for clients and good news for the planet.

These big, complex projects always start with a survey of existing equipment. Bernhard uses the GoCanvas App and checklist to survey all the equipment already at the site, noting size, age, and state of repair, and supplementing the textual data with photographs. The company’s technicians are able to easily note areas where clients can save money by looking for and documenting where mechanical equipment uses outdated methods of operation, and where that equipment could be upgraded to use more efficient parts and systems.

Bernhard uses the GoCanvas App and checklist to survey all the equipment already at the site, noting size, age, and state of repair, and supplementing the data with photographs.

Back in the home office, staff members use GoCanvas Business Insights to import all that data into Excel. “GoCanvas helps quite a bit” to get the information into a usable format, says energy analyst Michael Wenneker.

That data then goes to multiple departments: The engineering team uses the data to model the viability of a project; the financial team models future maintenance costs, and so on. It’s truly a team effort, with GoCanvas uniting everyone at Bernhard.

Timecards, overtime, productivity, and more: Your people may be your best asset but they’re also one of the most complex.

Construction, manufacturing, and field service businesses — as well as businesses in many other industries — may have employees distributed over multiple locations, some who never even visit a home office but instead work from the road. These businesses often have a combination of full-time, part-time, and contract employees, all of whom fill in different time cards each week.

GoCanvas allows you to take that mishmash of paper time cards and invoices and streamline the data into one app, where it can be processed by your back office.

And even better: Once timecard data is in GoCanvas, it can easily be imported to Excel using GoCanvas Business Insights, where you can perform complex analysis. Find your most productive employees, or identify the ones taking the most sick days. Learn which employees are working the most overtime and why. Combine timecard data with GPS data to determine which jobs take the most time and if you are billing accordingly.

Once timecard data is in GoCanvas, it can easily be exported to Excel.

Finance departments can use GoCanvas Business Insights to help fine-tune budgets, forecast sales, and more, but they can’t do it without good data.

One manufacturer said that prior to implementing business intelligence solutions, its finance department spent 80 percent of its time collecting data and 20 percent analyzing it; after the switch, those percentages were reversed.

With more data being more accessible, businesses are able to react more nimbly. “Ten years ago, we made assumptions on samples of data and based decisions on gut feel or someone’s ability to argue an opinion,” one financial director said in a report by research firm TDWI. Now, that’s changed because you have access to real-time actual data with the click of a button.

Case Study 3: Saving time

Another company making the most of its data is MOM Brands (formerly Malt-O-Meal). MOM has been a GoCanvas user since 2010. It outfits its in-store auditors with iPads to collect data at all the stores in which MOM Brands products are sold. These auditors track how each item’s brand standards are being upheld and whether products are placed where they are supposed to be. The auditors also ensure there is full compliance with distribution and retail standards.

MOM Brands now can pull all that data into monthly pivot table views at the click of a button, allowing its team to receive visual documents in real time. Users can reference historical data, segregate data, and even pre-populate form fields on their iPads before going out to a site visit at a retail partner location. MOM’s more than 100 users are saving countless hours, now that data that previously took days to analyze is accessible immediately; and the fact that data is transmitted directly from the field to Excel means fewer errors, and hours saved not doing data entry.

You may be thinking: This all sounds great, but won’t it take a long time and cost a fortune?

Not at all. Most GoCanvas customers using GoCanvas Business Insights get up and running by themselves. But if you want a bit of extra help, our Professional Services Team is on hand to guide you through the process and get GoCanvas Business Insights up and running. 

Our team can:

  • Customize the GoCanvas App for your needs 
  • Integrate your GoCanvas App(s) with GoCanvas Business Insights
  • Identify insights you can get from your data and help you with a custom dashboard

What’s more, you’ll find that the modest cost of GoCanvas is more than offset by the time and money you’ll save.

Imagine: No more hours spent on manual data entry or manually converting data from one format to another. No more errors due to typos or mis-keys. You can stop spending time chasing down faulty data or painstakingly creating dashboards and visualizations, and start focusing on what’s really important — running a successful business.

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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eBook Content: Use Mobile Apps to Manage Project Costs

Transportation workers looking at digital work orders on tablet.

Use Mobile Apps to Manage Project Costs

In this eBook, you’ll learn how to use mobile apps to track and control the cost of labor, materials, and equipment, and find out how these apps can help protect your bottom line.

Introduction: Two Of The Scariest Words In Construction: Cost Overrun

Estimating a job is a tricky business and things can change at any moment. But companies whose project costs consistently exceed their estimates are doomed to fail. There is a reason why barely 50 percent of construction companies survive after their third year in business. 

Why do companies sometimes have trouble meeting their margins? It’s partly because of the current economic climate: Construction costs are at an all-time high, according to Turner Construction’s cost index. Labor costs are through the roof, and while materials costs aren’t increasing as quickly as labor, they are also on the rise (and some can be quite volatile — which we’ll get to later).

Another issue is human error in bidding: One consultant shared a story of a contractor who forgot to add sales tax to his estimate. Another contractor, bidding on a big project for the Army Corps of Engineers, made a mistake in a single cell of an Excel file that changed the final bid amount by $3.7 million.

But another major cause of cost overruns is a lack of ongoing communication. According to Construction Global magazine, update reports from the worksite are often only produced every four to six weeks, which means that any developing cost overruns won’t be spotted until much later when they are often too late to correct. 

Mobile apps can solve this problem by allowing managers to track daily costs in near real-time.

Why mobile?

If you haven’t made the switch from paper forms to mobile apps, you might not know that cost tracking is just one advantage. Mobile apps give every member of your team access to the information they need in real time, from anywhere. Mobile apps also address the key issues with paper forms, including eliminating lost forms and illegible handwriting while expediting traditionally slow routine tasks — like completing time cards and estimates.

Electrical Contractor Magazine puts it plainly: “Contractors that are still putting estimates together using pencil and paper are not only wasting time and money, but they also are losing business. Just as the advent of the internet changed how sales teams interact with customers, smart devices and the cloud are helping contractors become more competitive and able to demonstrate their ability to immediately and effectively respond to customers’ needs.”

Mobile also helps companies respond quickly to changes. In “the old days,” it could take days or weeks to adjust to new specs from the architect, with multiple versions of the same documents being faxed or messengered around. Now those plans can instantly be sent to everyone’s mobile devices so that your entire team is on the same page at the same time.

How mobile helps control costs

As previously mentioned, construction costs are higher than ever before. The good news, according to JLL, is that there’s also a lot more work to go around — the construction industry will continue to grow by double digits in a majority of industry segments — outpacing the rest of the economy. 

And costs are also expected to rise further. So it’s more important than ever to know exactly how much you’re spending. 

Tracking your daily costs via a mobile app takes only a few minutes and can be updated from any mobile device in the field. That data can then be instantly exported into a file back at the office so you can see where you are trending in relation to estimates. You can slice and dice those costs to compare by project type or by cost category, to drill down into exactly where your estimates are spot on — and where they need to be improved.

Plans can instantly be sent to everyone’s mobile devices so that your entire team is on the same page at the same time.

Here are three of the most important areas where shifting to mobile can help you get and stay: Labor, Materials, and Equipment.

Chapter 1: Labor

The shortage of skilled labor in the construction industry has led to increased costs. CBRE reported that after the housing crisis of the last decade, many construction workers left the industry and have not returned.

“When the number of new construction jobs began to grow without a proportional increase in qualified construction workers, tighter labor markets conditions pushed wages upward,” said Andrea Cross, head of research for the Americas at CBRE and co-author of the report. The labor shortage is expected to continue for the foreseeable future, according to Tradesmen International, and labor wages will rise steadily at least through 2020, JLL said.

What does that mean for you? First and foremost, it means you need to have a tight rein on labor costs since they’re already likely higher than expected. Unapproved overtime could throw an entire project budget into disarray.

Mobile timekeeping apps are one way to effectively monitor your labor costs. Crews can submit daily or weekly timesheets, by project, and their hours worked are instantly uploaded into accounting software systems, where supervisors can see the cumulative totals. Instead of waiting a few days for workers to drive to the office to hand in paper timecards — or send a fax — and then for your back office staff to process those paper forms, you can know immediately how many hours were worked by each member of the crew that week. Mobile apps can also track the GPS location of where those timecards are completed, ensuring workers were “at the job site.”

Some mobile apps, like those at GoCanvas, are able to automatically notify a supervisor if there’s an anomaly or approval needed. That supervisor can then immediately sign off on overtime or, if there’s an error, send the card back to the worker for corrections – right from their mobile device.

Unapproved Overtime Could Throw An Entire Project Budget Into Disarray.

Chapter 2: Materials

Materials costs aren’t rising as quickly as labor costs, on average, but there are some standouts. CBRE points out that the price of asphalt, diesel, iron, and steel may be down, but the decline in those prices has been offset by increased prices for glass, cement, construction sand, gravel, and stone. In general, cement, steel, and lumber price growth may flatten off this year or next, according to JLL

That said, according to Ken Simonson, chief economist for Associated General Contractors of America, other materials have experienced wide cost swings. The price of gypsum products, for example, increased by 3.9 percent from January 2017 to August 2017 — and more than doubled in 2018. Further, many materials are purchased locally and local markets can have huge variability in their costs; that makes predicting price changes even more difficult since you can’t always rely on national data. 

With prices changing dramatically like this, you need to have a handle on your materials use and costs in real-time. You need to know how much you paid for a product, how much you used on a given project, and whether your markup was correct. Mobile apps can track all data relevant to a job — location, materials used, and costs — and even present an itemized bill to a customer for a signature, with no pen or paper required. Then, in the back office, you can pull all that information into an Excel spreadsheet to compare how you’re actually tracking with your estimates.

You can also use mobile apps to track orders, keeping an eye on shipments and inventory so you don’t run out of any crucial materials — or buy too much. Overbuying can waste money and also creates potential safety issues if materials are stacked too high or if they create crowded conditions. (To say nothing of the potential OSHA fines!) By tracking where materials are and when they’re likely to arrive, you can better plan ahead.

Be Ready for OSHA 

Want to learn more about staying on top of OSHA construction regulations and preparing for safety inspections? 

Download these resources: 

Your Guide to OSHA’s Construction Safety Regulations 

Chapter 3: Equipment

Is owning that dozer a savvy business decision? If you don’t know, you need to start tracking usage. 

Most major equipment comes with motor meters, or you could have the operator note start and end times in an app. This will give you an idea in real time of how often a piece of equipment actually gets used (as opposed to sitting idle on a lot). 

You’ll also want to calculate your “internal rental rate,” or what it costs you per hour to run. This calculation includes not just the cost of fuel and an operator, but mechanic hours, financing, insurance, and taxes, notes consulting firm K-Coe Isom.

Divide one-time costs (like the purchase price) by the expected number of hours you plan to get out of it over the equipment’s lifetime. Add up yearly costs (like insurance, taxes, and licensing) and divide by the number of hours you expect to use in a year. Then add up maintenance costs and divide by the number of hours you can go between servicing, and add in hourly costs like fuel and the operator’s rate. There are more detailed examples of how to do this at For Construction Pros, or a mobile app could do the math for you to ensure accuracy.

Once you know your “internal rental rate” you can determine whether renting makes sense. Your “rate” calculation for the equipment you bought might look like this:

Cost Item$ / motor-hour
Cost of Purchase$12.80
Cost of Annual Ownership$3.00
Cost of Running ($24+$1+$0.50)$25.50
Cost of Maintaining ($1.00+$4.00)$5.00
Internal Rental Rate$46.30

Many construction companies are moving this way: The demand for rented heavy equipment is soaring, with recent data predicting that the market for heavy equipment rentals will grow by 4 percent between 2018 and 2024. 

Usage data can help you determine whether it’s more cost-effective to rent or own. Are you using the equipment enough — and is maintenance costing you little enough — that ownership makes more sense than renting? If you do decide to go the renting route, remember that even then, a usage log can help you reconcile rental charges with actual use. With the ability to add a GPS tag and photos, you can also keep track of the last location equipment was used.

Finally, detailed usage and maintenance logs help you in the event of an audit: According to K-Coe Isom, the IRS has been looking more closely at deductions for repair costs on equipment since new regulations went into effect in 2014.

Putting It All Together

Mobile’s true savings really become apparent when you think about all the projects your business is juggling at once: It’s not just one job or one piece of equipment, but many dozens or hundreds of moving parts all at the same time. Using digital and mobile tools lets you pull everything together into one area so you can assess whether you’re on target at any time. 

With GoCanvas, it’s easy to upload cost data into a backend system — you can do it with just a few clicks. This saves time in the back office and gives your employees out-in-the-field actionable information just when they need it. Rather than spending their time filling out or reviewing paperwork, they can quickly and easily note the most crucial information on their mobile device and get back to work. 

With costs either through the roof or swinging wildly, you need the best information available to you to make accurate estimates and meet your margins. Using mobile tools is a smart decision that will help you minimize cost overruns on labor, materials, equipment, and more — and help your business meet its margins on every project.

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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eBook Content: The Definitive Guide to Eliminating Construction Paper Forms

The Definitive Guide to Eliminating Construction Paper Forms

In the construction industry, there are a lot of factors you can’t control, such as the cost of raw materials or the weather conditions at a site. But if you’re struggling with paper forms getting lost, damaged, or destroyed, then there’s a solution at your fingertips: mobile apps.

Chapter 1: The Problem with Construction Paper Forms and the Simple Solution

The paper system of time cards, safety inspections, and project reports could be slowing down your processes. How? It’s easy to make errors, miss fields, or lose information entirely on paper. Employees also spend extra time with redundant data entry. Tracking labor or equipment costs suddenly becomes difficult. Returning information from the field can take hours or days. You may not know what’s going on at job sites until days later. Worse, paper-based systems could be costing your firm thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours over the long run.

Some may not know it, but you’re always preparing for the future. You’re looking for the latest tools and industry trends. For many construction firms, one thing hasn’t changed: the way they collect information. Time cards, inspections, proposals, and change orders are all still done with pen and paper in the field

Inefficient

Whether in the field or in the office, paper forms require a lot of work. Handwriting reports on-site takes up valuable time. Back in the office, your administrator has to decipher messy handwriting and re-enter the information into a computer to keep it with other records.

Instead of taking fifteen minutes for one inspection, paper creates a long process of filling out the paper form, returning it to the office, and entering it into the database. It can take hours or up to a week for data to finally reach your database.

This inefficiency makes it difficult to quickly respond to your customers’ needs. One New England construction equipment company found their response time was slow. Why? Paper forms made it difficult for departments to share information. The problem wasn’t reaching the appropriate department, so they didn’t know there was an issue!

Storing paper also silently drains your bottom line. Just a single four-drawer filing cabinet can cost a company $1,500 a year. How many do you own, two? Three? Each cabinet is taking thousands of dollars from your bottom line.

Going mobile removes these inefficiencies. With mobile apps, every inspection, time card, or checklist is sent straight to the cloud. From there, your home office can export the information into a variety of systems from Salesforce to QuickBooks.

With mobile apps, you no longer have to spend time entering information into your system from a sheet of paper. Your employees on-site enter it once, and it’s all done. In many cases, reports that once took days now require only 30 minutes.

Lack of Standardization and Accountability

With paper forms, your employees pretty much have free reign to collect information as they please. Required fields can be skipped, miscalculations can be made, and accuracy can be questionable, especially if an employee fills out the form eight hours later.

For instance, a foreman could be on-site getting a project up and running for the day. He can miss the one employee who arrives late. When payday comes and this employee’s check isn’t right, your office has to go back and try to fix the problem.

One Chicago construction firm found that without standardization, their payroll manager was spending hours looking for forms. It was an expensive price to pay for finding and organizing information.

But this story isn’t unusual: Businesses of all kinds struggle with documentation: 11% of files will either be misfiled or lost entirely. Companies are wasting time and money when they create paper documents and try to retrieve them later. Cracks in your system cost you efficiency in the long run.

Mobile apps create a standardized process for collecting important information. With mobile apps, you can make certain fields required. So if someone forgets a section of their building inspection, they can’t submit the inspection until that section is complete. Whether on Android or iOS, mobile apps create an easy user experience, encouraging your workers to enter the information now, not later.

Can Paper Do That?

Have you ever thought about how paper limits the type of information you can collect? It requires you to fill out aspects of your report, such as descriptions, on one page and print photos separately. You can collect photographs and other media, but you have to go back later and compile all the data. This can lead to issues such as mismatched descriptions and photos, weakening the information you collected.

With mobile apps, employees are able to collect more information than ever before. With the power of smartphones and tablets, they can:

  • Take photos
  • Capture a location with GPS
  • Scan barcodes
  • Do calculations

If your form or process requires any of these features, they can be automatically included in the final report, which can be emailed out and/or stored in the cloud. Now, you can be certain that:

  • Inspections happen at the right time and place
  • Equipment is up to code with visuals
  • Calculations are accurate for better invoicing or purchasing orders

Not only will you gather more information, you’ll be more efficient and have less errors taking up time during your day.

Delayed Information Sharing

Construction sites are dependent on communications between field and office workers, particularly in the realm of tracking time, payroll costs, and work reports. But paper reports need to be transported all the way from the field back to the office. This often means they aren’t submitted until the end of the week, which can create a backlog in your office. This backlog delays payroll and project decisions.

With 11% of documents becoming lost or misfiled, these delays can become even longer. Carbon copies can get stuck between the seats of the truck or become ruined by one cup of coffee. Even if you misplaced forms, they can be impossible to decipher afterwards. Trying to recognize any of this information takes additional time, if you can understand any of it.

Paper also holds back companies from innovation. If you decide to update your processes with paper forms, you have to create new forms, print them, and send them to various sites. Creating a new form may take a few minutes, but actual implementation can take days or weeks. With a mobile app, you can create edits in minutes, and send out the change to all your users in real time. Whether in Cincinnati or Calcutta, the next time your employees open the mobile app, the updated version will be there. All they have to do is fill it out.

Paper forms may be familiar but delays from paper processes end up hurting you, the decision maker. An information lag can delay your understanding of the costs of a project, as well as if it’s running on schedule. Any delay limits your ability to make decisions to change the course of a project. Paper processes are holding you back from greater success.

Are you struggling with any of these issues? Mobile apps can solve your issues, save money, and help your firm focus on your primary mission: creating strong, great projects for your clients.

“Canvas allowed us to design, test, and then modify all of our air conditioning maintenance forms as we went along.”
– Ron Walker, Cool Frog Cooling

Chapter 2: Thinking Strategically About Construction Mobile Apps

Whether you focus on commercial construction or on private homes, the details matter. But what are the best methods for collecting your information? Since every business has different needs, great construction companies ask themselves certain questions while setting up their processes. To have the best information collection for your construction business, ask yourself these strategic questions.

What Info Do You Need?

To begin, start with one process that you use on a daily basis. Every construction site, for instance, has a daily safety inspection. Make a list of what information you need to have to cover your bases.

A great way to form this list is as an outline. That way, you will have both the substance and rough shape of your future mobile app.

More than safety, it’s important to ask yourself another question. Do you need more information on your employees or subcontractors? Have you had to scramble for information on equipment in the past? Have you been worried about legal liability? Your answers will help you decide what new information you need to ask for.

Mobile apps make gathering this information easier. While you can bold fields on paper, you can’t require people to fill information out. With mobile apps, you can make certain fields required. That way, your users must fill out those fields to submit their form. You’ll get the information you need no matter what.

What Information Do You Want?

More than what you need, it’s important to decide what you want from the data. What data do you not have? Where are your blind spots? Are you thinking of change or growth in certain areas?

Create a list of areas where your current data is lacking or what you will need before making future strategic decisions. Making future strategic decisions.

Some areas where our clients have expanded their information include:

  • Photos of a construction site to validate safety inspections and provide visual confirmation of compliance
  • Automatic date and time stamps when perishable materials arrive to a work site
  • Pre-populated forms with helpful information such as labor and material descriptions and prices
  • Adding GPS location capture for worksite inspections

It will take time, but if you go with mobile apps, you’ll have all that information in real-time. Thus, you’ll be able to make strategic decisions quickly and effectively.

Without information, you lack the evidence to prove you need to change. Gathering much of the necessary information with paper takes longer and requires more work from you and your employees. Mobile apps make it easy to expand and analyze your information, so you can make the best decisions for your business.

“With GoCanvas we can quickly modify or create any app to meet the specific project requirements.”
– Rick Davis, Owner of Rick Davis Consulting

How Do You Want to Receive Your Info?

More than the information you need, how do you want to get it? Some fields could be simple text boxes. Others could be a drop down list of values for the inspector to choose from. Maybe you want photos to validate inspections of equipment or certain set-ups. Knowing how you want to gather the information will save you time when you’re creating your mobile form.

Finally, you also need to think about how you’ll want to access and share the information later on. With mobile apps, all of your information is accessible 24/7 in the cloud. Will you want to download all of your data as a CSV or XML file? Or maybe you need to send the data to a customer, colleague, or subcontractor as a PDF?

Perhaps you prefer a seamless integration with one of your existing systems via an API? API integration will allow you to get forms such as work orders and time cards in real-time in your databases. These are all great options depending on your needs.

With GoCanvas, all forms go immediately to the cloud. Not only will you get more data, but you skip the manual data entry necessary with paperwork and other systems. One customer of ours has saved over $40,000 in administrative costs.

You can’t control the weather or the price of concrete. However, you can take steps to eliminate inefficiencies in your business. Mobile apps provide a unique opportunity for construction firms to collect insightful business information. With smartphone technology, you can validate your information easily and quickly. All of this can be collected in half the time it took your employees before.

What could your business do with hundreds of more hours on-site and at the office? Every construction business has unique needs. To capture the best data for your business, you need to understand your needs. Asking yourself these questions will help you quickly and easily collect the information you need to succeed.

Chapter 3: The One Switch That Saved a Contractor Thousands of Dollars

Ace Contractors Group Pty Ltd, is an Australian-owned company offering a wide variety of services including Civil, Landscaping, Infrastructure, Environmental Management, Water Industry, Electrical, Plant, and Equipment. They work not only across Victoria but also in Perth, Western Australia, and NB Projects in Ceduna, South Australia and Wolumla in NSW. For over 40 years, they have delivered quality projects at the best value to their customers.

While Ace Contractors was growing across the region and beyond, their paper system wasn’t keeping up. Unless employees went and audited each site, it was difficult to ensure that their various locations were in compliance. This system required extensive work hours and was painfully slow.

In addition, each site supervisor was burdened with large amounts of paperwork. Any time a form was updated, someone had to send it to each of the various sites across the region. Paper forms were slowing down their work, and hindered communication between sites. Ace Contractors needed a solution that was faster but also thorough.

Solution

In November 2013, Ace Contractors switched to GoCanvas to replace cumbersome paper forms with highly-customizable mobile business forms that improved their data collection and productivity.

Ace Contractors started with a trial group of users to test going mobile. With an intuitive user experience, the group took to the mobile app quickly. Soon after, they expanded their use of GoCanvas to their site supervisors and finally onto the project managers.

Today, they have moved their most commonly used forms to mobile. Forms now collected on smartphones include Mobile Plant Entry Permits, Weekly Site Inspections, Handover Certificates, and Excavation Permits.

They aren’t stopping there: They’re looking at ways to transition other forms to GoCanvas too!

Results

From the beginning, Ace Contractors saw productivity gains. Monitoring compliance is now easy and does not require that someone from headquarters visit each site. Employees on-site can fill out compliance quickly at their respective locations. All forms are sent immediately to the cloud, so the central office receives the report the day any form is finished.

Updating forms has become easier too. Once the form is edited with the GoCanvas App Builder, it is immediately available to users no matter where they are. Switching to mobile apps has removed the issue of lost paper forms and strengthened communication between the sites and senior management.

In real terms, Ace Contractors reported saving over $2,200 in just four months. Michael Spiteri of Ace Contractors believes that “we have most likely saved a lot more than that if you take into account form revision upgrades that do not require a person going to a site with a handful of paper, time and effort to re-print, and being able to instantly be informed if there is an issue on-site.”

With less time and effort, they receive more accurate information in real-time and can focus on finishing great projects.

“Being able to know what is happening on your site is priceless.”
— Michael Spiteri, Ace Contractors

Chapter 4: How to Create a Building Inspection App in One Hour

Whether you work in commercial or residential construction, inspections are crucial in your line of work. Inspections, however, take time away from the important renovation or construction work you do. For many businesses, you can’t even bill for time spent on this work.

Are you ready to go mobile? Today, you don’t need any coding or technological expertise to create a building inspection app. You can start create a mobile app today for free. Or, send us your form and we’ll convert your first form free!

Want to build your own inspection? Follow these steps:

Find a Form You Want to Convert

When going from paper to mobile, we suggest starting with only a few forms first, and working your way to a paperless office.

Log in or Sign up for GoCanvas

If you have an account, sign in. If not, you can create a free trial account here.

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.

Check out even more resources

Three inspection workers on job site.

The Ultimate Guide to Quality Control Inspections

Managing a construction project is a complex and stressful process. Among other things, you have to coordinate project team members, materials, and equipment and ensure that contractors are not afflicted by the potential risks and hazards present at the construction site. That said, quality means different things to different people which is why you should…

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

Constructions Digital Transformation

Your competition is finding faster ways to capture data and get critical insights from the field into their existing systems. In short, they’re not going bigger, they’re getting smarter. In this 15-minute broadcast on the construction industry’s digital transformation, find out why the trend is to modernize workflows – and how you can stay ahead of the curve…

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…

Connect with an Expert Today.

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

eBook Content: Essential Tips for Collecting Better Data & Unlocking Major Productivity

Construction Digital Transformation: Essential Tips for Collecting Better Data & Unlocking Major Productivity

Your competition is finding faster ways to capture data and get critical insights from the field into their existing systems. In short, they’re not getting bigger, they’re getting smarter. In this ebook on the construction industry’s digital transformation, find out why the trend is to modernize workflows – and how you can stay ahead of the curve.

Chapter 1: What is Digital Transformation?

No doubt about it, digital transformation has become the hottest trend in construction.

What is digital transformation? It simply means rethinking how your organization uses technology, people, and processes to go after new business and increase revenue. The pandemic dramatically increased the speed of “digital everything” and forced leadership teams across all industries to reinvent their companies with digital solutions.

The construction industry’s IT budgets certainly tipped in this direction. Research from IDC Market Perspective confirms that construction firms are now dedicating more than half of their IT budgets to digital innovation. 

Quality leadership plays a big role here. To drive useful transformation that leads to business results, construction leaders must embed the right technologies into the right parts of their workflows and business models. Today’s modern construction industry leaders need to innovate and execute the options that technology enables. 

In a McKinsey survey of 1,140 business executives, many respondents recognize that their companies’ business models are becoming obsolete: 

  • Only 11% believe their current business models will be economically viable through 2023. 
  • Another 64% of those execs say their companies must build new digital businesses to stay economically viable.

By adopting new practices, leveraging new technologies, and investing in new projects, builders and developers can win more contracts and enjoy profitability. 

In the following chapters, we’ll explore why the construction industry is modernizing, the pillars of a successful digital transformation, and how to use technology to maximize growth and unlock productivity.

Chapter 2: How the Construction Industry is Modernizing

Construction still has a long way on its road to recovery from the last two tumultuous years.

Technology is the way forward for construction. Connected construction is taking hold in the industry and it will be increasingly harder for holdouts to compete. 

Specifically, construction companies are using technology to better connect their office and site teams for end-to-end knowledge bases and analyses of operations. 

The construction industry is now automating project progress, equipment maintenance, and job site conditions on a frequent basis. This allows contractors to identify and correct issues quickly before they become a more costly problem down the line. In order to do this, contractors need solutions to gather loads of data from the field. 

However, there are several construction-related challenges rapidly changing the global market. 

Rising supply prices will likely continue for years, while regulatory changes will cause intense scrutiny on workplace safety and climate change adaptation. 

Plus, skilled labor shortages will remain a constant struggle for the construction industry. Getting data from the job site will be more critical than ever, as contractors begin expanding their crews and equipment fleets to complete these large infrastructure projects. 

While the construction industry has been adopting techniques to manage a frontline mobile workforce for a while now, the pandemic has removed a “centralized administrative office” from the equation. Construction companies are now tasked with adapting processes to accommodate both the frontline and information mobile workforce. 

According to the International Data Collection (IDC) forecast, the U.S. mobile worker population will increase from 78.5 million in 2020 to 93.5 million mobile workers in 2024. That’s nearly 60% of the nation’s total workforce. This is not only changing how companies must collect data from the field but also how they configure data retrieval workflows. Delivering paperwork to the back office is no longer an option. Companies will need to digitize their data to streamline operations and maintain a productive mobile workforce. 

Chapter 3: Core Reasons to Go Digital

Modernizing operations is the first step to maximizing growth and unlocking productivity.

Speed, efficiency, and growth are critical for your bottom line. 

Embracing a digital-first mindset will help to connect the people that matter to your business – and grow your business with key data insights. It also will eliminate tedious manual tasks and redundant requests. 

In some ways, construction is still finding its legs in technology. That means it’s important to get everyone on board (even non-technical users) without significant support from IT. Streamlined tech will get everyone on the same page and includes countless benefits: 

  • Increase employee productivity 
  • Promote a culture of workplace safety
  • Standardize how data is collected 
  • Enable staff with insights and analytics
  • Ensure data is never lost 
  • Increase employee retention 
  • Ensure client satisfaction 

Plus, custom software allows you to create safety and training reports customized to your unique needs. 

Sure, the technology captures the data you need for better efficiency. But in the construction industry, you can’t deny that automation and digital tools improve worksite safety and compliance record keeping.

For example, what would happen if your company were to experience an injury, illness, or accident? Not only would you have to deal with a potentially catastrophic event, but you also have to report it ASAP. With OSHA rules, every minute counts! OSHA has incredibly strict deadlines about when to report (i.e., within 8 hours). A better data collection tool can automate and streamline record-keeping.

In addition to reporting accidents themselves, the importance of tracking near misses can’t be overstated. Documented properly, near-misses can help to identify hazards or weaknesses in risk management programs, reduce workplace accidents overall, and increase company safety culture. Near misses are “symptoms” of undiscovered safety concerns – and a valuable source of information. Put another way, given a slight shift in time or position, there was potential for more serious consequences. For example, events where a safety barrier was challenged, such as a worker bypassing a machine guard, and/or events where potential environmental damage could have resulted. 

Construction Site Safety: Get Proactive, Not Reactive 

As part of your digital transformation, have a plan for improving compliance with laws and regulations; reducing costs (including potential reductions in workers’ compensation premiums); engaging workers; and enhancing overall business operations. 

GoCanvas’s custom form software allows you to create safety and training reports customized to your unique needs. It even lets teams access and work without an internet connection – ensuring that everyone is able to log in anywhere, anytime, to document important near-miss data as well as site injuries or accidents. 

Not sure where to start on your tech journey? 

In the next chapter, we’ll outline how the road to efficiency starts with good record-keeping, simple-to-use software, and real-time business insights that will power your company’s growth.

Chapter 4: How to Get Started on the Digital Transformation Journey

To maximize available resources, many are turning to automation and “no-code” digital tools.

According to MIT Sloan Management Review, companies supporting their business teams with “no-code” software development platforms have been installing simpler apps faster, enabling them to keep up with changes occurring at a previously unthinkable pace. 

The MIT Sloan article notes that: 

“Empowering teams to be their own developers by designing and implementing applications themselves allows companies to make technological progress without hiring more technology staffers. No-code platforms provide visual, user-friendly capabilities that allow non-developers to design, develop, and deploy enterprise-class applications. Simultaneously, they free up professional software developers to tackle more difficult problems, like modernizing core platforms.” 

Cloud-based software like GoCanvas offers these exact no-code/low-code solutions to streamline how your teams: 

  • Create custom digital forms 
  • Collect data from construction sites (via any mobile device) 
  • Disseminate information quickly among teams

4 Pillars to a Successful Digital Transformation

A key decision maker 

Follow the leader. Who owns your digital transformation project? As we discussed in Chapter One, quality leadership plays a big role, so every digital transformation project needs an owner. 

An organized, accessible backend 

Look for flexibility. How are you setting up your databases and tools? Check that the software features a high level of customization to fit your unique business requirements so you can truly unlock critical operational & customer insights. 

An easy-to-use front end for inputs 

Look for easy-to-use software. As mentioned above, you want something “no code” or “low code” so that even non-technical users can create and distribute things you might use, like work orders, inspections, time sheets, daily field reports, and safety reports. 

Company-wide buy-in 

Show the tangible benefits. Some employees will be hesitant! Communicate with them frequently about how this operational change will positively impact their jobs. Provide onboarding and training. Some SaaS providers, like GoCanvas, have dedicated customer support teams to help your team to onboard, configure, and sync the platform with existing systems.

Chapter 5: Putting Technology at the Center of Your Outlook

Here’s the million-dollar question: What’s your competition doing right now to maximize growth and unlock productivity?

Amid these unprecedented times, those who flourish will find new ways to modernize operations, despite the construction industry’s ongoing shortages and delays. Sometimes digital change comes down to capturing the right business insights and making them actionable. Understanding these construction trends – modernizing operations, improving efficiency, and saving time – is important for any construction firm. 

But focusing only on digital – and not transformation – could set you up for failure. That’s why today’s construction industry leaders must innovate and execute the options that technology enables.

Software Integration Examples to Kickstart Your Digital Transformation

Here are just some of the many possible integrations:

Quickbooks

You can use GoCanvas to automate invoices in QuickBooks (and save your accountant the hassle of manually entering invoices). Or use real price data from QuickBooks for parts and materials inside your GoCanvas forms to create the proper totals on your customer charge documents.

Google Drive

You can extract images from your GoCanvas form submissions and store them in Google Drive. For example, every time a customer-facing form is sent from GoCanvas, you can also automatically generate and store an internal-only version of the same form to Google Drive for compliance documentation.

Zendesk

You can manage your customer communication, and support system, and follow through efficiently by connecting your GoCanvas forms to Zendesk. For example, you can create Zendesk Support tickets with the necessary information every time a GoCanvas form submission is completed. Even better, you can even send Zendesk tickets to mobile users in the field using GoCanvas Dispatch.

Salesforce

You can also combine two completely customizable solutions — GoCanvas and Salesforce. The possibilities are endless here, as this integration can save you thousands of hours of lost time across your organization: 

  • Dispatch necessary details automatically once an opportunity is closed, so other teams can do their part to help your customers. 
  • Allow your mobile users to have the latest Salesforce contacts appear in their GoCanvas forms on their devices. 
  • Automatically attach GoCanvas form submission documents to your customer accounts in Salesforce to eliminate data entry errors or forgotten documents.
Netsuite

Last, but certainly not least, you can send dispatches automatically from Netsuite into your GoCanvas account and assign them to a person’s mobile device. 

Prepopulate a list of customers, addresses, or jobs inside your GoCanvas form with list data from Netsuite – no manual data transfer is required.

Checklist to Maximize Growth

The future belongs to construction companies that put technology at the center of their outlook, capabilities, and leadership mandate. Ready to transition your outdated processes? 

Try this quick list to see how easy it is to get going: 

  • Start with a pilot program. It might sound counterintuitive, but to create a competitive advantage in the market, start small. Focus on one single area for improvement with a pilot program. 
  • Focus on adoption. Include different stakeholders during the pilot program to gain their feedback early on.
  • Create a seamless flow of data. Implementing easy-to-use software means you can accelerate your digital transformation. 
  • Look to scale. Once a business case is clearly established and the value proposition is clear to staff, you can begin to roll out these programs on a larger scale.

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.

Check out even more resources

Three inspection workers on job site.

The Ultimate Guide to Quality Control Inspections

Managing a construction project is a complex and stressful process. Among other things, you have to coordinate project team members, materials, and equipment and ensure that contractors are not afflicted by the potential risks and hazards present at the construction site. That said, quality means different things to different people which is why you should…

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

Constructions Digital Transformation

Your competition is finding faster ways to capture data and get critical insights from the field into their existing systems. In short, they’re not going bigger, they’re getting smarter. In this 15-minute broadcast on the construction industry’s digital transformation, find out why the trend is to modernize workflows – and how you can stay ahead of the curve…

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…

Connect with an Expert Today.

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

eBook Content: Modernize Your Law Practice in 3 Steps

Modernize Your Law Practice in 3 Steps

Intro

Practicing law is a demanding, time-consuming, and often high-stress job. You have hours to bill, deadlines to meet, and clients to serve. And if you run a solo practice or are a partner in a small- to mid-size firm, you probably have other responsibilities on your plate: like running your business.

If changing how you operate is the last thing you want to think about, you’re not alone. The legal profession is notorious for doing things the way they’ve always been done and sticking with the same systems that have worked for years. After all, what attorney has time for new, complicated technologies?

But here are the facts: modernizing your law practice by strategically integrating the right technologies can benefit you in big ways — and save you time and money that can make a real difference in both your bank account and your personal life. The Internet and online tools have revolutionized the way business is conducted in all industries, including law.

Advances in digital tools give lawyers the flexibility and efficiency they need to fulfill the many duties and deadlines of practicing law in the 21st century.

What are the benefits of a modern firm?

Modernizing your law practice will not only streamline your processes but also give you more time to do what clients hire you to do: practice law. In many ways, you really can’t afford not to come up to speed. Continuing to operate the way lawyers have for decades can give clients — especially prospective clients — the wrong impression, and even lead to costly mistakes. Lost or misfiled documents add up to thousands of lost dollars and hours of productivity per year. And who knows how many clients you may be losing because of an outdated website that no one can find online?

We know that you only have so many hours in the day. We know that as a solo or small firm, your budget is limited. We know that the sheer number of programs and technologies can be overwhelming. That’s why, in this eBook, we walk you through three steps you can take to begin modernizing your law practice today.

What You’ll Learn:

  • How to strengthen your online presence via your website, blog, and social media
  • How to go paperless (or mostly paperless)
  • How to set up remote work capabilities with practice management software, mobile apps, and the cloud

GET STARTED NOW WITH THESE 3 STEPS…

Step 1: Strengthen Your Online Presence

Legal practice management software company MyCase polled 800 solo and small-firm lawyers to ask what steps they would take to modernize their firms in 2015. Survey respondents said their law firm’s website was their biggest focus, with 49 percent indicating that revamping their website was a top priority.

A professional website is a must for law firms. In today’s digital,hyper-connected culture, your website is the first impression most people have of your law firm. It only takes a second for prospective clients to form an impression and decide whether or not to give your firm a call or to click away to the next site.

Good design is essential to a successful website that will turn visitors into clients. This doesn’t just mean the colors, font, images, and layout, though those elements are important. It starts with clearly communicating your firm’s value proposition.

Your value proposition should be more than a tagline on your website. Are you a family lawyer who is a compassionate advocate for your clients? Are you a plaintiff’s lawyer who doesn’t back down from big corporations? Your website needs to communicate this message through the copy and images you use. Clients should be able to understand at a glance what you do and whether you can help them.

Search engine optimization (SEO) comes into play here. You don’t need to spend a lot of time or money on SEO, but you should be aware of it and educate yourself on the basics. Essentially, SEO is the practice of increasing the visibility or ranking of your website in a search engine’s organic (or unpaid) results. There are multiple ways to do this, including everything from making sure title tags and meta descriptions on your site content are both informative and the right length, to pointing internal links to your own relevant content.

Start by Googling the name of your firm and your lawyers, and see what comes up at the top of your search results. Then search for keywords or phrases that potential clients would use to find you. When someone Googles “racketeering lawyers, Jersey City,” for example, does your site come up at the top of the search results page? Set up Google Analytics or another analytics program to track your traffic and see how people are finding your site. Are they finding you through certain keywords? Through referrals from other sites? Maybe they’re coming from a social media channel like LinkedIn. Finding out will help you determine what works, what doesn’t — and where to devote your dollars.

There are countless strategies for improving your SEO and traffic.

These include:

  • Using strategic keywords. For example, in the description of your firm, include words that relate to your practice, such as wills, estate planning, business law, and divorce. Also mention the geographic area you serve (Madison, NJ).
  • Posting fresh content on your website on a regular basis(like a weekly blog post, which we talk more about below), and linking to your own relevant content on each page of your website.
  • Taking the time to fill in the text descriptions of photos of your lawyers.
  • Adding video content to your website — a good (but simple) strategy for keeping people on your site longer and boosting SEO.

Another crucial update websites need is responsive design. This means that your website adjusts to look good to visitors on all types of screens — including smartphones and tablets, not just desktops and laptops. In fact, according to a 2014 report from comScore, 80 percent of Internet users own a smartphone, and 80 percent of them use it to search the Internet (compared to 91 percent who use a laptop or PC to search online). If your website isn’t optimized for mobile users, you’re likely to lose those potential clients. In fact, in the spring of 2015, Google changed how it ranks mobile-friendly sites so that non-mobile-enabled sites are now penalized in search rankings. Responsive design is Google’s recommended design pattern. Google offers a Mobile-Friendly Test to find out if your website is responsive. If not, ask your web designer how to go about redesigning your site.

Launch a blog

Once your website is in good shape, consider launching a blog and social media channels, if you don’t already have them. Regularly posting to a blog and other social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ is a widely used strategy to enhance SEO and expand your audience online. Blogging also enables you to build credibility and position yourself as an expert in your field. In addition to blogging on your own website, you can also become a guest blogger on other websites geared toward to your target market. By linking back to your website, these guest posts can generate traffic and improve SEO for your website.

What kinds of things can you write about? Ask yourself what your clients would benefit from knowing about — tax credits, divorce proceedings, matters relating to wills and estates? Also, consider any unique approaches or specialty areas in your firm that you’d like people to know about. All of this can make good fodder for your blog.

Need more ideas for your blog? Try these eight tools and tips from LawFuel.

To get the most out of a blog, you need to write regular posts. Here’s where most small businesses falter: a study from the Content Marketing Institute reports that 70 percent of them struggle to find time to produce high-quality content. If that’s what is holding your firm back from blogging, consider joining the 61 percent of small business owners who outsource blog writing to a marketing firm or freelance writer.

Get Social

Writing and publishing posts to a blog is only the first step, however. Digital media is shared on social networks, so you’ll need to be at least moderately active there as well.

After all, most of your clients, prospective clients, and their influencers are on social media. According to Pew Research, 71 percent of online adults use Facebook, 28 percent use LinkedIn, and 23 percent use Twitter, as of September 2014.

Likewise, results from a 2014 American Bar Association LegalTechnology Report indicate that lawyers are using social media more than ever before. LinkedIn is by far the most popular social network, used by 99 percent of respondents from firms of more than 100 attorneys; 97 percent from firms of 10 to 49 attorneys; and 94 percent from firms of 2-9 attorneys. Facebook comes in second, with solo respondents being the most likely to have a presence there (45 percent), followed by respondents from firms of 2-9 attorneys, 38 percent of which are on Facebook. In contrast, larger law firms are more likely to be on Twitter.

According to the ABA report, 36 percent of respondents from firms of 100 or more attorneys report that their firms have a Twitter presence, compared to just 12 percent of firms with 2 to 9 attorneys.

What can you do on these platforms? You can share your blog posts, for one, each time you publish a new story. You can also share articles from outside sources you find interesting, congratulate coworkers for their achievements, post any available positions, and announce news and events related to your firm.

Like it or not, opting out of blogging and social media gives your competitors who are online (locally and beyond) the advantage. Rather than looking at it as just one more to-do on your list, think of it as a faster, easier way to build relationships and market your law firm.

Best Sites for Lawyers to Be Listed On

The blog and online lawyer community Lawyerist notes that it is worth the time to become listed or active on sites that usually rank well for attorneys’ name searches, such as:

  • Avvo.com
  • Facebook.com Business Pages
  • Twitter (make sure the username is the lawyer or firm name if possible)
  • Youtube Channel if you have any videos (be sure to name the channel your name or the law firm’s name)
  • Award sites such as Super Lawyers, Best Lawyers, and Martindale Hubbell

Source: “Basic SEO for Law Firms

Step 2: Cut Down On Paper, Go Digital

If yours is not one of the many law firms that have already gone paperless, what are you waiting for? It’s time to catch up or risk falling behind, says Lawyerist.com founder Sam Glover, who went paperless shortly after starting his solo practice in

If yours is not one of the many law firms that have already gone paperless, what are you waiting for? It’s time to catch up or risk falling behind, says Lawyerist.com founder Sam Glover, who went paperless shortly after starting his solo practice in 2005. The federal courts have been paperless for years, he points out, and even state courts are converting to electronic filing and paperless case files.

While it may not be possible to leave all paper behind in your law practice, there are many compelling reasons to move in the paperless direction. For one thing, the paper could be killing your productivity. A survey by MyCase found that the typical office worker makes 61 trips per week to the copier and printer. And every misfiled document costs firms $125 in lost productivity. That’s an average of four weeks lost each year waiting on misfiled, mislabeled, untracked, or lost documents.

In contrast, digital files streamline your files, are quicker and easier to search, offer greater flexibility in terms of who can access files and from where, and if backed up regularly, are more secure than paper files. Consider what would happen to your files in the event of a natural disaster like a hurricane or fire. Would your files be safe?

Make the switch to digital

There are some essentials your firm will need in order to go paperless. Chances are, you already own a smartphone and use apps regularly to check your email, the weather, sports scores, or what’s happening in your area this weekend. Did you know, though, that your firm can also use apps created especially to help you practice law and boost your productivity? How, exactly, can apps help?

You can use them for operational purposes like tracking time and billable hours, or you can use them to record information or jog your memory as you work. Some apps take the form of checklists that remind you of what to cover as you walk your client through, say, a divorce agreement. Others let you do things like collect signatures or create binding legal contracts signed by all parties on the spot.

What other tools can help you save time and stay organized? Here’s what Glover recommends:

  • A dedicated document scanner (such as the Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500), and/or a scanning app for your smartphone (such as Scanbot or iOS and CamScanner for Android), makes scanning much faster and easier.
  • With a bigger computer monitor (ideally 21” to 24” screen), you can view two pages side-by-side and save time by clicking and opening documents.
  • A tablet (such as an iPad) lets you replicate the feeling of holding a document in your hands and allows you to easily hand it to someone else to review.
  • A shredder that creates confetti, not ribbons, lets you dispose of paper that has been scanned.
  • Cloud storage (such as Dropbox or Box) provides a way to access your files from all your devices and share them with any other members of your firm.
  • Backup is critical when going paperless. At a minimum, use an external hard drive for daily backups, and consider backing up your files remotely (such as with CrashPlan).

Practice management software

In addition to digital solutions for managing documents, practice management software is another tool that many attorneys are embracing in their law practices. Currently, 49 percent of law firms already use it, the survey from MyCase reveals, and 25 percent of law firms plan to invest in law practice management software in 2015.

What does the software do? It streamlines attorneys’ workflow and business processes by offering a convenient way to manage client and case information, including contacts, calendars, and documents. It allows information to be shared with others in the firm (and in some cases, even clients) and eliminates having to enter duplicate data. Practice management software “is no panacea,” says Glover, however, it does provide the benefit of improving efficiency

The American Bar Association offers a comparison chart of features and functions of many of the leading practice and case management software programs for solo and small law firms.

By taking the time to put these systems in place and bring your entire firm on board to use them, you can avoid being the disorganized lawyer who loses papers and runs late to appointments. That approach might have worked in the past, but it doesn’t fly today.

Step 3: Set Up Remote Work Capabilities

Today’s lawyers no longer need to be tied to the office. Whether a case requires that you work remotely or a sick child means you need to work from home, attorneys have more flexibility than ever thanks to advances in mobile and cloud technology.

Studies indicate that lawyers are becoming increasingly reliant on mobile and see connections between mobility, efficiency, and productivity. The American Bar Association’s 2014 Legal Technology Survey found that 91 percent of responding lawyers use smartphones in their law practices, and 49 percent of lawyers use tablets. Increasing efficiency is the main goal, with lawyers reporting that they use their mobile devices for a variety of law office functions. More than half use their smartphones to access the Internet, email, telephone, calendars, contacts, and to send texts.

And as we explored earlier, many apps are custom-made for attorneys, and allow you to do things particular to your industry, like enter ABA codes as you track hours or create notarized documents like power of attorney forms and non-disclosure agreements.

The cloud

The cloud is key for busy lawyers in the 21st century. If you haven’t already made the transition, do it now. The cloud has been popularly represented as the great “server in the sky,” as this article from the American Bar Association website explains, but really “it’s just your data residing in a physical server hosted by a third party in a secure location.”

What’s the real benefit? As the ABA article puts it, “the advantage of the cloud is that you’re saving setup and maintenance costs for that server; and, in theory, that third-party corporation will be able to provide a more secure environment for your data with its resources than you could with yours.”

The convenience and flexibility of being able to access your law firm’s data from any Internet-enabled device is unprecedented, and cloud-based programs are more secure and affordable than ever. As a number of lawyers who use them have noted, being able to send emails and retrieve documents away from the office allows you to squeeze more work into the “cracks” of your day.

Many of the law practice management software programs we discussed in the previous section are now cloud-based.

Conclusion

Don’t settle for endless juggling

Practicing law in the modern world isn’t easy. You’re juggling never-ending deadlines, client appointments, court dockets, and more. In many ways, technology speeds up the pace of your workflow, making it possible to send documents across town (or even around the world) in seconds, with just a few clicks. If you’re operating as you have for decades, essential information can slip through the cracks and create all kinds of problems, from overlooked billable hours to a child custody case gone wrong. Your clients also won’t like the long wait times that come with snail-mailed documents and communication.

Outdated operations can hurt your firm in other ways, including your ability to attract talent. Attorneys from the millennial generation are digital natives — they’ve grown up with information at their fingertips and don’t know life without technology.

“Millennials are seeking flexibility and efficiency through technology, with balanced hours, including options such as remote work and job sharing,” an article from The Docket explains. “When other generations do not understand millennial goals and fail to communicate, it impacts turnover rates, tangible and intangible costs, fairness and equality and firm succession.”

These costs add up — and aren’t worth the risk. Even if you’re overloaded with cases and clients, make time to modernize. Don’t try to do it all at once. Start small but set deadlines and hold yourself accountable, just as you do with your legal work.

At Canvas, we offer close to 200 mobile apps for attorneys designed specifically to help solo practitioners and lawyers in small- to mid-sized law firms simplify and streamline their processes.

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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TE3CO Leverages Data Analytics to Unlock Business Potential

How TE3CO Leverages Data Analytics to Unlock Business Potential

About the Company

TE3CO provides mission-critical pressure relief technology and services to customers across the oil and gas industry. They employ a highly trained and capable workforce of field technicians and engineers.

The Challenge

Before working with GoCanvas, TE3CO relied on spreadsheets and emails to manage their ticketing process but found the system time-consuming and difficult to track. The business had grown from 3 units to over 140 units across the U.S. and Canada in a short period of time, and the ticketing process had become an “absolute nightmare” in the words of John Kovac, Technology Integration Manager at TE3CO.

  • Highly complex
  • Multiple clicks
  • Manual data entry
  • Time-consuming
  • Traceability was difficult

The Solution

TE3CO partnered with GoCanvas to simplify its ticketing process and increase efficiency:

  • Minimize rework and ensure accuracy by automating data entry
  • Streamline data collection through one database
  • Identify bottlenecks and improve process efficiency with data analytics
  • Spend less time on reactive admin tasks, allowing more time to focus on a proactive growth strategy

“The ability to fill out field tickets real-time, have the customer sign real-time, and be able to track it from its fruition through the final process was absolutely game-changing for our company. It used to take until the 15th or 16th of the following month to close out every ticket for the month, averaging approximately 85 to 90 tickets a month. Now, we’re able to have the month closed by the first or second using such things as workflow and being able to follow it from beginning to end,” said John Kovac

The Impact

Now that TE3CO has implemented GoCanvas to help with field operations and management, they’re able to save time and money by eliminating manual processes and having data that’s accessible for decision-making.

“Once our technician fills out the ticket, there’s no more transferring of data. GoCanvas handles all that. Using reference data and integration data, you can have everything in a dropdown, so every person is filling out all the generic information the same way.”

Software for the field service industry has the potential to make a significant impact on overall efficiency and productivity. Ensuring data is consistent, standard, and accessible can enable organizations to make more informed decisions.

“I have five apps that are being brought into analytics. From there, I can break that down by district, by camp, by company – once it’s in, you can drill into it as far as you want to. The world is at your fingers, and the more information you can get for one of your customers, the better it is,” said Kovac.

Leveraging software built for the field, TE3CO has found they’re able to:

  • Free up 20-30 man-hours/month
  • Save ~$60,000/year in resource efficiency
  • Identify leading indicators in 10 minutes vs. three days
  • Track tickets in real-time ticket
  • Reduce billing time

“There’s so much that you can do when you have the proper information to know that you’re running your company properly and that you’re charging properly and taking care of your customers properly,” said Kovac.

How GoCanvas Analytics Works

GoCanvas Analytics provides a seamless solution to report on submission data, visualize what’s happening, and distribute your findings throughout your organization. Drill down into one facet of your business or keep track of everything in a high-level view. Uncover trends and make data-driven decisions that result in improved productivity, cost savings, and increased revenue.

Recording: Unlocking Frontline Data with Business Analytics – TE3CO

Unlocking Frontline Data with Business Analytics

Webinar Overview:

In this on-demand webinar recording, TE3CO shares how they’ve optimized business performance and streamlined data transfer with smarter workflows and data analytics.

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3 Ways to Drive Cost-Efficiency with Integrations

3 Ways to Drive Cost-Efficiency with Integrations

Time is money. With digital data collection, businesses are working smarter and faster than ever. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Drive even more cost-efficiency by connecting GoCanvas to the business tools you’re already using. With access to over 1,000 systems, GoCanvas Integrations allows you to automate processes across your organization to reduce redundancy and bottlenecks.

In this webinar recording, Stephen Minus, Director of Client Engagement Services, and Ellen Beck, Senior Product Manager, will highlight the top 3 integrations customers are using to get more done, with less effort:

  • Simplify billing and reduce turnaround time with automated invoicing
  • Ensure prompt follow-up and corrective action by triggering dispatch
  • Keep your team informed by updating multiple systems with one action

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5 Simple Features to Enhance Efficiency with GoCanvas

5 Simple Features to Enhance Efficiency with GoCanvas

Overview:

Discover the untapped potential of our form builder in this short video. Learn about five simple features that will help you drive more efficiency with GoCanvas:

  • Stay organized with Submission Naming.
  • Save time with System Default.
  • Customize PDF delivery with Email Field Style.
  • Tailor your forms with Loop Screen Styles.
  • Simplify tracking management with Duplicate Entries.

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Unlocking Business Potential with Data Analytics

Unlocking Business Potential with Data Analytics

In this on-demand webinar, TE3CO shares how they’ve optimized business performance and streamlined data transfer with smarter workflows and data analytics.

“Any time you’re eliminating somebody typing something, you’ve automatically doubled your success in accurate data.”

 – John Kovac, Technology Integration Manager, TE3CO

Access the on-demand recording of the webinar to hear how TE3CO is gaining a competitive edge.

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