EXCAVATING A
PAPER PROCESS
Premier excavating and paving contractor BR Kreider believed
that adopting a people-centric approach to digitize and automate traditional HR processes would drive productivity, surface insights, and ultimately free them to focus on more rewarding work. To help them implement a digital employee experience, BR Kreider trusted us to develop a mobile app and employee portal.
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The Problem
Time spent communicating effectively with any team is always a challenge for a business. But being in the business of construction takes this to another level. It means having to manage employees and sub- contractors across many, far-flung construction sites. For three generations, BR Kreider successfully relied upon historically proven methods. Offsite teams would spend time driving into HQ to receive assignments. They’d submit vacation requests on paper. But the biggest challenge of them all? Submitting and tracking time logs accurately. Employees filled out a paper timesheet each day and physically handed it to the office admin. Those slips would then be manually inputted into their ERP system for record keeping and payroll.
As you might expect, this process was time-consuming, difficult to scale and inconsistent. At the onset of the Covid 19 pandemic, everyone was less inclined to be handling paper and a proper challenge was dropped upon nearly 80 years of routines. Progressive, resilient, and resourceful, BR Kreider began to look towards a tech-driven solution to address these issues.
Initially, the leadership at BR Kreider evaluated as many as 11 different commercial-off-the-shelf solutions (COTS) because they’re typically more cost effective and faster to implement. But after a seriously respectable due diligence, they concluded that adopting such a solution would force them to substantially change the way they operated. And it could risk undermining the trust between them and their employees. These concerns, along with their faith in our exceptional customer service (shameless plug!), is why BR Kreider ultimately decided to look at a custom solution developed by us.
“We could not find any such system on the market that is this simple and keeps track of equipment hours which is the life blood of our company. Industrial Resolution has created a winning system!”
The Solution
While engaging with our Discovery process, it became apparent to BR Kreider that they could further optimize productivity by using technology to eliminate “busywork” for both their managers and employees. In the process of bidding farewell to the company-wide frustration that goes hand in hand with manual data entry, processing, and reporting, they pleasantly found that they began to build trust.
JObsite Mobile App
Using this easily installed, user-friendly mobile app, employees now clock in when they arrive at the job site and clock out when they leave. Team members can also search for and bookmark jobs.
JObsite Web Portal
This one-stop shop was developed to empower employees to easily request time off, access content or documentation and browse the latest company announcements.
On the administrative side, supervisors are now able to centrally review, modify, add, approve and reject employee-logged time tickets. In the case of a rejected ticket, a text message is triggered to the field crew to fix any errors. Once tickets are approved, they are easily exported back into the ERP system.
The portal also facilitates all content management functions for administrators, allowing them to manage company-wide announcements.
The Results
37 % Time Back
Accounting is saving approx.. 2-3 hours per day of manual data entry of approx. 150 field team mem- bers. That’s a potential time savings of up to 720 hours a year!
900 Less Entries
Each day the Jobsite batch that is processed into Viewpoint is 800-900 line items and that is 800-900 less entries the Accounting team is making each day in Viewpoint.