Paper is an industry standard, no matter what business you’re in. Construction in particular has a high turnover rate, which guarantees a constant influx of forms and paperwork that has to be filled out, mailed, scanned, faxed, and filed.
Inertia keeps companies dependent on existing paper-based systems, even though those systems may now be outdated. Plus, each piece of paper circulating in a construction environment costs the business 7.2 cents. Considering every form for every worker every day, it adds up fast.
But it doesn’t have to be this way, thanks to an increasingly connected mobile workforce. Living in the digital age means freedom from all that paper clutter. By digitizing forms, you are not only saving space, but time and money as well. The best news: your process doesn’t have to change.
InSight Mobile Data Regional Sales Manager Tom Saraceno explains how companies can implement digital forms for their workforce—without interrupting existing processes
The First Step: Digitize Job Cost Tracking
The most expensive part of any job is the people. If you’re hesitant to go completely paperless right away, a good place to start would be to digitize forms for keeping track of work hours.
Workers have a tendency to go from job to job—they dig the hole at Job A, and now have to go pour concrete at Job B—and also can switch from a skilled labor job to an unskilled job on the same worksite, so the job code has to change on the worksheet. Another element that has to be tracked is the change from standard wage to prevailing wage. On paper, this can quickly become complicated—increasing the risk of error.
By digitizing those forms, workers can keep track of this information on site using a phone or tablet. To make the transition as easy as possible, the StreetEagle platform can create custom digital forms that look exactly like the existing paperwork that everyone is used to, so user-adoption and utilization of mobile forms is very straightforward.
Share Information Seamlessly and in Real-Time
With a paper-based system, forms get sent back and forth, costing time and money on both sides of every transaction. In the past, mobile workers needed access to a scanner or fax machine to send documents electronically—and the outcome on the other side might still need to be manually entered in other systems.
Going mobile eliminates the time lag and cost associated with paperwork. Workers in the field can capture information with a phone or tablet and transmit it back to the office in real time—or receive digital updates at the job site. Taking advantage of mobile technology provides universal visibility and can streamline operations at work sites and in the office.
Eliminate Paper, Eliminate Error
Everyone is familiar with how one small, human error can be responsible for great confusion in an office environment. A worker in the back room is always chasing someone down about a form, struggling with indiscernible handwriting, or tracking down missing information.
It’s a constant battle embedded in the paper environment that can be addressed with the simple addition of digital forms to your workflow. By adopting a paperless strategy, many sources of human error are eliminated, along with a lot of headaches.
Go Paperless With InSight’s Flexible All-In-One Platform
Going paperless isn’t just for saving the environment. Digitizing paper forms in your company can save you time, money, and the stress associated with constantly organizing and filing paperwork. InSight Mobile Data’s StreetEagle platform offers a turn-key, drop-in replacement: take a piece of paper you’re using today and put it on your smart phone to start using tomorrow.
With StreetEagle, transitioning to a digital system is a seamless process that does not interrupt the familiar forms and processes already in place. Now you can have all the forms you’re accustomed to using, right at your fingertips on a mobile device. For more information about how this all-in-one platform can help your company adopt a paperless forms strategy, contact InSight Mobile Data today.