Field Worker Time Tracking

After being acquired by new owners, a well-established traffic control company in Western Canada knew it was time for change. The new owners immediately realized there were several inefficient processes. These were not only time-consuming, but prone to human error. Despite a growing demand for their services, these limitations were hampering business growth and scalability.

Although not being technically-minded, the new owners were confident that technology could somehow help combat the challenges they were facing.

Thought Cloud was contacted to assist with their digital transformation goals. The initial focus was on identifying which core business processes, if digitized, could have the most impact on the business.

Three processes were identified, which included:

1. Dispatch to field-worker automation
2. Field-worker time-capture
3. Reporting

These processes were very manual.

Dispatch activities were planned and written on paper the night before dispatch. These would include job locations, job numbers, PO's, client contacts etc. The Dispatcher would then review a list of potential field workers by marketplace, and send them individual text messages with the job details. Workers would then respond via text if they are able to accept the job or not, and the Dispatcher would continue until all positions were filled.

At the end of each day, Field-workers would fill out a paper-based time-sheet, take a photo of it, and send it to their Dispatcher. The Dispatcher would then manually enter the time entries into spreadsheets, and send them to management for approval.

The first step was to migrate the client from G-Suite to Microsoft 365, to take advantage of SharePoint for document management, Power Automate for workflow automations, Power Apps for dispatch, and Azure for hosting and managing mobile app bac

The digital transformation effort would include:

• A custom Power App for the Dispatchers, which would draw from a number of SharePoint lists including workers, customers, and job details, allowing them to assign shifts to workers based on their availability across job markets.
• Power Automate integration with Twillio's text messaging service to automatically notify workers of shifts
• A custom mobile application for iOS and Android to allow field workers to capture data (including offline)
• Creation of automations using Power Automate, including a timesheet approval process, PDF generation of timesheets
• Power BI to generate reports for accounting

The final solution resulted in a dramatic reduction of effort associated with the manual dispatch process, due to being able to: 

• create shift plans and manage worker details
• send job information in batches via text message
• cancel jobs via text message
• monitor worker job acceptance and feedback
• track time
• perform preliminary time approvals and submit to management for final approval 

For Field workers it resulted in:

• no more filling paper timesheets
• no more photos of timesheets that have to be sent to the head office
• single click submission
  
• timesheet history

For management it resulted in:

• improved timesheet data quality due to validations on the mobile app
• no missing timesheets due to worker timesheet reminders
• readable timesheets
• reduced lag in receiving information
• faster timesheet approvals
• ease of sharing timesheets with customers
• a searchable document library of timesheets
• improved ability to reconcile reports with backoffice accounting system