Increasing Productivity and Strengthening Capability with GeoPal

Since COVID-19 struck, GeoPal has been supporting the Construction & Utilities Industries to adjust to the rapidly changing environment through digital transformation. Both Industries have been moving quickly towards digitisation for the last number of years, with profound implications for the sector - post pandemic and beyond. A recent study carried out by IFS (Global software company) notes that 70% of companies have maintained or increased digital transformation spending during Covid-19. Moreover, research found that organisations concerned by economic disruption were 20% more likely to plan increased spending on digitization. The rapid transition to digital systems accelerated during Covid-19 will continue long into the recovery process, marking the future of the Construction and Utility industries alike.

The bridge between ‘survive’ and ‘thrive’ is dependent on an organisation’s ability to eliminate structures of ‘tribal knowledge’ - critical information held solely in the minds of staff and also embedded in the cultural traditions of these organisations. Digital technologies transform knowledge, experience and expertise into insights and standardized processes that can be enacted company-wide, harnessing knowledge and expertise for systematic and procedural usage, as well as significantly increasing knowledge retention.

Implementing digital transformation in your organisation is easier than it may seem. All of the above challenges are solved through the use of flexible mobile workflow forms. There is no software coding required – GeoPal provides an easy to use online tool for creating mobile forms using a simple drag and drop interface. GeoPal offers a viable and cost effective solution to implement digital transformation in your organisation, guaranteeing;

1. A low capital expenditure SaaS model.
2. ROI in three months.
3. 90 day system implementation.

What is GeoPal?

GeoPal is a mobile workforce management application that integrates seamlessly with your existing office systems, such as your ERP, CRM, GIS, BIM or Asset Management system. According to Gartner, almost 3% of a company’s revenue is spent on paper processes - such as printing, filing, and storage. GeoPal counteracts this, providing connectivity between your field workers and your back office systems and replacing all paper forms with mobile forms for - timesheet capture, job completion reports, incident reports, asset surveys, sub-contractor reports and much more.

GeoPal gives you :

• Real-time visibility of your field operations through executive dashboards and KPI reports delivering increased operational efficiency and health & safety compliance.
• 10% increase in productivity with better job scheduling / utilization rates
• 90% reduction in SLA penalties and fines
• 50% Reduction in Office administration costs by eliminating re-entry of field data.
• 19% increase in asset availability
• 75% Reduction in insurance claims with enforced Health & Safety compliance
• 100% SHEQ Compliance

Going paperless may at first seem like an overwhelming undertaking, but change and digital transformation are vital for business growth - particularly in a crowded marketplace. If your organisation is not embracing new technologies, they’re losing ground to competitors that are. Utility and Construction companies already benefiting using GeoPal are operating in a diverse range of markets including power, water, telecommunications, road, rail, marine, petrochemical, nuclear, civil engineering and other infrastructure services. Projects are manpower heavy and work includes civils, maintenance, fibre installation, scaffolding, industrial painting, cleaning and refurbishment.

How Does it Work?

In collaboration with your organisation, GeoPal’s team of experts deliver flexible, reliable and secure workforce mobility solutions that connect your remote assets and field workers, leveraging field data to immediately gain actionable insights and increase your business’s productivity and profitability.

GeoPal implements custom mobile workforce management solutions, staying involved over the long term. We monitor the benefits you are achieving with GeoPal and we adjust the implementation until the expected productivity, profitability and compliance benefits are delivered. Our clients include some of the largest Industrial Services, Environmental and Facilities Management companies in the world. We create the core software infrastructure that companies need to mobilise their field based workforces, integrating our mobility solutions with companies’ existing IT infrastructure to provide connectivity between the back office and the front lines.

A look at some of GeoPal’s Key Features & Components

Mobile App

The GeoPal mobile app is highly configurable and can be tailored to the exact requirements of customers in different sectors. It has a very intuitive, fast, user friendly interface to deploy to large field-based workforces and is available for android and iOS. Field workers use the GeoPal mobile app to receive jobs assigned to them, navigate to the job location, check in onsite and then follow the job workflow. The workflows can be customized to suit the data to be captured at each step – no coding required.

With GeoPal, organisations can eliminate pen-to-paper processes, streamlining workflows by collecting data on mobile devices (even without internet connection). Data is synced to the cloud, where it’s immediately available to those in the organization with access, reducing data silos. This also helps reduce mistakes, delays, and revisits due to human error.

Cloud Platform

The GeoPal cloud platform is hosted on Amazon AWS, in physically separate locations with a load balancer splitting traffic between both locations. This underpins our 99.99% reliability figures and makes the solution massively scalable.

Mobile Workflow Forms Builder: A workflow is a predictable, predefined set of tasks that run in sequence. Research shows that processing workflows, on average, occupy a third of companies’ time. Create an unlimited number of mobile workflow form templates, surveys and audits on the GeoPal Cloud Platform. There is no coding required, use our intuitive interface to create your mobile forms and publish them to the GeoPal mobile app.

Custom report Builder: Field workers use the GeoPal mobile app to fill in workflow forms and surveys – including photos, signature, GPS coordinates and so on. Create reports with a custom layout on the GeoPal cloud Platform.

Business Workflow Logic: When a field worker completes a form, survey or job on the GeoPal mobile app, you can have business rules running in the background to automate processes, like sending an automatic email to a customer, send a text message to a supervisor or create a follow-on job.

Job Scheduling and Dispatch: Scheduling jobs on GeoPal is as simple as dragging and dropping the job onto the field worker’s timeline on our planner section. The job is then dispatched to their mobile device. Add jobs to the GeoPal platform manually or upload them via spreadsheet.

Location and Mapping: View the real-time location of your field workers on a google map on the GeoPal cloud platform. The GeoPal mobile app sends a location update every 5 minutes. You can also view the location of your jobs, customers and assets.

Asset and Part Management: Upload assets to the GeoPal cloud platform via spreadsheet or via API. Visualize the location of your assets on a google map on the platform – with different icons for different asset types and different colours representing different statuses, such as in-service, out of service, needs repair and so on. The status of assets can be updated via the mobile app or via a message from an Internet of Things sensor. 

Quick Integration

GeoPal adds mobility to existing IT systems, such as CRM, ERP, GIS systems, Finance and Payroll by integrating with them via our Web Services RESTful API. GeoPal provides these systems with real-time updates from the field, such as: job status updates, parts usage, location of employees, time and attendance and so on.

CRM & ERP Integration: Out-of-the box connectors for Oracle Netsuite, IBM Maximo , Microsoft Dynamics CRM and EPR, Safesforce and SAP. Our mobility plugin adds Field Workforce Management functionality to these systems.

GIS Integration: GeoPal also integrates with ESRI ArcGIS, enabling you to view your assets in the field on the GeoPal mobile app and update the asset attributes on the app even when offline. These updates are then passed from GeoPal to your ArcGIS system via our API.

IoT Platform Integration: GeoPal integrates with many IoT platforms including ThingWorx, Waylay.io, thethings.io, Devicelynk, Telit and Libelium. IoT sensors in the field send status and alarm messages to the IoT platforms.

Actionable Reports

Job Reports: GeoPal’s custom dashboard allows you to select the specific dashboard widgets you want. There are many widgets to track the performance of jobs, such as: number of jobs by status, average job duration, number of jobs completed on time.

Productivity Reports: Productivity reports show you the percentage of time spent on billable work as a percentage of total shift time.

Asset Reports: View reports showing assets by status – how many assets are in service, out of service or need repairing.

Compliance Reports: identifying, reporting, and responding to safety hazards in a timely manner can be a challenge. With GeoPal, view reports showing the number of vehicle inspections completed and the number remaining as well as the results of health and safety audits and inspections. identifying, reporting, and responding to safety hazards in a timely manner can be a challenge.

Rather than considering Covid-19 a time to reduce costs - downscaling and streamlining the workforce, construction companies should invest now in the digital skills required to succeed in construction’s digital future (GlobalData). Digital Transformation in utilities and construction is no longer a luxury or an afterthought. The time for digitising your workforce is now.

Find out how your business can benefit by Connecting Your Field Operations with a Free demo.