In this case study, we examine how Singletouch's data management and field management software helped a Canadian electrical contractor reduce the time-consuming paperwork associated with creating timesheets and invoices and then printing them for customers. (Additional information on deploying Singletouch is available in the vendor's case study, Field data capture reduces cost by 73%).

NorCan Electric is, in the assessment of company president Cameron Cassels, a fairly detailed organization. The electrical and instrumentation service provider collects a lot of information about day-to-day work in the field -- activity summaries, manpower summaries, timesheets and so on -- and puts that information together, in the form of an invoice, for its customers.

The "old-fashioned way" of getting through the invoice cycle involved a lot of paperwork, a lot of data entry and, when it came to job costing, a lot of guesswork.

So when Singletouch, a developer of data management and field management software, approached NorCan, the contractor was all ears. NorCan started using Singletouch in July 2008. In the ensuing months, the company has seen benefits for both its foremen in the field and its staff processing invoices back at the office, Cassels said.

The long, slow paper trail

Before adopting Singletouch technology, NorCan's foremen would collect timesheets from field personnel, go back to the office and hand the timesheets to a payroll clerk. The clerk would enter the information into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, summarize it and then enter it again into NorCan's payroll software (Simply Accounting by Sage).

Not surprisingly, this was a lot of work, particularly for large projects and especially since different NorCan customers have different information reporting requirements, Cassels said. The process also made job costing difficult, since it could take a while for payroll data to be updated and analyzed. Lastly, this process was also open to human error as data was being written down, entered and re-entered. In recalling Singletouch's assessment of that process, Cassels said, "We squeezed as much as we could out of Excel."

With Singletouch in place, the foremen now use a bar code scanner to scan employees in and out. At the end of the shift, the foremen then syncs up the device with the server. Back at the office, Singletouch software users can print daily and weekly timesheets and bundle them with the invoices; the timesheets can also be exported to Simply Accounting.

The Singletouch implementation did not require NorCan to make any server room upgrades. However, the company did need to purchase a few laptops to serve as "kiosks" so that the bar code scanners being used in the field could sync up with the contractor's servers, Cassels said.

Saving time, "reducing frustration"

The most immediate benefit of adopting Singletouch, Cassels said, was "reducing frustration for a lot of office staff," since having all the timesheet data in the same place makes it much easier to meet customers' reporting requirements.

Moreover, a separate Singletouch implementation, rolled out in January, lets foremen create purchase orders. This brings together all the information needed for invoices, which saves more time for office staff. This also improves job costing and forecasting, since purchase order as well as timesheet data is now available as soon as a shift is over.

Overall, about 75 field workers at NorCan Electric are using Singletouch technology. Some embraced it really quickly; others were more apprehensive. Cassels said the former showed the latter how Singletouch let them implement a repeatable, time-saving process. "None of these guys want to work behind a desk," he noted. "That was a real selling feature."