Release Notes: GoCanvas Windows App

Posted on by GoCanvas Team

Release Notes: GoCanvas Windows App

At the very end of 2015 we made a strategic decision to support 3 platforms for filling out GoCanvas apps.  Android, iOS and the Windows operating system. We decided to NOT support Windows Phone and Blackberry any longer.  Our goal with these 3 platforms is very simple: To 100% support them. This means that all GoCanvas features (Unless not applicable) would be available across them and the design of the interface would be simple and easy to use.

We are now happy to announce that our GoCanvas Windows App is now available!

You can install this version of GoCanvas on any laptop/desktop/tablet that is running Windows 7, 8 or 10. For those of you that have been using the GoCanvas Desktop Client, this will be a massive improvement for you.  There are tons of new features availabe on this version that were previously only available on iOS or Android. Here they are!

  • Folders
  • Table of Contents
  • Grid view for loop screens
  • Viewing and editing past submissions (History tab above)
  • Receive dispatched Loop items
  • Draw on an image you captured or pulled from your gallery
  • View PDF after sync
  • Departments
  • Web link field
  • GPS field
  • Sync after tapping submit
  • Blank date and time fields

Now your team members that have Windows laptops/desktops/tablets can use GoCanvas just like your Android and iOS users and get the same experience. This opens up a world of additional opportunity for your organization to save even more time using GoCanvas.

  • Complete submissions on Android or iOS and edit them later with the Windows App.
  • Better incorporate your office-based team members into your GoCanvas processes.
  • Office-based team members can consider GoCanvas for their processes now. Human Resources forms, approval forms, request forms and more can all be filled out with the Windows App.
  • Mobile users that have laptops or Surface tablets (We do NOT run on Windows RT, which is used by older Surface tablets) can now use those devices instead

About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

Check out even more resources

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Feature Focus: Create, Assign & Manage Tasks More Efficiently with Dispatch Calendar

Posted on by GoCanvas Team

Feature Focus: Create, Assign & Manage Tasks More Efficiently with Dispatch Calendar

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Eliminate Missed Appointments & Improve Back Office Productivity

In many businesses today, the daily organization and management of a mobile workforce can be extremely time-consuming.  It often involves the creation of complex spreadsheets and/or using of multiple calendars in order to accurately track assignments. The organization of these tasks can easily take 1-2 hours per day and result in the office staff having to work overtime in order to ensure the proper completion of every activity.  In addition, Office Dispatchers often have to deal with manual processes including: 

  • The creation, printing, and distribution of daily dispatch schedules
  • Call, texting, or emailing of tasks to field employees
  • Creation of spreadsheets and reports to measure productivity

Does this kind of inefficiency sound familiar within your company? If so, you need Dispatch Calendar!

With the release of the brand-new Dispatch Calendar, GoCanvas users now have the ability to quickly create, manage, and assign 100’s of weekly tasks from a single screen. There is no more navigating between different screens, software programs or employee calendars; Dispatch Calendar conveniently places every task right at your fingertips. 

Best Use Cases for Dispatch Calendar

When evaluating whether your company should implement Dispatch Calendar, you should first take a look at how you process and assign daily tasks today.

Dispatch Calendar Animation

Does your office staff have to manually write out the details of daily or weekly appointments? Do they have to reproduce these details across various systems? Do you have to wait until the end of the day or week to receive reports and view whether or not all appointments and tasks have been completed?

If you answered “YES” to any of the above questions, then Dispatch Calendar is a feature that could have a major impact on the daily productivity of your business. It is as simple as using Google Calendar but with the additional benefits that come with using a mobile data collection platform. You are now able to easily manage a single calendar of all your employees’ tasks that connects to both your data collection solution (GoCanvas) as well as their personal calendar programs (Gmail, Outlook, etc). 

This is also a feature that can work across various use cases and is not just for those who already utilize dispatching software.  Additional industries that could benefit from this feature include:

  • Field Service – Electricians, Plumbers, HVAC technicians
  • Moving / Shipping / Logistics
  • Inspection
  • General Contracting
  • And more!

How to Get Started with Dispatch Calendar

It is super simple to enable Dispatch Calendar for your GoCanvas account!

Anyone on a GoCanvas free trial will instantly have access to the feature and simply needs to navigate to the “Dispatch/Workflow” section of their account. By simply clicking “Enable” on the banner, the old GoCanvas Dispatch tool will be transformed into the more intuitive, Google-like Dispatch Calendar.  An example of the banner message you will see is below. 

For paid GoCanvas subscribers, the process works the same way. If you’re a current GoCanvas subscriber on the Professional subscription plan, this feature is readily available and can be enabled the same way. If you are not on the Profession Plan, but would still like to try out Dispatch Calendar.

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About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

Check out even more resources

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Gown Your Business with GoCanvas Partner Program

Join our Partner Program and gain instant access to our global network of thought leaders and industry experts enjoying shared collaboration and collective success.

Learn more
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Partner Snapshot: Forte Supply Chain Solutions

Explore how Forte Supply Chain Solutions partnered with GoCanvas, combining in-house industry expertise with our white-label mobile forms to revolutionize their processes.

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GoCanvas Integrations: Streamline your Workflow

Integrate with over 1,000 software applications. Enhance your GoCanvas experience by syncing real-time data to one or all of your business tools.

View integrations

Connect with an Expert Today.

We’ll help you put together the right solution for your needs.

Let’s Build A Plan Together

How Checklists Can Boost the Performance of Retail Businesses

Posted on by GoCanvas Team

How Checklists Can Boost the Performance of Retail Businesses

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The Problems with Retail Today

The retail industry is much more complex then it seems to the outside world. The ability to efficiently manage a mid to large scale retail business in today’s marketplace is almost impossible if you don’t have the right tools. Luckily for business owners in this industry, the current tech boom has led to a variety of tools and platforms that allow for the quick collection and analysis of data in mere seconds. 

So what’s the problem?

Many retail business find themselves in situations where they either can’t afford to invest in high priced pieces of software, have staff that don’t embrace mobile technology, or are afraid of changing their internal processes after decades of doing things a certain way. A combination of all three of these factors is usually why a retail business will recognize that things aren’t running as efficiently as it should be, but don’t do anything about it. 

Embracing The Future of Retail Business

The key to truely embracing technology within your business is to select a platform that compliments and enhances what you are doing today. 

Canvas mobile checklist

In the Retail Industry, this means selecting a platform that helps increase your daily visibilty into the operations of your business. By selecting a solution that helps reduce the time you spend walking around checking up on things or waiting on reports to be generated, you are instantly recouping hundreds of hours every month that can be refocused on other areas of your business that need improvement.

Also, what would happen if you were able to receive a real-time report after every failed checklist? It would mean that issues would no longer go unnoticed or unresolved for days, weeks, or even months at a time. A single small issue doesn’t snowball into many big issues. And with real-time data reporting, you are able to make proactive decisions within your retail business that can have a huge impact on your employees’ productivity. 

Mobile Forms for Retail Business

The easist, most efficient way to get started with technology in your retail business is to analyze the different parts of your organization and identify which are most involved in data collection. The reason being is that these areas involve the most paperwork and employee time, and are most likely to be dramatically affected if a mobile data collection solution is implemented. That is why implementing mobile checklists with GoCanvas is one of the most popular ways for retail businesses to go paperless. 

GoCanvas offers a variety of mobile retail checklists that cover everything from retail store audits, cleaning checklists, daily store opening/closing checklists, and more! 

Canvas Mobile checklists

The best part about implementing the GoCanvas platform to your retail employees is that there is no IT involved,  zero coding, and is something easy for you to manage on a daily basis. When your business uses GoCanvas, it instantly allows you to convert your outdated paper processes into mobile checklists. This eliminates the need for all manual reporting on the backend since all the data collected with GoCanvas is instantly uploaded to the cloud and available for review. And since all reports can be sent to you in real-time, business decisions can be made immediately and without hesitation. 

Additional benefits and features for retail businesses include:

  • Field requirements to ensure that employees always complete their checklists
  • GPS and Image Capture allow employees to create incredibly detailed reports
  • Dropdown lists and checkboxes allow for the quick capture of accurate information
  • Schedule, assign, and manage 100’s of tasks with the Dispatch Calendar
  • GoCanvas Workflow allows for the creation of custom report approvals from employee to supervisor
  • And much more!

Mobile checklists aren’t the only form that will help improve your efficiency. Check out the basic order form app today!

Interested in learning more on how GoCanvas can give your retail business an edge in the marketplace? Click the button below!

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About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

Check out even more resources

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Join our Partner Program and gain instant access to our global network of thought leaders and industry experts enjoying shared collaboration and collective success.

Learn more
Forte Supply Chain Solutions Partner Video

Partner Snapshot: Forte Supply Chain Solutions

Explore how Forte Supply Chain Solutions partnered with GoCanvas, combining in-house industry expertise with our white-label mobile forms to revolutionize their processes.

Watch VIDEO
Closeup of a handshake.

GoCanvas Integrations: Streamline your Workflow

Integrate with over 1,000 software applications. Enhance your GoCanvas experience by syncing real-time data to one or all of your business tools.

View integrations

Connect with an Expert Today.

We’ll help you put together the right solution for your needs.

Let’s Build A Plan Together

What’s the Cost of Paper at Your Business?

What’s the Cost of Paper to Your Business

More and more businesses are switching from paper forms and documents to digital for their company needs. Why are they opting for digital? The answer is clear – the environment and cost savings. 

It is true that overall the paper industry has become more environmentally responsible in the paper production process. Today, 39 percent of papermaking comes from recycled paper, which is a noteworthy improvement from the past. But, that does not entirely take away from the fact that papermaking still accounts for a considerable amount of deforestation in the nation. Each year, $18 million acres of trees are cut down and more than one-third of the timber harvested in the U.S. is harvested for paper. The amount of timber harvested each year in the United States continues to exceed the forest growth. The negative impact on the environment could be reduced in many cases by choosing digital alternatives. 

In addition to digitizing for environmental reasons, businesses have begun to move away from using paper for another reason: cost savings. Businesses care about the bottom line, and therefore more businesses have opted for digital versions of the everyday documents they were once using. Paper itself may not be very expensive, but the costs add up as you factor in storage, copying, printing and postage. When people are finished using paper, you must also spend money to dispose or recycle it. Studies estimate that associated paper costs such as these total to roughly 30 times the actual purchasing cost.

The Bank of America reduced its paper consumption by one-fourth by merging to digital for forms and reporting, by copying and printing on double-sided paper and by using lighter-weight paper. By digitizing, businesses are also able to free up space that would otherwise be used for filing cabinets and storage and save time that employees would typically be spending on searching for documents. 

There will continue to be situations where paper is the best option, but for those looking to reduce spending, the switch to digital could pave the way to a greener future, save businesses money, as well as free up space and time in the office which translates into saving money as well. 

View As Text

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Text Version

The Cost of Paper

Many companies have switched to digital, opting for e-billing, apps, mobile forms, and similar solutions to run their businesses. Why are they making the switch?

The top two reasons are to: reduce Costs and be more environmentally friendly.

PAPER COSTS IN AN OFFICE

Paper costs involve more than the purchase cost of the paper. Recycling, storage, and other associated costs are around 30X the paper purchase costs.

  • $20 – Average spent on filing each month.
  • $1.500 – Average filing cabinet costs each year.
  • 9 sq. ft. – Area of space a filing cabinet takes up.

In addition to monetary savings, reducing paper consumption at an office can:

  • Improve productivity
  • Increase efficiency

According to research, 35 percent of an employee’s time at
work is time spent locating information and documents. By having documents in a central place and digitizing, time can be cut down.

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS

  • 18 Million forecasted acres lost each year
  • 60 percent of timber is harvested for paper and pulp each year.

INDUSTRIES GOING PAPERLESS

According to Canvas, a tech-based company that provides mobile apps and forms for data collection and sharing, the top industries going paperless are:

  • Construction
  • Repair and Improvement
  • Transportation and Warehousing
  • Retail, Sales, and Wholesale Distribution
  • Repair and Maintenance
  • Professional Service

Top Departments that use GoCanvas: Operations 62%, Sales 25%, Safety 27%.

Most used types of Apps & Forms: Work Orders 35%, Inspections 54%, Checklist 43%.

THE FUTURE OF PAPER

“Personal printing, such as printing out boarding tickets
or directions, is on a downward trend, but commercial
printing is maintaining its pace.”

The switch may be taking longer to catch on than anticipated but companies are very much interested in digitizing and the popularity of digitizing is predicted to continue to increase.

“While some businesses have moved away from the use of paper, sectors like education, government, and health care remain extremely paper-intensive.”

Many organizations have experienced firsthand the benefits of digitizing and have accepted a new mindset of using digital means day-to-day for what they were previously using paper for. There continues to be a strong interest in organizations to replace paper records.

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GoCanvas Growth. Your Opportunity.

Posted on by GoCanvas Team

GoCanvas Growth. Your Opportunity.

A Look at the GoCanvas Partner Program

Partners have always been an integral part of the GoCanvas journey and this month GoCanvas has deepened its commitment to reaching new markets and clients through an expanded partner program. We’re actively looking for Technology Consultants, Value Added Resellers, and IT Solution providers to team with us and bring the GoCanvas mobile data collection platform to their customers. Fully supported and enabled, GoCanvas partners will unlock industry-leading commissions through attracting and on-boarding new GoCanvas customers while also deepening their consulting relationships with those clients by executing transformational integration projects, migrating client data and processes to the cloud.
 
People's Faces - TriangleThe most successful GoCanvas partners tend to have deep industry knowledge that they use to solve real business problems, introducing GoCanvas to replace outdated processes and eliminate expensive paperwork.  John Hamilton, President of JOTS Computing, who leverages his knowledge of Public Safety and GoCanvas to change the way police and firefighters capture data in the field, offered this on the GoCanvas Partner Program, “Canvas has been our number one partner in helping our men and women in Public Safety do their jobs more efficiently…It’s Click, Submit and Done!. I rarely engage with state, county or city public service executives where I can’t describe ways that GoCanvas could be deployed to streamline their existing processes.” 
 
Construction and engineering software expert, Sandrah Vittands, a founding partner of S&B Systems, a firm that provides services to clients in both the United States and Canada, has several active and prospective GoCanvas projects running today, “We’re ‘hands-on’ with the top construction software systems in our industry, and we continue to introduce GoCanvas as the optimal solution to capture data from the field and integrate that information into our clients’ existing systems.”

How You Can Get Involved

If you’re interested in employing your industry-based expertise in new and profitable ways, we’d love to talk to you about the GoCanvas Partner Program, click here to learn more.

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About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

Check out even more resources

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We’ll help you put together the right solution for your needs.

Let’s Build A Plan Together

How Home Builder, True Homes, Streamlined Inspections & Increased Sales by $1M

Posted on by GoCanvas Team

How Home Builder, True Homes, Streamlined Inspections & Increased Sales by $1M

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The Next Generation of Home Building is Here

Building - Quote -

Background

  • Industry: Construction, Home Building
  • HQ Location: Monroe, NC
  • Website: Visit Here

Quick Facts

  • Recover $22,880 in paper costs annually
  • Recognized 19% increase in customer referral rate
  • Return on investment of $1,000,000+

Stagnation Caused By Paper

Being a home builder within the Construction industry, completing and/or starting 4 new homes per day, was inherently causing paper forms to pile up. The main source of the pile up revolved around their inspection process at each construction site. These multi-page packets of paper that covered every section of the house could take hours to fill out, all while the new home buyer is just wanting the entire process to be over. This led to some home buyers to become frustrated and dissatisfied, which eventually led to a decline in True Homes’ customer referral rate.

On the backend, it was taking the staff in the office a minimum of 6-7 minutes to extract information for reporting purposes. And with over 45 project managers filling out 5 to 10 forms per day, this was equating to an average of 450 hours per month spent on just extracting data from paper forms.

Inspections Made Easy

True Homes reached out to GoCanvas to begin the process of streamlining their entire walk-through inspection process.

The Senior Mobile Consultants at GoCanvas began working with the Field Operations Manager at True Homes to develop an 117 question mobile inspection that included built-in scoring. The new mobile inspections, being used on a mixture of iOS and Android devices, were pushed out to project managers of all ages and tech knowledge. While many embraced the new way of doing things on mobile devices, a few were resistant to change after many years of using paper. But after a couple weeks of using the new system, they realized that the benefits far outweighed the initial learning curve.

“At first I was not happy about it. But then I saw that it changes how I work” said a project manager. “It makes my job easier, more efficient.” 

The new mobile inspections helped project managers identify issues within the homes and quickly communicate these concerns to the vendors in order to have them corrected immediately. With the GoCanvas mobile forms the inspections could easily be broken down by the different areas of the home, include embedded site photos, and be quickly completed without dragging the homeowner through a 2-3 hour process. This streamlined inspection process led to issues being resolved before homeowners even realized something was wrong, which ultimately resulted in much happier customers.

Ultimately this led to a 19% increase in referrals from customers in just 12 months.

Early Returns on Investment

Since deploying GoCanvas out to their project managers, True Homes has already seen dramatic benefits to their business. Not only are they collecting data faster, they are able to view real-time reports and dashboards via their database integration with Microsoft PowerBI. GoCanvas’s connection with Zapier made the process of getting the data they collect automatically pushed out to their business intelligence systems hassle free and done without the need of expensive IT developers.

True Homes has also taken advantage of GoCanvas’s extensive list of project management features including Folder functionality. This allows clients in the Construction industry to easily sort and organize the various types of mobile inspection forms they have created. This makes extracting information by location or home section a breeze, eliminating much of the 7 minutes it used to take to extracting information from EACH paper inspection.

Overall satisfaction among their customers, employee production, and data reporting were all positively affected by going mobile with their inspection process. This transition from paper has ultimately led to their $1M+ increase in sales in just 12 months of deploying GoCanvas.

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About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

Check out even more resources

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See how VIP Lighting optimized efficiency with GoCanvas

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We’ll help you put together the right solution for your needs.

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3 Ways to Create a Mobile Work Order Form in Under 10 Minutes

Posted on by GoCanvas Team

3 Ways to Create a Mobile Work Order Form in Under 10 Minutes

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Choose a template

Going Paperless in Minutes, Not Months

The secret to setting up the right mobile platform for your business is not by searching for the cheapest tool, but finding the one that you are able to customize, deploy, and manage yourself without the need of IT. This is why more and more companies from the Construction, Inspection, and Field Service industries are choosing GoCanvas for mobile construction work order and document management.

Still wondering if your business should make the switch to mobile work orders? Take a look at some of these stats from our clients in the Construction industry:

  • 45% of clients use GoCanvas for mobile work orders
  • 72%% of clients reported dramatic improvements in the speed of data collection and reporting
  • 78% of clients increased the productivity of their business by 10-19%+

How to Create a Mobile Work Order During Your Lunch Break

The reason that close to 75% of GoCanvas users are able to build their first mobile form in less than a day is because of our code-free form builder and template library.

Another option is choosing one of the pre-made mobile work order forms in our Application Store of over 30,000 industry and use-case specific templates. This allows you to take your time as you find the right work order that matches your industry and use case. The best part is that you can download as many templates as you wish, test them out, and even customize them using the GoCanvas App Builder to make sure they are perfect. This option is perfect for people who don’t want start from scratch but also want to be hands-on as they build out the mobile platform for their business.

Canvas Mobile Form Builder

The last option (but best in my opinion) is to create a custom work order using the drag-and-drop, no-code builder.

This option gives you the ability to customize everything from the features, user experience, and the reports of your work order. You are able to make the work order as simple as a two screen mobile form with simple data entry fields to as complex as a 15 screen mobile form with automated calculations and conditional fields. This option allows you create a data collection experience that matches the specific job or project that your employees are undertaking.

Go Paperless Today

The best part about all of these options is that there is NOT a huge time or cost investment. Your business is able to design, create, and deploy a mobile platform under a week without the need for involving IT or outside consulting services. This is ideal for any company who is looking for a boost in productivity but is afraid of investing large amounts of time and money in technology.

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About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

Check out even more resources

business people discussing project

Gown Your Business with GoCanvas Partner Program

Join our Partner Program and gain instant access to our global network of thought leaders and industry experts enjoying shared collaboration and collective success.

Learn more
Forte Supply Chain Solutions Partner Video

Partner Snapshot: Forte Supply Chain Solutions

Explore how Forte Supply Chain Solutions partnered with GoCanvas, combining in-house industry expertise with our white-label mobile forms to revolutionize their processes.

Watch VIDEO
Closeup of a handshake.

GoCanvas Integrations: Streamline your Workflow

Integrate with over 1,000 software applications. Enhance your GoCanvas experience by syncing real-time data to one or all of your business tools.

View integrations

Connect with an Expert Today.

We’ll help you put together the right solution for your needs.

Let’s Build A Plan Together

Construction Safety Week 2017: 5 Stats Every Safety Manager Needs to Know

Posted on by GoCanvas Team

Construction Safety Week 2017: 5 Stats Every Safety Manager Needs to Know

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Construction worker with tablet

Construction Safety: By The Numbers

8 & 24

The number of hours in which you are required to report a work-related death (8) or injury/hospitalization (24). Most companies never imagine an accident will happen until it actually does. In the construction industry, it is critical to have a system in place for properly documenting, reporting, and storing all data that relates to accidents on job sites. This will not only make it easier to comply with the strict OSHA regulatory standards of accident reporting but can also reduce the risk of litigation due to safety negligence. And since it is now a requirement to electronically submit all injury records to OSHA, using a mobile OSHA 300, 300A, or 301 form to collect this information cuts out all manual data re-entry on the backend.

47%

Percentage of fatalities that construction companies with less than 10 employees account for. This number is was discovered during a conducted by The Associated General Contractors of America. It sheds a spotlight on the negligence and utter lack of safety procedures found in small construction firms. The good part is that solutions like GoCanvas can be implemented without much cost and instantly increase data visibility across job sites so that items like , , and more are conducted properly. The size of a project doesn’t dictate the amount of risk involved, and having proper safety procedures in place can help prepare personnel for all potential dangers they may encounter on the job site. 

78%

The increase in maximum penalties under the new OSHA guidelines as of August 1st, 2016. Companies found to be committing a ‘Willful or Repeated’ violation are now subject to a $124,709 fine. this is an increase of over $54,000 from previous years. Companies committing a ‘Serious’ violation are now subject to a fine of $12,471, this is an increase of over $5,000. Fine are going to continue to rise in the coming years, and you can learn more here.

6,929

The total number of ‘Fall Protection’ violations in 2016, and the #1 most cited violation by OSHA for 6 straight years according to Construction Dive. This consistent ranking shows that companies are still not approaching this issue with enough seriousness and attention. Simple Fall Protection mobile checklists can help construction companies monitor for signs of negligence on job sites and put into place preventative actions that help prevent serious accidents from happening. The GoCanvas Application Store has over 20 Fall Protection mobile checklists that can assist construction workers in daily safety reporting, including checking their equipment and harnesses before they put themselves in danger.

32,000

The total number of workplace inspections conducted by OSHA in 2016. According to the OSHA FactSheet, this means that only 0.43% of the possible 7 million worksites in the U.S. was actually reviewed by federal staff due to understaffing and overwork. So in order to make the biggest impact, OSHA specifically target companies that have a history of past violations, worker complaints, referral of hazards from other regulatory agencies, and/or work in high-risk industries.

Forms on Fire
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About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

Check out even more resources

Three inspection workers on job site.

The Ultimate Guide to Quality Control Inspections

Managing a construction project is a complex and stressful process. Among other things, you have to coordinate project team members, materials, and equipment and ensure that contractors are not afflicted by the potential risks and hazards present at the construction site. That said, quality means different things to different people which is why you should…

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A man using GoCanvas for the digital transformation of his workflow.

Constructions Digital Transformation

Your competition is finding faster ways to capture data and get critical insights from the field into their existing systems. In short, they’re not going bigger, they’re getting smarter. In this 15-minute broadcast on the construction industry’s digital transformation, find out why the trend is to modernize workflows – and how you can stay ahead of the curve…

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A electrician inspecting equipment.

See how VIP Lighting optimized efficiency with GoCanvas

VIP Lighting is a retail lighting and electrical maintenance business that services over 10,000 retail locations all over Australia and New Zealand. Before GoCanvas, VIP Lighting had two separate systems that were impossible to integrate, leading to inefficiencies. GoCanvas made it easy to integrate their systems into single, centralized platform…

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3 Ways Mobile Checklists Can Keep Your Healthcare Organization CQC Compliant

Posted on by GoCanvas Team

3 Ways Mobile Checklists Can Keep Your Healthcare Organization CQC Compliant

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Keeping Compliant with Canvas

DoctorThe Care Quality Commission is a major regulatory body in England that was established under the Department of Health in 2009. Its role is to monitor and inspect all organizations that provide medical care and ensure that patients are being given high-quality, safe treatments. In the case of healthcare organizations that are found to be in non-compliance with CQC regulations, they are at risk of substantial fines, legal action, or being shut down.

This type of government regulation is not just specific to England or the Healthcare industry, but similar to the likes of the USDA, OSHA, and the HSE in other countries. These organizations and more operate to ensure public safety and set fundamental standards for service quality. Sometimes these regulations can take a toll and hurt smaller businesses who don’t feel they have the resources to properly self-regulate themselves.

But there’s good news! Simple changes to the way data is captured and processed on a daily basis can drastically reduce the risk of failing an audit and increase compliance to a whole new level.

With GoCanvas, you are able to build your own mobile checklists and forms to meet the specific needs of your organization or facility. You are also able to online that you use and we will build them to get you started in just a couple of days. All it takes is using one mobile form to see a dramatic increase in operational efficiency!

Why Paper Causes Failed Inspections

The reason why most organizations fail Care Quality Commission inspections is because more often than not someone failed to report an issue within their facility to the proper personnel. These issues reside for weeks and months without resolution until they become so big that either management finally sees them or a CQC auditor finds them and it’s too late.

What is the cause of this? This is the failure of the two P’s – People & Paper. 

stack of paper

When inspections or checklists are filled out on a piece of paper, inherently the quality of the data is compromised. That is because there is no data validation with paper. Fields can be missing, unreadable, or incomplete when they eventually show up to the office for review. That is WHEN they actually show up to the office. It can take days and sometimes weeks to get a fully completed form back to the office, and then another couple days for that form to be fully reviewed and input into the company’s backend system. Ultimately this means that upper management won’t get a full report of these for at least a business week, meaning issues are going to take a while to be identified and properly resolved.

So, how can mobile checklists assist with this process?

3 Ways Mobile Checklists Can Increase Compliance

The beauty of mobile forms is how quickly and easily it turns static data into easy to access information that can be reviewed and shared in real-time. That is why mobile forms, especially checklists, are perfect for organizations and facilities that want to stay CQC compliant.

Here are the top reasons to make the switch to GoCanvas mobile checklists and forms:

#1. Photo, GPS, Date, & Time Verification 

Mobile checklists with GoCanvas not only allow your employees to quickly verify that everything throughout the facility is in working order and compliant, but also allows them to easily document issues by snapping a photo and capturing a GPS stamp of the location of the deficiency. This information, along with a date and time stamp of the report, will then be instantly sent to a supervisor who can review it, note compliance issues, and schedule a same-day follow-up. This ensures that issues don’t linger on for weeks or months and reduces the organization’s, as well as patients’, exposure to potential risks.

#2. Custom Automation & Approval Workflows
Gif of trucks and buildings

With the GoCanvas platform, organizations are able to setup both simple and complex information automation for the review and approval of data. This is a feature we call Workflow. For organizations trying to stay CQC ( OSHA, USDA, etc) compliant, Workflow is a tool that allows for checklists to be filled out by field employees and transmitted to a supervisor’s mobile device for instant review. The supervisor can see exactly what was filled out by the employee, make changes if necessary, or even reject the report and send it back to the originator with a note as to why it wasn’t approved. This type of automation can instantly replace the need for needless phone calls, text messages, emails and ensure that reports are review and approved in a timely manner. An online dashboard is also available to view the status of all tickets so that nothing ever slips through the cracks.

#3. Data Validation & Instant Cloud Collection 

The power of using mobile checklists truly comes from the quality of data that is able to be collected. Creating mobile checklists through GoCanvas allows your organization to create fields that are required to be filled out before a report is allowed to be submitted by your employees. This means that photo verification, signatures, time stamps, and more will always be a part of the reports that are submitted and that there will never be another incomplete submission ever again.

Cloud, lock, gear

But the quality also comes from the fact that the data is collected instantly on the cloud and made accessible to the people who need to see it when they need to see it. There is no more waiting hours, day or weeks to view reports and the data is available to be connected to the systems that you already have setup for in-depth analysis. GoCanvas allows your organization to make real-time, data-informed decisions that can increase operational efficiency and dramatically reduce the risk of violations and/or fines.

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About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

Check out even more resources

Best Ways to Collect Data in Manufacturing

Data analysis is the heart of any well-functioning manufacturing company. Without accurate, real-time data, manufacturing plants are left in the dark about costs, areas that need improvements, quality assurance, employee production, and so many other valuable insights.

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Improving Your Manufacturing Workflow With Apps

Have you ever wondered how manufacturing companies like Nvidia, SpaceX, Tesla, Intel, and Nike remain at the forefront of their industries? These companies obsess over optimizing their manufacturing process. To create and maintain a near-flawless workflow…

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Wastewater Processing: 8 Tips to Make Your Manufacturing Site More Sustainable

When it comes to wastewater disposal, manufacturers can place a significant strain on municipal water systems. The lack of proper waste management leads to sanitary waste, particularly in metropolitan areas’ water supply.

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We’ll help you put together the right solution for your needs.

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Ready for an OSHA Inspection? Tips to Avoid Violations and Fines

Posted on by GoCanvas Team

Ready for an OSHA Inspection? Tips to Avoid Violations and Fines

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Ready for an OSHA InspectionOwners of small- and medium-sized business find the prospect of having an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspection scary, especially since the agency is now inspecting businesses from bakeries and liquor stores, to construction companies, tire stores, and performing arts companies.

OSHA doesn’t warn you before they send an inspector, so being prepared is the best way to stay clear of citations and fines — especially since fines increased almost 80% over the past year.

Here’s what to expect and how to prepare your company and staff for an inspection:

Know OSHA’s most-cited hazards — OSHA puts out an annual list of its top 10 most-frequently cited standards. Review it – and think of the areas you should focus on during your internal preparations as they apply to your industry.

Develop safety checklists — OSHA puts out a checklist to help you prepare, but consider it a guide. Inspectors routinely develop their own policies via a “General Duty” clause, and will cite your company for violations of regulations that aren’t written down.  Create your own safety inspection checklists specific to your business.

Put an OSHA inspection plan in place — Put a plan in place so that your employees know their roles and responsibilities on inspection day. Assign an inspection team and prepare them in advance with mock questions, and even surprise inspections.

Know what to do on inspection day — OSHA inspections are rarely announced in advance. Knowing what to do when the OSHA inspector actually arrives makes everything run more smoothly. Only offer the inspector documents that he or she specifically asks for, and if you can immediately correct something cited, you should do so.

No matter how well you prepare, OSHA might find something that you need to correct. But with the right preparation, you’ll be less likely to be cited for serious violations that bring large fines. Most importantly, you’ll have a strong system in place to keep your employees safe and free from workplace hazards.

Want more details on prepping your organization for the OSHA inspector? Download our new interactive eBook, 4 Steps to Prepare for OSHA Safety Inspections.

What’s in the interactive eBook?

  • OSHA’s inspection priorities and a full list of most-cited hazards.
  • Quizzes and facts on OSHA standards, inspection policies, and fines.
  • Tips on how to develop safety checklists unique to your business.
  • Facts on how to use mobile apps to create checklists to help with inspections.
  • Notes on what your staff should do on inspection day — and after.
How to Prepare for OSHA Safety Inspections

About GoCanvas

GoCanvas® is on a mission to simplify inspections and maximize compliance. Our intuitive platform takes care of the administrative tasks, freeing our customers to focus on what truly matters – safeguarding their people, protecting their equipment, and delivering exceptional quality to their customers. 

Since 2008, thousands of companies have chosen GoCanvas as their go-to partner for seamless field operations.

Check out even more resources

Man inputting digital work order into a tablet from a work site.

How Digital Work Orders Impact Your Key Business Outcomes

Is your company still using paper sheets to manage work orders? The drawbacks of using paper forms are often hidden, making it difficult to understand the true impact of paper forms on a business…

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Woman reviewing data via her mobile phone.

See How Centurion Got Amazing ROI from GoCanvas

Centurion is the largest heavy haulage provider in Australia. They deliver national supply chain solutions to the resources, energy, construction & retail sectors throughout Western Australia, Queensland & the Northern Territory…

Read their Story
A man reviewing data on tablet collected by GoCanvas solutions.

5 Tips to Improve How Your Business Collects Data

Companies rely on collecting data in order to operate. In a fast-changing world, companies that focus on streamlining and improving their data collection processes will be able to do more. The good news is that it’s become easier than ever for businesses of all… 

Discover the 5 Tips

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