"Information would usually take about a week to get to us.... Now we can immediately help customers."
GOFORMZ CASE STUDY
AT-A-GLANCE
Kaw Valley Greenhouses needed a digital solution to replace their easily damaged and time-consuming paperwork. Forms were often lost or turned in damaged, and took far too long to deliver from retail locations to the back-office.
Kaw Valley digitized their retail and human resources forms with GoFormz, allowing team members to collect data directly from mobile devices, and route completed forms and information to the back-office in real-time. With instant access to completed forms, Kaw Valley can now more rapidly respond to customer needs, expedite seasonal hiring paperwork and processing, and improve communication between locations.
THE FULL STORY
Kaw Valley Greenhouses has grown and sold plants throughout Kansas, Nebraska and Missouri since 1967. Family owned and operated, Kaw Valley sells their plants across 40 seasonal locations, with over 12 million plants grown annually.
Kaw Valley Greenhouses, a family owned operation that grows and sells around 12 million plants annually. Kaw Valley’s plants are sold across 40 seasonal retail locations, spanning Kansas, Nebraska and Missouri. The Kaw Valley team originally relied on paper forms to capture retail and incident data – a cumbersome, often frustrating process they were eager to fix.
“Even before we knew GoFormz existed, we knew we wanted GoFormz,” quipped Megan Pickford, an Office Manager for Kaw Valley who oversees a variety of IT, finance, and retail operations processes. With around 600 employees spread across 40 locations, precisely documenting sales, location needs, and customer inquiries was often a difficult task.
“A lot of times our paperwork would get wet or blow away, so sometimes we just didn’t get paperwork and we would have to guess,” Megan explained of their pre-digital process. Kaw Valley’s retail locations are often partially outdoors, making paper forms far too fragile and cumbersome to withstand variable weather and frequent use. Adding to these frustrations was the need for forms to be hand delivered or mailed back to the office. “A lot of our forms would just be sitting in an envelope until a truck came to make a delivery, which could be anywhere from every day to every three to four days, depending on sales. And then that form would hopefully go from the warehouse to the front office, where we would hope to get our paperwork.”
Fortunately, Megan and her team were introduced to mobile forms by a GoFormz user, and they quickly began digitizing their documents for use on mobile devices. Initially, the Kaw Valley team planned on primarily using GoFormz to communicate their daily store sales. However this quickly changed once their Human Resources manager identified just how many opportunities for optimization digital form features introduced.
The Kaw Valley team began their digital transformation with their Cash Balancing form, equipping their now digital document with automatic calculations. Automatic calculations are a powerful tool for improving the accuracy and completeness of data, and the efficiency of form completion. The digitization of the Cash Balancing form was quickly followed by mobile versions of several HR and sales forms — including inventory forms, I-9 and government tax forms, and invoices.
Many of Kaw Valley’s forms are also equipped with automated email workflows. Once a form is completed, a PDF copy of the form is emailed to back-office personnel for processing and storage, making sure collected data is available immediately rather than hours or days later. Among the forms that leverage automated workflows, are the Supply Request and seasonal hiring forms.
“We use GoFormz to communicate forms back and forth between the retail locations and the back-office, so we don’t have to wait for mailing and delivery."
Onsite employees fill out a Supply Request form for any needs at their retail location, like office or register supplies. Once the form is completed, it is immediately emailed to back-office personnel, alerting them that supplies are required. Before GoFormz, such location needs were communicated via phone, requiring frequent calls between retail sites and the back-office, and a lot of informal note-taking. The new digital Supply Request form combined with the automated email workflow has streamlined and expedited this process — increasing back-office responsiveness, while reducing time spent on the phone. “Now I can sit down and look at their requests when I’m right in front of what I need to get it done… versus hoping I find all my sticky notes.”
Many of Kaw Valley’s forms are also equipped with automated email workflows. Once a form is completed, a PDF copy of the form is emailed to back-office personnel for processing and storage, making sure collected data is available immediately rather than hours or days later. Among the forms that leverage automated workflows, are the Supply Request and seasonal hiring forms.
Kaw Valley now uses GoFormz for not only their sales documentation and personnel forms, but also to record customer incidents and store damage. Before GoFormz, if a customer were to fall onsite, or their car was damaged, it would take time to gather the necessary information and documentation to address their needs and complete insurance claims. Because these situations necessitated rapid response times to meet customer and insurance needs, relying on paper forms resulted in detrimental delays. With GoFormz, onsite teams can immediately capture customer details, images of incident damage or hazards, the time and location of the incident, and more. Once the form detailing the incident is completed, it is instantly available to the back-office for processing insurance needs. “Now I can immediately work with the insurance company and the customer, so I know both sides of the story.”
“Information would usually take about a week to get to us.... Now, with GoFormz, we can immediately help our customers.”
Similarly, real-time access to completed forms has helped Kaw Valley simplify the reporting of thefts and onsite damage. If a Kaw Valley location were to report a theft and the police were to call the back-office for further information, Megan can now simply locate the Theft Form completed onsite, allowing her to answer police and insurance needs immediately. “Now they can snap an image of the damage, give me all of the incident information, and I can get the insurance claim started within minutes… versus after a couple of days.”
Kaw Valley quickly witnessed savings across their operation, especially when taking into account the budget they had originally allocated for postage. “Any employment paperwork, especially when it was getting close to payroll, we would have the supervisors go to the post office and overnight the package,” Megan explained. Removing the need for postage expenses, while also eliminating the delays associated with manual delivery, has saved Kaw Valley time and money.
Next, Megan and Kaw Valley plan to collaborate with their GoFormz account manager to automate and streamline their inventory and invoicing reporting.