Knights Spraying needed a digital form solution that would provide instant access to captured data in the field and eliminate manual form delivery.
Leveraging the GoFormz Reporting Tool and form automation, Knights Spraying can access real-time data and rapidly extract actionable insights for their daily business operations. Additionally, through Conditional Logic, Knights Spraying seamlessly transformed their comprehensive deficiencies documentation process into an auditable experience, eliminating the risk of missing documentation and human error, while ensuring forms reach the appropriate individuals.
Vegetation Management Report
Timesheets
PTO Requests
Invoices
Knights Spraying is the leading provider of vegetation control services in Vermillion, Alberta. Their expertise extends to working with organizations in diverse sectors such as the oil and gas industry, utility companies, industrial plants, pipelines, right-of-ways (ROWs), municipalities, commercial businesses, highway contractors, and more.
The Knights Spraying team knew they needed a digital solution. “The initial drive to find a solution was understanding the collection of paper forms in the field and needing to get them back to the office in a timely manner,” explained Brandon Tupper, Owner of Knights Spraying. “An industry partner was using GoFormz and they were the ones that told me to check it out.”
The transition to GoFormz was seamless for the Knights Spraying team, as they did not begin their operations with paper-based processes. “We went directly to GoFormz. I never even started with paper because I understood from past jobs and experience that a digital solution was necessary.”
“We went directly to GoFormz. I never even started with paper because I understood from past jobs and experience that a digital solution was necessary.”
– Brandon Tupper, Owner, Knights Spraying
Knights Spraying was committed to ensuring their digital form solution could complete the work of multiple apps. “It’s quite important to me to not have the staff use twenty different apps,” explained Tupper. “If I can find solutions all in the same place, within the same app, with the same look and feel, and my team can get used to it, then the happier everyone is!” The ability to customize forms, leverage Conditional Logic, create automated processes, and report on captured data, made selecting GoFormz an easy decision for the Knights Spraying team.
Knights Spraying relies heavily on the GoFormz Reporting Tool. “There are three main user groups of our reports,” explained Tupper. “The first would be at the supervisor level and an example of this would be any near misses or hazard IDs that are identified in the field the previous day.” He continued, “We have a report generated after everyone in the company has filled out the hazards they've identified. A supervisor gets that automatically emailed to them in their Excel file and at the next day's safety meeting, we can review any hazards or near misses that happened throughout the company, in real-time.” This is exceptionally important for the Knights Spraying team, especially for their seasonal workers. “It’s important for our workers to know that they’re not just filling out paperwork that gets lost in a big pile,” noted Tupper. “It provides value to the staff in their daily operations because now when they identify a hazard, they are going to take the time to write it out knowing that the next day at the safety meeting it’s going to be shared company-wide.”
They also use the Reporting Tool for tracking time off requests and timesheets. “We use reporting for our requesting time off forms to generate reports for the office staff,” explained Tupper. “Essentially we use it as our scheduler for work shifts and all our team has to do is communicate with the supervisor which employee has a day off coming up.” In addition, generating reports has played a significant role in their payroll processes. “We use our timesheets in GoFormz and what a huge time savor this is for us when doing payroll!”
The final layer of the Reporting Tool is used by Tupper. “I use the reporting tool as a high-level quick snapshot of what’s going on in the company,” he explained. “I can generate a report quickly and see how production is, what the safety metrics look like for the company, and other custom metrics that are specific to our industry.”
“We use our timesheets in GoFormz and what a huge time savor this is for us when doing payroll!”
– Brandon Tupper, Owner, Knights Spraying
Utilizing Conditional Logic, Knights Spraying simplified its extensive documentation process for mapping deficiencies identified by employees during an inspection. “We needed to be able to audit and verify when that employee’s identified deficiency is fixed and repaired,” noted Tupper. “This is quite challenging to do in our industry.” They needed to figure out how to have an employee identify a deficiency, have that deficiency get automatically transferred to the right person in the company, get notified via email and through GoFormz, open the form and complete the maintenance repair, identify the work was completed, and then map it out in a report. “Having this process established is great for our staff because during an audit they can show they are identifying deficiencies in equipment or work processes and it’s making its way through proper management channels and getting fixed in a timely manner.”
This process is an industry, legislative requirement. “Can you imagine the nightmare this would have been if we tried to do this all on paper? Having this digital process be smooth and automated was big for us,” expressed Tupper. “Not everyone is tech savvy so we can’t ask our workers to transfer a form to someone else, so having everything run automatically in the background is great for our line of work.”
“Can you imagine the nightmare this would have been if we tried to do this all on paper?”
– Brandon Tupper, Owner, Knights Spraying
Knights Spraying now operates with an almost entirely automated process. “90% of our templates result in an automated workflow,” noted Tupper. “We use the OneDrive integration and GoFormz creates a file hierarchy automatically,” he continued. “Because of this, every year we don’t have to go in and rebuild a file explorer or folder structure.” With this established automation, Knights Spraying can maintain the organization of their work consistently year after year. This eliminates the chances of missing documentation and human errors.
The Knights Spraying team notes numerous benefits from utilizing GoFormz, the most significant of which being enhanced relationship management with their customers. “Having the ability to daily invoice customers might not result in a massive financial gain but it absolutely strengthens the relationship with our customers,” expressed Tupper.
In addition to maintaining customer satisfaction, Knights Spraying has seen an increase in safety culture. “Being able to track inspections, maintenance, hazard IDs, incidents, and incident follow-ups all in GoFormz helps create a safe workplace,” noted Tupper. “We also do our preventative maintenance through GoFormz which ensures we have good working equipment and an overall safe culture,” he continued, “GoFormz plays a huge role in our company culture.”
“GoFormz plays a huge role in our company culture.”
– Brandon Tupper, Owner, Knights Spraying
Finally, Knights Spraying has experienced significant time savings through the form-filling process. “We’ve recently started using GoFormz for our invoicing process,” he continued, “Before it required a full-time office staff, but now all we have to do is set up a data source correctly with our field work tickets and we’re able to populate our work tickets based on the data that the office would normally have to manually enter.” Data Sources facilitate smooth form-filling experiences by extracting information from a database and automatically populating form fields based on that database. “Now we’re creating reports that have all the necessary information for reporting and it will automatically be turned around into a quick invoice.”
As Knights Spraying operates seasonally, they plan to iterate on their current Templates as the season comes to a close. “I have some ideas on how to make our current Templates even better due to changing customer demands and trying to keep up with new employees coming on board,” explained Tupper. “It’s just remapping, retooling, and implementing lots of improvements that GoFormz has been making over the years.”
Additionally, Tupper intends to delve into Power BI to create a dashboard that interfaces with their daily operations conducted in GoFormz.