How Nelmac uses e-proof of delivery to improve reporting

Software to simplify proof of delivery data

Specializing in asset and environmental management, Nelmac is a business with a large number of jobs on its schedule every day. The job types extend from mowing sports fields to the more complex servicing of wastewater treatment plants and helping manage New Zealand’s bio-security efforts.

Nelmac’s Technology Team was tasked to find a better way to schedule and manage the thousands of jobs completed each month across the business. The main challenge was that the existing paper and whiteboard based systems didn’t give Nelmac or their clients enough confidence that the teams were being deployed where they were needed. Without this information, there was no way to know if the team was meeting its contractual requirements. 

For example, one condition was to have a 95% completion rate on all reactive jobs within five working days, but without timely and accurate information, tracking this was nearly impossible.

As Nelmac’s Technology Business Partner Brodie Bell says:

“Traditionally we’d relied on paper and whiteboards to schedule jobs. But there was no way we could use this to scale our business as it grew – and it didn’t meet our clients’ expectations either. Our clients were fielding calls from their customers about the status of our jobs – and the only way our clients could confirm when a job would be completed was to give us a call.”

Brodie set about evaluating business processes and implementing vWork across the business after evaluating the available software solutions.

Sharing of critical data drives visibility

The impact of vWork on the business has been significant. In the initial few months after rollout, Nelmac experienced a noticeable change in productivity. The dispatching team took less time to prepare and manage the work schedule, and the management team were able to resolve exceptions quicker. Productivity in the field improved as field workers received and managed all their job information via the vWork app on their tablets.

The ongoing benefit of vWork for Nelmac, in addition to the ease of job scheduling, relates primarily to the proof of delivery and health and safety functions.

Team leaders, the management team and Nelmac’s clients have increased and immediate visibility of job progress, meaning that everyone is able to see how well each team performs against target.

The built-in health and safety checks specific to each job type, mean that team leaders are able to see and manage any health and safety concerns as soon as they arise. 

Brodie and his team have set up workflows to include a hazard review prior to starting the work – aspects like pre-start checks on vehicles mean that Nelmac are confident that their workers are kept safe whilst out and about.

Unanticipated gains shine through for Nelmac

There were a number of benefits to the business that Brodie didn’t anticipate at the project outset. The biggest one was the opportunity to review and improve so many business processes. 

For every job that is set up in vWork, there is an associated workflow – a series of smaller steps associated with each type of job that ensures that workers consistently meet the expectations of Nelmac, its clients and regulatory requirements. The ability to template each workflow exactly to their needs meant that Brodie and the team had the opportunity to review every process.

Brodie marvels how this project has made the organization smarter. “Our people now submit requests to change the conditional logic in workflows, as they know better than me where the opportunities are to do their jobs’ better. Seeing this kind of culture improvement is important to us – and our Clients.”

Additionally, being able to use an API to pull data from their client’s CRM directly into vWork means that Nelmac are creating jobs almost as soon as the request comes in from a member of the public to their client. And in reverse, Nelmac are also providing job status data back to their clients, too.