Paper Checklists have been around for decades. They have been indispensable through the ages and many people continue to feel comfortable with their use in their business, not feeling the need to change. However, the usefulness of paper checklists reaches its limits as businesses scale and tasks become more complex.
Whilst the trend to retain paper is decreasing year-on-year, COVID-19 has certainly accelerated this. Remote working practices and not being primarily in the office, the use of paper and paper checklists is now seen for what it is, a large drain on the resources of a business. Specifically time spent creating, storing, finding, moving & eventually disposing of paper checklists (if you can actually find that piece of paper 6 months down the line!)
“Professionals spend 5-15% of their time reading information but up to 50% looking for it” - Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC).
Advances in cloud computing and hand-held devices, even over the past five years, have been nothing short of phenomenal. Costs to use data on these devices has decreased to negligible sums, which is testament to the rapid progress we have made as a civilization. Being able to perform business functions on your own smartphone or tablet is now seamless and at no additional cost. Essentially, the playing field on which businesses operate has been fundamentally altered.
A business that has successfully run paper checklists for the past 30 years will soon find that competitors who are fully digitized in their business and checklists, are faster to meet the customer needs, and spend less company resources in servicing that customer need. Ultimately the digitized business can offer a lower price AND provide a better service to that customer.
The mismatches between companies will become more glaring as time progresses and those digitized competitors will become even more efficient, at the same time providing a level of information and insight to their business that they never thought imaginable.
If this is news to you or your organization, you should be aware that the digitization of asset inspections is already happening at pace. The good news is that it is not too late!
Paper vs Digital for Asset Inspection
More than 70% of today’s business would fail within 3 weeks if they suffered a catastrophic loss of paper-based records due to a flood or fire.
|
Paper Inspections |
Digital Inspections |
|
Risk of lost information (flood, fire, |
Inspections records are held in the cloud or on premises software |
|
Increased time requirements of entering data and/or transferring to computer |
Inspection input is directly into digital format, no duplicated effort to digitise |
|
Storage is variable (car boot, office, bag) |
Safely located (in the cloud or on premises server) |
|
Time spent finding the inspection report |
Inspection / Asset records instantly searchable through term, date range, custom fields |
18 minutes - The average search time for a document.
Ready to go digital?! What are the next steps?
Choosing the right software for your business (key considerations):
-
Price: Annually upfront vs monthly subscription (how much are you willing to pay?)
-
Billing Metric : Matching the software to your business model (Charge for users, Assets or Inspections)
-
Upfront investment cost vs immediately deployable into business
-
Contractual tie-ins vs. no lock in clauses / contracts
-
Cloud-based vs web-based vs on-premises (server / desktop / laptop)
-
Subscription vs owned (perpetual)
-
Asset Register transfer or in-field at the asset onboarding
-
Disruption of existing processes vs no disruption to existing business processes
Once you have a reasonable idea of what type of software you want and what price you are willing to pay and the terms, it is useful to evaluate as wide a range of available options as possible.
How can AssetPool help solve your challenges?
AssetPool is a multi-feature inspection software solution that works with your business to manage your assets and equipment effectively and accurately, in real time.
You can customize the paperless software to suit your business and sync it across all devices for complete control over your asset registration, maintenance and management.
Creating and customizing your digital checklists is as easy as 1,2,3
Digitize your business processes, save time, save revenue, and optimize your workflows.
-
Dedicated secure Cloud Hosting on Amazon Web Services (AWS)
-
Our different billing options allow you to match the service we provide to your business model, either through a monthly per user, per asset or per inspection billing.
-
Immediately deployable into your business. No integration costs or business disruption, we can get you up and running within your normal business operation cycle within 48 hours. This is due to our unique in field on-boarding process that allows you to create the asset at the asset and without the usual costly touchpoints of transferring data from old legacy systems and diverting resources away from your business
-
No contractual tie-ins or upfront payments, we offer a monthly subscription service
We know time is money, and AssetPool can help move your business from the stone age to the digital age. Contact us for a demonstration and ditch those pesky paper checklists for good!