Kelly Group Case Study
With a large mobile workforce working on lots of rail, metro and highway sites on many projects spread across a very large area, the Kelly Group found itself beset with huge difficulties in keeping all stakeholders – senior management, project managers, the commercial team, the customer, the regulatory authorities, admin staff and the on-site workforce – up-to-date with the information they required.
Opportunity
The Kelly Group required a system which would allow them to track and assign jobs to their 2,500 field employees as well as track their fleet of 1,600 vehicles across rail, metro and highway. Their situation presented certain challenges. A single, mobile, integrated system which gathers and supplies all required information to all stakeholders including the customer.
- Incomplete Reporting: Kelly’s used various systems and processes such as paper forms, tools for uploading photographs and mobile phones, to deal with a vast amount of information from different sources; critical data was often lost, incomplete or inaccurate.
- Poor Stakeholder Communication: They struggled to get answers to questions regarding tasks assigned, schedules, costs, and incident and risk assessment reports. Moreover, they found it difficult to provide the customer with this important information.
- Wasted Resources: Field workers would call the office every morning to find out what jobs were assigned to them before finding their own way to the job, filling out a series of paper forms and finally, manually returning them by hand to the office; a very time and cost consuming task.
In order to cope, a mish-mash of systems and processes (paper forms, Excel spreadsheets, an online tool for uploading photographs, digital cameras, mobile phones, etc.) had built up over time to try to solve the problems but was creaking under the strain and would soon break. A large central admin staff were required to gather and co-ordinate the information on paper forms and Excel spreadsheets.
How We Helped
Ultan Technologies worked with the Kelly Group to understand their business and determine their requirements.
We helped them streamline their business processes and then designed and built the KWPS system around the new processes to solve their problems.
Value to the Kelly Group
The streamlined processes and the tailored KWPS system aligned directly with the Kelly Group goal to target efficiency improvements in order to implement the most cost-effective solutions. This meant:
- Less time spent on preparing reports since the customer, the commercial team, project managers, senior management have instant access to the latest progress on each site on each project in real-time
- Better control of margin since information on costs and margins – to-date and remaining – are available in real-time
- More repeat business since customers are happier because they can get up-to-date information on progress, costs, change requests and issues on-demand
- Gives the Kelly Group an edge when looking for new business because of efficiency and cost-effectiveness improvements:
- A single integrated system to gather and supply all the required information to all stakeholders including the customer
- A custom tablet application is used by the on-site workforce
- A cloud-hosted web app is available to all users
- The on-site workforce uses tablets to find out what sites and work they are assigned and to enter information and take photographs
- All data entered on-site via tablet is submitted and available to all relevant system users as soon as a 3G data connection is available
- Risk assessments, red alerts, daily site reports, work done, costs incurred, change requests are available in real-time
- Geo and time tagged reports of work done, safety hazards, problems and necessary work changes including start and finish times and photographic evidence is available in real-time
Overall, Ultan Technologies worked with the Kelly Group to streamline their business processes and then designed and built the KWPS system around the new processes to solve their problems. This includes increased control over margins, better customer service, and unique customer log-ins to the latest progress, change and issue reports. As a result, Kelly Group was able to save £375k per annum with mWorkerCIS. The custom development from Ultan Technologies cut substantial financial costs and provided customers with piece of mind, showcasing Kelly Group as a transparent, ethical and efficient business.
