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Harrell Remodeling is a highly successful residential design/build construction company, whose business processes needed an upgrade. Until recently, the company had been relying on a variety of traditional business tools, such as spreadsheets and fax machines, to manage key business processes, including the preparation and collection of time sheets, tracking job costs, managing payroll and communicating with field staff.

Despite its success, Harrell management knew it could increase productivity and save money at the same time by swapping-out paper-based tools and manual processes for advanced technology systems. The company is also a "green" business and wanted to reduce its paper usage.

Remote Workers and Paperwork: An Inefficient Mix

Harrell has grown from a company with just one employee in 1985 to a 50-person business today. As with any business, in its earliest stages it was practical to use the least expensive and most accessible tools. Therefore, it is no surprise that field staff filled out time cards by hand and brought them to the office Monday morning for work performed the previous week, or faxed their time sheets to the office from the job site.

Harrell office staff was similarly burdened by the paper time sheet process. Once time sheets were collected, the data had to be reviewed, approved and inputted by hand into the Sage Master Builder payroll system. This was a lengthy and tedious process, especially if the payroll person could not read an employee's handwriting or faxed time sheets did not arrive promptly.

Harrell is unique for the multi-dimensional services it provides to customers. Many firms focus on design or construction, while Harrell offers both. It is critical, then, that design and construction staff be in constant contact with one another, as change orders and job-site questions impact both teams equally. With field staff mostly out of the Harrell Design Center, they lacked regular access to computers and e-mail. As a result, carpenters were sometimes disconnected from designers, and likewise from clients.

Time to Get Automated

To address these issues, and to stimulate greater office and field productivity, Harrell in 2007 deployed a series of new technology solutions from Xora, mJobTime and RIM. GPS TimeTrack from Xora, mJobTime, BlackBerry devices from RIM, and Sage Master Builder, have been integrated to work together naturally, right "out-of-the-box," enabling speedy deployment of the software and hardware at Harrell.

GPS TimeTrack software runs on BlackBerry handheld devices, which are carried by 25 Harrell carpenters and 15 Harrell designers. Harrell carpenters use the GPS TimeTrack application to record time sheet and job status information. Meanwhile, Harrell Design Center staff has access to Web-based maps and business reports, generated by GPS TimeTrack, that detail the location and activities of field staff in real time.