Ever wondered how one small company fulfils over 8 billion orders in a single season?
Neither have we, but we’re going to write about it anyway, because ‘tis the season. ☃️
So prepare yourself for an inside look at how Santa’s workshop operates, why paper is taboo at the North Pole, and what you can glean from the inner workings of the most productive workshop on the planet.
Let’s dive in.
The Challenges Santa’s Workshop Faced
It may surprise you, but the north pole isn’t great for tree growth. Or any kind of plants, really. This makes paper production in the area a challenge. Hence, in the past, Santa’s chief elf had to source paper from across the frigid seas.
The costs were immense, and workshop management quickly realized that this was not sustainable. The whole budget was blown on paper, and when it came to present production, all they could afford were simple wooden toys. (Sorry, kids of the past!)
We won’t even begin to mention the drag that paper caused on workshop processes. Keeping track of stacks of orders in paper form proved near impossible (imagine 8 billion paper sheaths in one room!).
Forms got lost, orders went unfulfilled, and tears soaked young cheeks.
There had to be a better way.
It All Begins With A Functional Workshop
Santa started his quest to go digital with a comprehensive audit of the workshop processes. Once he had everything in one place, he could better understand what sort of solution they were after. And so, he started his search for a paperless workshop management system.
Given the unique nature of the shop, a simple off-the-shelf solution wouldn’t cut it. They needed something more robust. Something customizable.
After a lengthy search, several pots of eggnog and enthusiastic help from the elves, Santa stumbled upon Appenate.
The initial cost to adapt this mobile app building solution was a pittance when compared to traditional paper. Most of the elves already had mobile devices. Those who didn’t were given company devices – Appenate doesn’t consume tons of processing power, so affordable devices were enough to run the software.
And so the app building began, with the workshop – the main paper consumer in the North Pole – being the primary focus.
Teething Issues Soon Gave Way To Smooth Sailing
Initially, the elves building the apps struggled to grasp the Appenate backend, mostly because we sacrificed simplicity for power so our customers can do more. That said, with our unlimited support and training, they were soon creating apps to track entire workshop processes, following the line of production flawlessly.
Once things were running smoothly, they noticed a new issue. Some elves were having trouble remembering to fulfil their tasks (May or may not be the eggnog). And so they turned to Appenate for a solution.
A Comprehensive Task Management System
Appenate’s powerful task management system gave the elves the answers they needed. With it, they could assign tasks to individual elves, attach forms or apps to the task for easy access, and even see at a glance what task statuses were on the Appenate web portal.
This gave management easy means to hold elves accountable for their tasks, and the workshop ran smoother than ever. A complete necessity, given the growing human population (We hit 8 billion people globally on the 15th of November this year).
The issue now was that when a safety incident happened, paper forms were still being printed to document the incidents. This was both costly and inefficient. Not to mention the elves hated filling out those forms – so many fields! Hand cramp central, am I right? As a result, many incidents went unreported, a big loss for elf safety everywhere.
So again, the elves turned to Appenate.
A Safe Workshop Is A Happy Workshop
With the mission of making incident reports easier to submit, track and follow up on, the elves built custom mobile apps with our no-code app builder. This easily halved the time it took to submit an incident, and supervisors were able to react faster.
What’s more, the safety elves were able to keep a better eye on reports, with information being easily accessible on the cloud.
This culminated in a safer workplace for all the elves and an overall positive outlook on employment conditions. They’re still drinking too much eggnog, however.
Powerful Native Capabilities
The workshop is a busy place, and it’s sometimes hard to stop and enter data on an order manually.
The elves wanted things easy – Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for quick scans of printed data on different machines and NFC tags for accurate timesheets. They even printed and stuck QR codes to their machines. Now, when a maintenance elf does the rounds, a quick scan of the QR code opens up the correct app, and even prepopulates some of the standard fields!
They were delighted to find that all of this was possible through Appenate, which produces fully native applications on Android and iOS. So the elves could harness powerful modern device capabilities and smooth out their processes once and for all.
When All Is Said And Done
The final problem management had was that logging in and manually checking data on the system felt inefficient. Management had too many responsibilities – like vetting the naughty list – to be worried about manually checking the system.
The elves didn’t quite know what to do about this, so they booked a training session with us. Fifteen minutes later, they were well-versed in creating basic yet info-rich automatic reports. Furthermore, they used our email connector to send these reports out every week, straight to the manager in question’s email address.
We’re all about efficiency! And the customers are happy, too, judging by this recent review.
“I’ve never had a late delivery from the Noth Pole yet!” – Piper Enerson, daughter of Meg, Sales Manager at Appenate.
If ‘Santa’ Can Do It, You Can Too
As fun as it was to craft this obviously fictional story, much of it is based on real-world client cases. And if they could do it, so can you. Your business CAN move away from paper and be more efficient and profitable in 2023.
We sincerely hope you enjoyed this read. We in content would also like to extend the season’s greetings to our customers, future customers and loyal readers – from the entire team at Appenate, happy holidays!
Enjoy the family, relax and recharge, and let’s get back to it with renewed energy in 2023. ✊
And if you are new to Appenate and would like to see what we can do for your business, sign up for a free trial here.