“It was so flexible and easy to build, allowing the
total customization to meet my client’s needs.”
– Kathy Stevens, KAS Consulting
Finding A Robust Digital Solution
Kathy Stevens, director at KAS Consulting, sat down to talk with Asel – our APAC sales associate. Together, they explore KAS Consulting’s journey with Appenate and how several challenges were overcome with custom solutions.
Business Goal
Solution
Outcome
- Find a digital alternative to paper-based ISO45001 conformance in processes and procedures.
- A highly customizable and repeatable solution to roll out to multiple clients going forward.
- Appenate was found to be easy to use and fit all the requirements to help Kathy’s clients.
Seeking A Digital ISO Solution
KAS Consulting (AU) is a workplace health and safety (WHS) consultancy that helps its clients improve business processes, implement new systems, and comply with legislative standards.
Kathy Stevens is the training and consulting director of KAS Consulting. We reached out for insight into her experience with helping clients achieve ISO standardisation by means of our custom mobile apps.
How Did Kathy Find Appenate?
Kathy was introduced to Appenate during a client brief, where she was involved in designing a new Workplace Health and Safety system to meet ISO45001 standards.
While initially using a mix of paper and software, Kathy and her client jumped at the task of fully automating their health and safety processes.
Making The Switch
Lost forms, late submissions, and inaccurate reporting were issues that plagued Kathy’s client. She would provide them with source documentation, but, lacking the proper managerial infrastructure, efficiency was a hard standard to maintain.
Digitisation enabled them to achieve next-level accountability over their processes – one of the main advantages of using mobile apps in businesses.
Appenate helped them to consistently access their data even where connectivity was an issue. In our imperfect world, replete with the possibility of interference, offline capability shouldn’t just be an afterthought.
Kathy also found the cost-effectiveness of going digital very attractive. Check out our ROI calculator to see what we mean.
Using Appenate Without An IT Background
At first, Kathy felt intimidated by the idea of using Appenate, as spreadsheets and Google Forms were her previous consultancy allies. She didn’t know much about code and systems integration and readied herself for a steep, uphill climb.
She worked closely with our support team and got her hands dirty anyway.
To her surprise, Appenate was an intuitive and novice-friendly platform. Fast-forward to today; Kathy is now in the position to provide her smaller clients with all the assistance they need to get the most out of our platform.
When recruited by her bigger clients, who generally have extensive integration requirements, she calls on the help of our tech support to do the explaining for her.
“Every year, it’s gotten easier for a novice user to use and get the most out of Appenate.”
Introducing Appenate To A Technophobic Audience
Hesitancy to adopt new technologies is not unusual. Kathy faced a few common objections on the grounds of –
- Limited Exposure – Some workers just don’t have the computer literacy rates that are developed with adequate exposure to technology
- Age – The older members of the company showed heightened resistance to the process.
- Language Barriers – There was the concern that the software might only be understandable by English speakers and that non-native speakers would have a harder time adapting.
Kathy lightened the resistance of her clients by pointing out that we use mobile phones to manage our lives – every single day.
Everyone knows how to use a phone, open up an application and type some text into a box. It’s that easy.
All pushback ceased after a simple, two-minute demonstration. It turns out, after all, that many of the workers found it easier to type than write by hand.
Easy Replication & Rollout
Appenate lets you duplicate, individualise and push out forms to all users. You can customise permissions and use our filtering functions to display the relevant information to the right people.
To get your team on board with Appenate, Kathy suggests that you follow a ‘logical progression’ with your demonstration. For example, start with the process goals then play around with simple designs and example fields. Try to use a lot of pictures and symbols, opt for pre-populated fields and slowly build toward more intricate forms.
“I’ve never seen workers accepting a system’s change quite like they do to Appenate.”
Speedy Fault Resolutions: Weeks To Minutes
Before going fully digital with Appenate, Kathy’s client was bogged down by data-capturing difficulties.
Here’s how it went:
Plant operators had to complete daily plant pre-start inspection forms. These forms would go to their supervisor for approval, which could take up to two weeks as the forms were handed in with fortnightly timesheets. Once approved, the forms would reach the plant maintenance coordinator about another week later.
The plant maintenance coordinator would often have a stack of at least 500 forms to go through to find the ones that had indicated a plant fault. Only then could he schedule a mechanic to fix the fault. Four weeks to fix a fault on the plant is too long of a timeframe, wouldn’t you agree?
The complete conversion of the process to Appenate allowed checking of the plant through to scheduling maintenance to go from weeks to minutes.
In Kathy’s experience, online capture of data had an obvious advantage over scribbling on paper – synchronistic updates.
Her client also struggled with the all-too-common occurrence of double entries, reporting the same issues repeatedly, which messed around with their data and work efficiencies. After the switch, accurate, accessible and editable data was immediately available.
Sold On A Digital Solution – And Never Looking Back
As a consultant, Kathy vouches that Appenate has successfully enabled her and her clients to build custom apps, access real-time information and drive up customer satisfaction.
She mentioned that she was impressed with the response rate of our technical support team and the ease of uptake that it allowed for new adopters.
Ultimately, our app-builder is flexible and straightforward. It’s affordable and founded on the need to deliver tangible results for companies in every industry.
Make Your Life Easier
Keen to help your clients ditch paper and work smarter? As a consultant, you’ll get a free Appenate account in which to test and showcase your solutions to clients.
For more information about our consulting partner program, click here.