Stock Control and WorkFlows
This was a start-up business that has very manual, physical activities
DisasterCare Red Dragon has a lot of customer 'jobs' where client belongings need to be carefully restored, often stored for several months on their behalf and to tie into strict insurance company processes to allow for invoicing.
This project required the ability to track Insurance Agency jobs and the flexibility that each Insurance Agency has different requirements for their own system in order to invoice. In future development they also need the ability to do specialist cleaning and restoration of private (non-insurance) work, which needs it's own Pipeline that communicates with the owner of the soft contents in an entirely different way.
Each job often requires client belongings to be left in storage for long periods of time while their home is being renovated and restored. The company also needs to allow clients to come in and access individual items. So this needs to be carefully documented and physically managed.
The KanBan view has been set up so that anyone on the shop floor knows exactly what job is where in the restoration process, and what jobs have been scheduled next for processing. There are also some actions locked down so that only when shop floor technicians enter information or confirm actions that it can be passed over to the next stage.
All of the operational activities are reflected in Books all the way through the entire process, from draft or confirmed orders through to work invoiced, all of which can be seen from within the jobs on the CRM if the right level of access has been given to the user. Only certain users are able to access any financial information. So while everyone can see the Jobs in the CRM not every one can see all the details that the office can.
As part of the process, when Insurance Agency Technicians are out on site to collect the soft home contents, they have an online form to take down the Policy Holder's details. This was all done previously on bits of paper that was then left with the Office, sometimes out of hours. It is now done entirely online so that as soon as the technician fills out their form on their mobile or tablet the new draft Job is immediately created on the CRM so the Office knows exactly what will be delivered to the warehouse.
Throughout this project the key deliverables were:
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Reduction of Data entry - the rule of thumb is only do it once.
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Open Visibility - everyone on the shop floor and in the office needs to know exactly where in the process each job is.
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Selected Visibility - not everyone should have access to all information.
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Captured Timeline - the Office needs to be able to see on the system at what point a job activity was processes, when a client was called or emailed, when other correspondence has been involved, when items have been added or removed etc.
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Protected Processes - depending on the client (private, Insurance Company, etc) very specific actions or information needs to be completed that can not be missed.
And we needed to implement the project development incrementally so that the staff were not overwhelmed with changes, something that was really important due to the amount of work.
