Flooring Company Nails Down BI for Better Results

Managing a mobile workforce is wrought with challenges. At some point, all paths lead to revamped and rewired workflows. One organization taking aim at all this is The Matworks, a 50-year-old customized flooring solutions and janitorial services firm that serves national retailers, the hospitality industry and others.

“We wanted to find a way to better serve our customers through technology,” said Jared Agan, vice president of Operations. “We wanted to better track performance and improve customer communication.”

With the likes of industry giants such as Target, Walgreens and Walmart on the line–and janitorial services performed at more than 700 locations around the U.S.–The Matworks recognized a need to evolve beyond paper, phone calls and e-mails to manage projects and track results. In many cases, “We were responding to the noise level rather than knowing what was going on and conducting business in a proactive way. We wanted to establish the company as one with honesty, integrity and a focus on customer service,” Agan said.

As a result, The Matworks explored various approaches along with the vendor landscape and eventually selected mobile platform workflow solutions provider ProntoForms. It went live with the technology in January 2016. Today, sales staff and others rely on iPads and iPhones to collect data and improve visibility into jobs and inspections. The firm also uses a ProntoForms dashboard to visualize data, view reports and analyze performance and compliance information in near real-time. All data is encrypted in transit and stored in the cloud.

The technology framework allows Matworks to schedule sales and support more efficiently; teams are able to visit the right locations at the right time, and address customer needs in a more responsive way. For example, during a quality assurance inspection, customer feedback is now immediate. Problems and exceptions — such as when a customer satisfaction score comes in too low — show up instantly and someone at the company can take appropriate action.

“The system has helped us move from assumptions and hunches to using actual data to make decisions,” Agan explained.

The ProntoForms system, which streamlined a number of workflows, has helped the company significantly improve service quality, increase transparency, and raise customer satisfaction scores. In fact, the company has realized a 75 percent reduction in overdue service calls — while cutting costs and improving efficiency in other ways, such as better expense tracking and the ability to review notes about inspections and other tasks. Agan said that in some cases — because Matworks was able to catch a problem up front — it has eliminated the need for a company representative to jump on an airplane in order to put out a fire at a customer site.

Agan said that Matworks is currently in the first phase of the mobility initiative. It plans to expand the system to gather operations data from the field and better tie together the management team.

“We are now able to view current data and reports — and take action without any delay. The technology has helped the company become much more responsive to customers.”

Samuel Greengard
Samuel Greengard
Samuel Greengard writes about business, technology and other topics. His book, The Internet of Things (MIT Press) was released in the spring of 2015.

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