Background
Over the span of four decades, Georgiou Group has established a reputation for excellence in the civil engineering and building construction sectors in Australia. It brings together the expertise and experience of Direct Drainage, Geocrete, and Roadpave after they were merged together in 1996.
Fueling its success is the Georgiou Way, a group of beliefs and practices which cover Safety, Profit, Relationships, People, and Innovation. Through these values, stakeholders and members of the workforce strive to be ‘the best people to work with’. It is this vision which has made Georgiou the first choice of government clients across the country, and won it prestigious awards including the Gold Safety Achievement Award (IFAP/CGU Safe Way Awards) and Civil Contractor Federation Earth Awards (QLD).
The Problem
As a project-based enterprise, Georgiou’s executive process many paper-based documents daily. The company, however, realized its paper-based dependency affected its coordination and organizational processes. For starters, tracking the progress of remote operations requires more time and incurred costs such as travel expenses. The lack of transparency in field operations also compromises the robust safety culture the company has been continuously building.
Field operations aside, paper was slowing down certain departments such as the human resources department. With new members joining the workforce, gathering employee documentation such as ID and driver’s license copies was difficult. This was especially true for on-site employees who didn’t have access to scanners and printers, or couldn’t drop by headquarters.
At first, Georgiou’s IT team took the initiative to develop an HTML 5 app. However, the app took months to be developed. Moreover, the team realized making even the smallest changes required additional time. The app also didn’t offer the capabilities, functionality, and speed the enterprise required for quicker, accurate data entry.
The Solution
Intrigued by the concept of mobile forms, Georgiou contacted Makeen Technologies to create its mobile forms app, OneApp. The app features over 80 mobile forms which cover a range of business functions, including Health and Safety, Precast, Plant, and Human Resources. Delivering a rich user experience, the forms are intuitive and quite easy to use. They’re also comprehensive, ensuring remote teams communicate all the data stakeholders need to take decisions.
As for functionality, OneApp integrates with Georgiou’s back-end systems. Through Makeen Technologies’ Mobile Forms’ built-on connectors, the app sends and receives data from on-premises or cloud-based SQL and MySQL databases, as well as SharePoint. This ensures the latest data is available for both remote teams as well as back office staff.
Makeen’s Active Directory Authentication Connector is also configured for the app. This enables seamless login using existing Active Directory credentials. Moreover, the connector complements the solution’s overall security features.
The Result
According to Georgiou, the enterprise has achieved a greater level of productivity since rolling out OneApp. Chief Executive Officer John Georgiou remarked, “Innovation is important to us, and harnessing mobility gives us a competitive advantage. Makeen Technologies makes it simple. Empowering the user interface with an enterprise app allows our company to be productive and save time and allows focus on delivering safe and positive outcomes for our clients. The use of mobile technology has made a huge difference.”
In addition to productivity, the app improved decision making. Captured data was sent directly to the data warehouse, and ran through Georgiou’s analytics tools. This allowed stakeholders to better assess projects and have a bigger picture of key KPIs.
On the field, users of OneApp reported improved project tracking as its forms allowed them to report their progress to head office in real-time. Health, Safety, Environment and Quality (HSEQ) supervisors were satisfied with the app’s ability to engage the workforce around health and safety compliance and safety systems. The forms, especially the checklists, allowed them to effectively coach and mentor the workforce. The ability to attach annotated photos was most helpful with reducing the administrative burden of inspections.
Georgiou’s IT department praised the speed of creating forms via the platform’s form designer, makeen transform Studio. It allowed them to drag and drop configurable components in one-fourth of the time they would have otherwise spent on mobile development. The team also enjoyed the flexibility to make changes on the go within 15 minutes and publish to all OneApp users regardless of the devices they used.
The Human Resources and Finance departments were also positively impacted by the addition of OneApp. HR managers now enjoy fast employee documentation collection thanks to features like image capture and eSignatures. As the app works with all HR systems and integrates seamlessly with them, managers have easy access to data anytime, anywhere. The Finance department was just as pleased as OneApp helped them reduce transaction costs by 50%.
