Why Should You Digitise Your Inspection Process?
Whether your business operations involve conducting safety inspections to identify potential hazards, inspecting equipment to carry out preventative maintenance, or completing property and residential inspections, checklists are a useful and often essential tool. They provide a clear list for field staff to follow, ensuring that inspections are carried out properly and thoroughly each and every time.
In the modern world, where there is an app for almost everything, inspections can be completed quickly and easily using a tablet or mobile device. The use of digital inspection checklists on-site can be incredibly beneficial to businesses, simplifying the process for all parties.
How Digital Checklists Simplify Data Collection for Field Service Engineers
It’s no secret that traditional paper checklists are extremely inefficient. Not only do they take a long time for inspectors to complete by hand, but they also must be transported back to the office before a report can be manually created.
This means that, when companies stick to paper-based processes, a lot of time and money is dedicated to administrative work. Digital checklists and forms allow inspectors to spend less time carrying out these tedious tasks, cutting admin costs.
When using digital processes to collect data in the field, inspection reports can be created automatically, emailed to the appropriate staff members, and saved to the cloud, removing the arduous task of manually creating reports.
Furthermore, when inspectors work with paper forms, collected data can sometimes be illegible or incomplete. Digital forms are useful for standardising the data retrieved in the field. Using required fields and dropdown lists, companies can gain increased control over data format, ensuring that accurate information is submitted first time.
Another benefit of digitalising inspection processes is that managers can choose to regularly schedule and assign checklists to staff members to be completed on a regular basis. This way, inspectors will be notified when a task is due. Additionally, inspection apps can often be used by staff to work collaboratively using cloud-based tools, which is likely to boost productivity.
How Digital Checklists Simplify Data Handling for Managers
When manual work is reduced by implementing more efficient processes, the entire organisation reaps the benefits. Management teams can enjoy not only reduced costs, but also the convenience of managing checklists digitally rather than on paper.
A significant limitation of using paper forms is that, over time, it’s easy for important documentation to be lost or damaged. Businesses are taking too many risks by maintaining a paper-based filing system. By adopting a digital system to collect and automatically store their data, businesses can better manage their records, lowering their risk and liability.
With data stored in a cloud-based platform that is secure and accessible, managers have a central place from which they can manage all important records and documents. This is especially useful for companies carrying out critical inspections like job site or equipment safety inspections.
Tracking compliance is a crucial task. Many businesses have complex operations, with teams completing checklists in multiple locations. This means it can be difficult to keep track of what inspections are being carried out where. By using a digital checklists and data collection platform, you can run analysis and compile reports to thoroughly track compliance. This can provide greater transparency of your organisational operations, enabling you to take appropriate action if any defects or hazards are found.
Switch to digital inspection checklists today to empower your company with valuable insights. To learn more about how our digital forms solution can enhance your inspection processes, call our team on 0203 411 1795 or email us at [email protected]. To schedule an online 1 to 1 demonstration, call us or visit our website.