Feb. Issue Extra: Hand-held Hype

Kurt Kluznik, president, Yardmaster, Painesville, Ohio, offers insight into his company’s extensive use of hand-held technology.

Our accounting software is used for scheduling our crews, and the schedules are pulled from the job estimates. We can download the schedules and crew lists into the Palm Pilots. This gives the foremen the job information like the address and a copy of the work sold, such as the number of mowings, prunings, etc. When the foreman gets to the job, he can select his crew members from the list in the Palm Pilot. He then uses the Palm Pilot as a time sheet.

Since the Palm Pilot also includes a clock, there is exact time keeping. All of the information matches so the mistakes that commonly occur with written time sheets are eliminated, such as the wrong employee name or wrong account number. The information is downloaded to the network each day. This makes billing, payroll and job costing very current and painless.
When a client or employee needs to know when we were last at a site or how many fertilizer applications we’ve applied, the information is easily accessible and timely. Because this is an integrated program, we’ve been able to reduce the amount of hours spent on clerical work and improved the overall accuracy of our bookkeeping.

We’ve also minimized the writing required of the foremen. Some of our managers are using cell phones equipped with Palm Pilots. In addition to the convenience of eliminating another pocket appliance, our managers find improved productivity. Their “Rolodex” file of clients and vendors, along with task lists, day planners, calculators, etc., are all in one unit.

For the most part, there is some employee training to consider when integrating new technology such as Palm Pilots. This is a change for them and change is not always without resistance. Many of our employees have never used a Palm Pilot before. But it is easy for them to learn. Once they get used to it there are minimal problems. Training is fairly simple and can be done in a day with some follow-up coaching.

Currently, we are still working out the bugs to enable our remote branches to access our network over the Internet and upload and download their Palm Pilots. Access to high-speed Internet lines for one of our locations delayed this project. Further, in most cases, work has to be scheduled in advance, but it should be anyway. Also, when an emergency or recent sale requires action, we can’t bypass setting the work up in the computer, which is a good thing overall. Yet, when there is a schedule change due to rain or absence this system becomes cumbersome.

However, the pros of hand-held technology include the elimination of redundancies. The same information gets input once and is used by sales, administration and the field. Having to match up information from several different sources has been greatly reduced. The whole process forces more organization and consistency when handling information. It also reduces the chances of doing work that wasn’t included in a job, forgetting work that was included and missing any billing opportunities. – Kurt Kluznik