SUCCESS STORIES
Eliminating the Middleman
A client had to file a record of each sales transaction with the government daily. It required about 1/4 of an employee’s daily time and about $50,000/year to file using a “middleman” service. Once A2 Data discovered this was happening, we wrote code to eliminate the middleman.
Now it requires about 5 minutes/day and the client pays $0 annually to the middleman. When the middleman service asked our client why their usage had stopped, a staff member indicated that “our IT guy wrote code to file with the government directly.” The middleman service said this couldn’t be done. The staff member replied, “Well, he did it.”
Clocking and GPS
A client wanted to automate employees clocking their work time and eliminate manual time sheets. Entering handwritten timesheets into the payroll system (that we built) took an employee about 10 hours of her work time every week.
We built a system that allowed employees — in the office (on computers) or in the field (on iPhones) — to click a button to log start time, end time, and breaks, and assign it to a specific job for job costing. Redundant entry of time was eliminated, verification took a fraction of the time, and the data was more accurate.
As a bonus, we “geocoded” every click. This enabled our client to view employee locations and routes and improve logistical efficiency.
Automating Complex Operations
A client had an employee manually estimating costs that would incur on each sale. A complex “rate sheet” was used to estimate a range of costs based on a variety of variables, for example, if the vendor is X and the destination is Y and the shipper is located in the South Pacific, the cost is $450. The rate sheet was extensive and the employee spent about 1/3 of her daily work time performing this function.
A2 Data turned the rate sheet into intelligent computer code that accounted for all the variables and automated this task. Now the client’s server spends a few seconds daily doing what an employee needed 12-15 hours/week to do. The end result was more accurate as well.