Top
American Woodmark’s Quality-Focused Mobile Strategy

American Woodmark’s Quality-Focused Mobile Strategy

February 13, 2015

Via: itCurated
Category:

Whether you’re renovating your home or building from scratch, chances are you want every last detail to be perfect. That’s why American Woodmark, a kitchen and bath cabinet manufacturer, offers more than 613 cabinet lines. With hundreds of styles and finishes available, homeowners are likely to find exactly what they’re looking for.

That’s a great start for any business, but this company went a step further, employing mobile technology to ensure that every cabinet is in perfect condition when it reaches its new home.

And with nine manufacturing facilities located across the country and customers ordering cabinets from all over, that’s no easy feat. American Woodmark products often travel thousands of miles before reaching their final destination, so the manufacturing company came up with a very clever mobile strategy to track and report on their products.

Finding the Perfect Solution

In the past, workers on the go relied on laptops to report quality issues, but the lengthy boot-up time and clunky equipment made that process slow and painful. With the hope of streamlining this process, American Woodmark developed and launched FieldTrac, an app that allows field workers to accurately identify products, track their movement and report on quality.

One key feature they needed to include was a barcode scanning capability that would enable them to identify and track products moving from place to place. So the company went in search of a mobile barcode scanning solution that would perform well in any environment. They selected the Scandit Barcode Scanner SDK for iOS and Android because it leverages built-in cameras on smartphones and tablets, removing the need for additional hardware to scan and upload barcodes. Scandit’s solution also promised ease of integration with FieldTrac.

Now, all the tools American Woodmark employees need to track and report on products fit in the palm of the hand. With FieldTrac, employees are able to quickly pull up important product information anytime and record status updates from their mobile devices anywhere, making their jobs faster and easier. The app also makes it easier to collect large amounts of data in the field, analyze it and discover patterns and problems. That means employees have the information they need to make every aspect of product shipping more efficient.

American Woodmark’s Quality Focused Mobile StrategyAmerican Woodmark’s Quality Focused Mobile Strategy

Tracking Anywhere, Anytime

With the FieldTrac app up and running, employees around the country are able to quickly record and retrieve data with the tap of a finger. Because FieldTrac is easy to use and Scandit’s barcode scanning solution requires no training or how-to-guides, field workers could start taking advantage of the new system from the moment it launched.

Robert Beecraft, a field supervisor for American Woodmark in Florida, said, “Having FieldTrac and Maestro Web [one of American Woodmark’s other apps] in the field has been a huge help. I am currently using both systems combined to provide accurate information to us and to our builders on the status of their jobs. Filling out forms and job completions in the field … has increased accuracy, reducing duplicate work once I am back in office. There are a lot more features than just status: photos, GPS coordinates and field issue feedback. This is a huge step forward.”

With the ability to scan products in any environment, whether it be in a warehouse or truck trailer, American Woodmark employees are fully equipped to track and report on every order. FieldTrac is put to work from the moment a customer places an order to when the product ultimately is installed in its new home. Employees use the app to record measurements, scan product barcodes in the field to verify and document product location and make notes on quality, as well as confirm that an order has arrived safely and been properly installed.

Since its development, FieldTrac has become a major part of American Woodmark’s service platform, improving employee efficiency across the board and guaranteeing the delivery of quality products for their customers. Employees find the app easy to use and customers receive quality-ensured products tracked from when they leave the warehouse to when they arrive at their final destination.

An American Mobile Story

American Woodmark is a great example of a company in a traditional industry that has looked to mobile technology to take its business to the next level (you can see some other examples of this here). Logistics can present a huge challenge for many organizations, but mobile technology is perfectly suited to gathering large amounts of data in the field, analyzing it and discovering patterns and anomalies that can help decision makers correct course when needed.

Ultimately, this allows companies like American Woodmark to deliver a high-quality product and an exceptional customer experience every time – an outcome that would be prized by any company in any industry.

Read More