The Fulcrum Focus

File attachments in Fulcrum

Great news! Today we’re announcing a new file attachment feature that will save inspectors, data collectors, and administrators a ton of work when they need to manage document-based information. Documents are now just another data type: You can add them to any section of your Fulcrum app.

AI-powered aerial data platform Sitemark now uses Fulcrum to make it easier and more effective than ever for companies to collect field data, clearly visualize solar installation site anomalies, and take action to fix them – all on a mobile device.

Any company can pay lip service to safety, but the ones that actually prioritize it are rewarded with stellar safety records, great reputations and low experience modification rates (EMR). So how do you make the jump from lip service to a robust safety program that can reduce workplace injuries?

Every year, thousands of workers are injured or killed by electrical hazards, a situation made more tragic because many of these incidents are preventable.

UPDATE: Since this announcement was originally posted, Fulcrum remains SOC 2 compliant.

Spreadsheets excel in tasks like accounting and data analysis, offering versatility and ease of use in organizing and processing information. However, when it comes to collecting field data, particularly for integration with GIS platforms, their limitations become apparent. Fieldwork demands real-time data collection, often in diverse environments with varying connectivity and conditions. Spreadsheets lack the necessary functionalities for efficiently capturing and managing this data on the go. Furthermore, the manual input required for spreadsheet-based data entry increases the risk of errors, compromising data reliability.

Each day, teams on the ground play a crucial role in performing essential operations like inspections, installations, and ensuring compliance. These operations, while seemingly straightforward, create an abundance of location intelligence that often doesn’t receive the attention it deserves.

esThe work your field technicians do at the front lines is core to your organization, and leveraging the information they collect in the process can help your company make better decisions at every level. That makes your field teams the perfect catalyst to drive your utility’s digital transformation.

h President Biden’s infrastructure bill, also known as the American Jobs Plan (AJP), aims to create millions of jobs and modernize the country’s crumbling infrastructure. The federal government touts this bill as the biggest public investment since the 1960s. It aims to kickstart the economy post-pandemic, akin to the era of interstate highways and the Space Race. Utility and telecom companies show keen interest in the $400 billion allocated for infrastructure in the $2 trillion plan.

OSHA’s latest findings for 2020 underscore fall protection as the top cited violation, marking a decade-long trend. This highlights the pressing need for enhanced measures to prevent falls in the construction sector. The consistent recurrence of fall protection violations signals a systemic challenge that requires urgent attention and proactive solutions.

In 2019, a staggering 2.8 million people suffered a workplace injury, and 5,333 workers died on the job, an average of 15 deaths every day. Outside the very real human cost of suffering, companies pay out millions each year in fines, legal fees and increased insurance premiums.
“Boots on the ground” safety professionals are often all too familiar with these tragedies. Responsible for reporting safety data, complying with regulations, and reducing risks and incidents, you know first-hand the complex challenges of managing safety in potentially dangerous situations.
While danger can never be fully eliminated from certain industries, rigorous safety reporting helps you minimize risk and protect your employees. And a safety professional who prioritizes data-driven, streamlined reporting will be able to identify problems before tragedy strikes again.
 

Fulcrum enables organizations to eliminate many cumbersome, inefficient paper processes from their workflows to increase the productivity, safety, and quality of their field operations. But some mobile users — especially those with particularly complex and dangerous jobs — have still needed to carry paper safety booklets and bulky SOPs for reference on project sites. Until today’s launch of Fulcrum’s attached document feature.

With the integration announced earlier this year, customers of Fulcrum and Esri™ can now get more value out of their investments in both platforms. By sending high-quality, real-time Fulcrum data into Esri, organizations can get a clearer picture of what’s happening on the ground, analyze their situation more effectively, and make better, more data-driven decisions.

In a recent study conducted by Boston Consulting Group (BCG), 95% of executives across several industries in the United States, UK, Singapore and India said that mapping and GIS location intelligence are important to achieving desired business results.

Two great features that aid image processing have recently been added to the Fulcrum no-code application platform: Adding multiple photos from the gallery and renaming photos on download.

With the mobile revolution, more and more users in field roles are discovering the power of location-based data. Whether it is used to trigger a workflow or process, or simply help visualize information on a map, users — particularly those who work in the field — are increasingly demanding location-aware apps to make their jobs easier and more efficient.

Recent snowstorms managed to cripple the second largest state in the continental United States. Overnight, millions were left without essential services due to aging infrastructure and unprepared electrical grid’s vulnerability to severe storms. Unfortunately, with extreme weather conditions becoming increasingly common around the world, being proactive about how to respond to such disasters in the future could save time, money, resources, and most importantly, lives.

(If you’re the type of person who wants to jump straight to the doc, go for it.)

From the beginning of 2020 to the beginning of 2021, the way that many organizations do business changed dramatically, seemingly overnight. Remote work became the norm as offices went dark, and people learned that many tasks could be completed with little (or no) face-to-face interaction. The cloud technology that has enabled this transformation has made many things possible that previous generations couldn’t have dreamed of — not just for traditional office workers, but for the mobile teams who don’t do their jobs behind a desk and who still report to job sites every day. It facilitates a seamless transfer of data, without the need to be in the same location, reducing costs while increasing safety and productivity.

Today marks the first phase of a new, easier way to integrate Fulcrum and Esri™. Joint customers can now get more value from their existing Esri investments by extending their location intelligence capabilities beyond the specialized geographic information systems (GIS) user.

The Coronavirus pandemic caught almost everyone off guard in 2020. Some organizations swiftly embraced new technology, enabling their workforce to transition smoothly to working from home. However, others found it challenging to adjust to this new reality and maintain a healthy cash flow.

The construction industry faces a tight labor market and a shortage of skilled workers. This situation often forces companies to fill roles with workers who do not meet the ideal employee profile. They do this out of desperation to complete projects on time and within budget.

A manager is only as effective as the team they’ve built, and ensuring they have the right tools to get the job done is part of being successful. That’s even more critical when those teams are out in the field and responsible for day-to-day tasks without a manager being physically present. If your team members are working solo, outdoors, or in geographically diverse environments, managing effectively becomes exponentially more challenging.

Everything about 2020 was strange. The way we worked, shopped, socialized, and learned was upended seemingly overnight. Most of us have since adapted (out of necessity). Tools like Zoom and Google have helped us work and learn from home. However, a significant group of workers faced unique challenges. They were vital for maintaining operations but couldn’t work from home. These workers had to adapt to new ways of working and find tools to perform their tasks effectively.

Amid the election and pandemic, it seems every American has likely deepened their knowledge of U.S. geography. We’ve spent a substantial part of the year analyzing data. This data has pinpointed where the virus hits hardest, identified states reporting their election outcomes, and now, tracks the deployment of the coronavirus vaccine.

It’s the end of the fourth quarter, which means business leaders everywhere are planning their goals for the new year.

Organizations that continually increase efficiency, safety, and customer satisfaction all have this in common: They embrace Field process improvement.

Construction is one of the most heavily regulated industries because of its inherent risks. According to the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), one of every 5 workplace fatalities occurs on construction developments. Because they’re often working at height or with heavy machinery, construction workers must be diligent about following strict safety protocols to avoid injuring themselves, their co-workers, or passersby. The best way to ensure those protocols are followed? Use a construction checklist.‍

Businesses are embracing no-code development for its many benefits: It costs less than traditional software development, it increases their agility and productivity, and it takes strain off of their IT departments by enabling non-developers to create and quickly modify custom apps.

Few things are more frustrating than being held up by technical problems. The laptop freezes. The vending machine breaks. The car doesn’t start. Knowing that your immediate future is now dependent on someone else — the IT guy, the repair tech, the auto mechanic — is such a helpless feeling. Like being stuck in limbo. The good news is that technical problems are not inevitable. In fact, many are fairly easily avoided. Because almost every technical problem is really, at its core, a human one.

When was the last time you went grocery shopping without a checklist? How soon after did you have to go back for something you forgot? Checklists play an important role in our lives, not just by reminding us to buy milk. Health and safety checklists, for example, can prevent accidents, illnesses, and injuries.

When you call 911, what’s the first question they ask you? What is your location?‍ Knowing where you are — and being able to share that information quickly — is crucial to getting the help you need in a timely manner.  Location matters. Not just in emergency situations, but in nearly all aspects of our personal and professional lives, from the most mundane decisions (which route should I take to work?) to the most pivotal (where should I buy a house?). 

No code app development platforms are exploding in popularity, and with good reason.

Keeping up with ever-changing environmental regulations can be a challenge, but for environmental engineering firms, it’s paramount for serving their clients as well as preserving the environment. In fiscal year 2019, the Environmental Protection Agency required companies to invest more than $4.4 billion to control pollution (called injunctive relief) and pay more than $360 million in civil penalties. Continuous, centralized recordkeeping is critical to ensuring compliance and avoiding penalties like these. That’s why today’s environmental engineering firms are adopting mobile environmental compliance technology to make sure they’re helping their clients meet state and federal regulations. It also helps them work more efficiently so they can complete more jobs in less time without sacrificing quality.

Establishing a quality culture within your mobile workforce is more important than ever.

When you think about field inspections, what comes to mind? Probably something like this:

In part I of this series, we talked about the importance of productivity and speed in workflow automation. That puts a lot of pressure on the inspector to be quick — there’s no faster way to have people resent the time you spend “checking boxes” than to take a long time doing it.

As a property manager, it’s your job to not only help your clients preserve the value of their property, but to ensure it stays in compliance with local ordinances. In many states, a code violation multiplies every day it goes unresolved. So a $1,000 violation, left unattended for a week, becomes an $8,000 violation, and so on.  To protect your clients (and your company), you need to conduct regular inspections, respond quickly to problems, and confirm that your contractors are performing high-quality work.  Between contracts, inspection reports, and maintenance records, it’s a lot of paperwork — and paperwork is the enemy of expeditiousness.

In part I, we talked about increasing productivity in safety, quality, and other inspections. Then, in Part II, we talked about increasing rigor and speed without sacrificing quality. In this post, we’ll talk about speeding up your organization’s reaction time to events that happen in the field is made possible by automating workflows with Fulcrum.

When it comes to quality, people tend to notice when things go wrong rather than when they’re going right.

In our last post, we talked about how workflow automation can increase productivity in safety, quality, and other inspections.

Your health, safety, and environment (HSE) inspections require you to collect a lot of data. But if you’re using paper-based checklists, you’re only getting a fraction of the benefits you could receive, without the kind of productivity that you need. Read on to learn why digitized HSE inspections are the best for data collection processes.

Fulcrum workflows automate the process of taking the data you collect and pushing into new processes — without any additional effort from data collectors or their supervisors. We’re excited about it because it’s the first step to helping you:

New Fulcrum Workflow Capability
The Fulcrum team was super excited to introduce the Workflows capability this week, and we can’t wait to hear about the different ways our customers use it!

This is part 1 in a series about Fulcrum spreadsheets, data, and visualization. In this part, we’ll cover the basics of spreadsheet applications and an introduction to selecting dataviz methods. Be sure to also check out part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5 of the series.

This is part 2 in our series on spreadsheets and data visualization. In this part we’ll cover using Google Sheets with Fulcrum. Be sure to also check out part 1, part 3, part 4, and part 5 of the series.

One of our favorite mobile mapping apps is Locus Map, a “utility belt” mapping app for Android that’s feature-packed and robust for all sorts of outdoor and recreational mapping needs. It lets you load offline trail maps, record GPS tracks, drop waypoints, and more.

Using Fulcrum digital inspection software to optimize your retail operations
Retail store audits can be extremely valuable market research tools for understanding the sales environment for products in brick-and-mortar sales environments. Understanding patterns of customer service, product placement within store footprints, standards for stocking procedures, and competitive product analysis. This can help better understand several layers of the merchandising / retail process.

How did you come up with the idea for Fulcrum? I get asked this, or a version of this question a lot, and we typically include an abbreviated version of the story when we do corporate capability briefings for new prospective customers. I’ve been asked enough times recently that I realized I should probably put it down in writing, because there are likely people at Spatial Networks that don’t even fully understand the history of Fulcrum’s origins.

Paper is an amazing tool. Think about it. Anyone can use it, it’s consistent, it requires zero training, and it’s inexpensive. In the technology age, the truly wise will not forget the lessons in simplicity from the great days of the pen and pencil. But we can do better. In field data collection, paper should be the inspiration, but not the operation. Here are four reasons why you need to consider the alternative to pen and paper surveys — mobile data collection technologies:

Since the release of SpatialVideo back in June, which allows you to collect GPS-tracked video from Fulcrum on iOS and Android, we’ve heard dozens of different ways that users are recording video for various projects. For covering large work areas quickly, video is great as it saves time, and allows field staff to capture large volumes of reference data for review and assessment in the back office.