Nor-Cal Pipeline Services substantially decreases dso with Spira Data

Nor-Cal Pipeline Services

Based in Roseville, California, Nor-Cal Pipeline Services (Nor-Cal) is a pipeline construction company offering cured-in-place pipelining, root control, and maintenance hole rehabilitation, as well as hydro and air knife excavation, turnkey potholing, and CCTV inspection and pipe jetting of underground facilities. They have crews and operations throughout the Western United States.

SELECTING SOFTWARE FOR FIELD OPERATIONS

There are many different factors that contribute to the selection of a piece of software:

• Does it help us meet our objectives and solve current pain points?

• Are our functional requirements covered?

• Is it easy to use?

• How long does it take to implement?

• Will it scale with us? Does it align with our technology strategy?

• If there are issues, can we count on the software’s customer service to be responsive and quick to act?

For Nor-Cal, the selection process was simple. Members of the leadership team with influence in the selection decision had used Spira’s ORP™ at their previous organization and the experience was a positive one. They determined that Spira’s ORP™ checked all the boxes and kicked off the implementation project in 2021.

With this implementation, they were replacing their current field ticketing process that was completely manual; a process that had limitations and potential points of failure. Field staff created multiple paper tickets for all their work—time tickets, work orders, etc. At the beginning of every week, they dropped off all the tickets for the previous week to be processed by the back office. This process created overhead and did not support Nor-Cal’s growth objectives. Paper tickets can be lost or damaged. Field personnel may forget to fill out all applicable fields. Area Managers and Project Accountants became handwriting analysts out of necessity. A significant amount of time was required for reconciliation and there were many delays to both invoicing and payroll.

IMPLEMENTING SPIRA

After a couple collaborative business strategy sessions, Nor-Cal decided to leverage Spira’s ORP™ from the point of accepting a job all the way through to invoicing and payroll. From determining the overall workflow between different departments and roles, to identifying what data attributes are required and optional during input, to understanding reporting and dashboarding needs, Crystal Neves, Project Coordinator, worked closely with Spira to define the details of the system requirements.

Crystal remained intimately involved throughout the project to ensure that all configurations, workflow setup and reports produced the desired results and ultimately became a Spira superuser.

TRAINING AND DEPLOYMENT

The roll-out of Spira was planned with an emphasis on minimal business disruption and maximum user adoption in mind. As is true with many people, there is comfort in the usual process; people become set in their ways. So, it is never a surprise that there is resistance to the roll-out of new software and processes, especially if the audience may not be very tech savvy. With this in mind, Nor-Cal created a training plan that was methodical and deliberate and with the consistent message that the new system is the future and everyone will receive sufficient support.

With sites throughout California, training was rolled out one site at a time—onsite instructor led hands-on training. Once training was completed, the trainer remained available to the field staff. Even remotely, an administrator can log onto the field devices to help answer questions and troubleshoot any issues that arise. The field quickly adopted Spira and many expressed that they preferred it over the paper ticket process—it is easy to use and it mitigates risk of delays and inaccuracies in payroll processing for them.

REALIZED BENEFITS

Spira’s ORP™ streamlined Nor-Cal’s field ticketing operations. There are now less mistakes and a higher level of accuracy. Paper tickets used to get lost or damaged or were just illegible. Drivers would forget to submit attachments or fill out information that the customer required for invoicing; this risk is mitigated with the configured required fields and ticket validations. Because tickets are submitted daily, they are reviewed daily. If there are mistakes, they are caught early and quickly corrected.

With paper tickets, they experienced a two-week lag from time of work performed to customer invoiced; now, it is a two-day lag—a significant reduction in days to invoice (DTI) which will result in a lower days sales outstanding (DSO).

LOOKING FORWARD WITH SPIRA

As the business has fully embraced Spira and the current functionalities implemented, Nor-Cal sees opportunities to enhance their processes further by utilizing Spira’s ORP™ Job Manager and Resource Planner as a replacement for their off-system calendar, as well as integrations with other systems they utilize to further reduce any remaining redundancies. Nor-Cal is projecting growth—more customers and more staff—and trusts that Spira will enable them to meet their growth goals.

Conclusion

Since 2007, Nor-Cal has been providing pipeline services throughout the Western United States. They are committed to delivering quality customer service, and by replacing their paper ticket process with Spira’s ORP™, they can honor that commitment by allowing staff to focus on the services and trust that the system and process outputs timely and accurate invoices. Spira’s ORP™ helps Nor-Cal reduce the time from order to cash and is set up to support their continued growth and expansion efforts.