45m 13s
Alexandria David 0:04
Hey, hey. Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. We’ll go ahead and get started. I know some people are still trickling in for the next moment, but I just want to say thank you. We know everyone’s buried in deadlines, holiday plans with the mother-in-laws.
Kind of those last minute projects. So the fact that you’re here genuinely does mean a lot to me. I appreciate you carving out the time. My name’s Alexandria. I work here at Connect, specifically developing our relationships with our short line railroad partners as well as our rail service companies.
The goal of us meeting today is for us to genuinely have a meaningful discussion about how technology, essentially like mobile and digital workflows, can help transportation companies streamline their streamline their operations.
And I’m not talking about the kind of technology like Elon Musk and AI robots. Genuinely, here at Connects, our goal is to enhance your crews, not replace them. This means we are able to support the crew out in the fields and all the weather conditions they go through.
Jackson, North Dakota’s artist spawn is the one in Florida. We know that for sure. We have our mechanics in the shops. We know working hard with lots of different pieces of equipment, pieces of inventory, supervisors trying to kind of manage all of that. You know, they need more insight into these operations as well as our back offices.
Or supporting all the functionalities. We know you genuinely wear multiple hats in this.
Run on autopilot. Our goal is to streamline those operations that slow them down. We can simplify workflows so you can focus more on productivity, safety. So we’ve put together a short but dense presentation today that reflects a mix of the folks we have. We do have some short lines with us.
Service companies as well as our friends in public transit. We support them too as well, but we wanted to kind of give you a rough idea of some scenarios that we are able to support in the real world. Keep in mind everything we do is fully customizable.
But we want to cover some track inspection forms, locomotive repairs and even how the BRC workflows can configure with customers and quality assurance teams alike. So that will give you a solid sense of our platform, but I’d love to introduce the star of the show, Evan. He’s going to give you a walk through.
of the demo. If you have any hard technical questions, those go to him. We do have the Q&A at the top. We’ll go through those at the end, but feel free to drop them in the chat. But uh without further ado, Evan, take it away.
Evan Ufkes 2:58
Thank you, Alexandria. Appreciate that wonderful introduction. And again, my name is Evan Ufkes. I work here on the sales team at Connixt and today I will be giving you guys a good in-depth look of what we would like to look at as a day in the life.
Of the typical rail user using our application out in the field or in the shop. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to give you guys a good walk through of the application. Let me quickly share my screen. Alexandria, please let me know if this is looking OK.
Alexandria David 3:35
Yeah, it looks good.
Evan Ufkes 3:36
OK, perfect. Right now I’m just mirroring my phone onto the screen. So if anyone has any questions, again, please use the Q&A or or chat box to ask questions along the way if necessary and I’ll be able to, I’ll try to be able to address those as we go along.
Now as a user, right? And the users are in our minds are the inspectors or the supervisors, anyone that has to do perform a task, right? That’s gonna be the person that is logging in and they will get their own customized view of these different modules now for this.
Demonstration. We have 4 pulled up here. We have my work queue. I’m going to use my mouse as my finger so you guys all know where I’m pointing. We have this new pending and view now for planned work orders or inspections.
Things that you have on a schedulized basis, that’s where you’re going to jump into my work queue. So as an inspector or a user in this case, I will jump into my work queue where I can get a complete list view of all the tasks that are either assigned to me or perhaps.
A group of individuals for us all to go ahead and execute. So you can see here I have a few tasks in here that I need to perform. I can quickly scroll through here on a list view to see all the different tasks. If I want to jump into a task, I can hit create and that’ll preload that digital form.
For me to fill out.
Now for tasks that aren’t necessarily or maybe you don’t have these on a scheduled basis, these are more or less tasks that I would come in and say, OK, I need to perform this inspection today. That’s where I’m going to come into new. So if I’m hitting new, this is going to preload all of my.
Digital forms for me to go ahead and perform. So if I’m going to pick, hey, I need to do an FRA locomotive inspection today, that’s where I can find that or these service day requirements, checklists or a track inspection, so on any form that you currently use.
In the field or in your shop today can be digitized and found and used in this application.
So I’m going to go back to the main menu and I’m going to pull this over here because what I’d like to do is give you all a good demonstration of what the the the physical form looks like next to the digital form. So I’m going to let this load up here for a second. Oh, that one’s not found.
I don’t know why that one’s not loading, but what we’re gonna do is I’m gonna and these are forms that are pulled right from the FRA website. So these are digital forms that are used today and can be downloaded right from the website. So just bear with me for a moment while I get this document to reload. I’m not sure.
Why it didn’t load U there?
Alexandria David 6:38
No worries. Understandably, also with forms, we can mirror them to your own internal forms and processes. But for this demonstration we wanted something that was widely, you know, used, easy for everybody. But I think our true keys is how our application is able to mirror your current forms. It makes our adoptability and the use of ease.
Rates generally increase.
Evan Ufkes 7:01
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that’s a good point because what we’re trying to do is just make them easier for the user to fill out, right? That’s that’s kind of the whole point is empowering the users and giving them a tool that’s going to allow them to perform the test more efficiently, but also enhance the data.
By the added features, which I will get into in just a moment, but just bear with me while I try to get them. I’m not sure why this form just completely left my.
Alexandria David 7:29
I think, I think it is true to say everyone has a Carl on the team and Carl needs big buttons, something easy to use. He he’s a little apprehensive, but one of those processes mirror the way he is already doing it, it really kind of helps streamlines. We have crews of all ages.
You know, I do understand some are a little skeptical about technology, but I think it’s important to kind of make these, you know, genuine enhancements. And like Evan’s saying, the data is generally valuable, the insight people are able to have.
Evan Ufkes 8:05
Absolutely, absolutely. So jumping back to the demo and and thanks for that Alexandria. So what I want to load up is this locomotive inspection and repair record. And again this is taken right from the FRA website of approved documents that you are able to fill out and also submit for compliance reasons.
So what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna find this in the new, right? So I’m gonna go into start. I’m gonna say I’m gonna start a new locomotive inspection repair record. I’m gonna find that right here. So I’ll select that and that’s gonna load up the digital version of this form. Now keep in mind that this may look different on the app.
However, all the fields are going to match pretty much the exact same, so the flow of doing this form can be can be optimized or manipulated.
Information that you see here. So scrolling down, we’re going to say operated by. So if we have a list of inspectors or operators that will be filling out this form, we have these great drop down menus that you can select from and actually find the user that.
Needs to fill this in, so I’m gonna select this user. So that’s just me. I am David at Okta filling out this form and then I can go all the way down and start filling in all the necessary information that I need to. Notice that these two lines have red asterisks.
These are actually features that we put into the digital copy that we call required fields, meaning that the user or me as an operator won’t be able to submit this to be completed without that necessary information. And keep in mind these are just configurations we can put anywhere.
anywhere within the form or the workflow, meaning that, I mean, if you wanted them to fill out every single line item in here, everything’s required, you can do so. That’s just a nice extra check to make sure that your crew and everybody else is filling out that necessary information.
Again, all these different fields are going to look the same. These are basic toggle checklists propelled by. So if I pull up this number six line right here. So if I break this down, I can’t really see what’s going on in here unless I kind of break it down in this physical form, however.
This drop down menu here also breaks down all the different areas that you can select from. Now keep in mind this same logic can be applied across all the different forms or all the different types of line items in here. So if you want information.
As a selectable option to to look through or select from, we can store all that information in the digital form itself. So all the user has to do is select what they’re doing here.
Alexandria David 10:58
You mean like all those FRA codes that no one can remember and they have the little books, but I like that because then you can associate the code with a brief description so they can even verify. Umm
Evan Ufkes 11:02
Exactly. Good point.
Correct.
Alexandria David 11:14
Speak in my language.
Evan Ufkes 11:14
Correct, correct. So drop down menus with selectable information can be applied anywhere throughout the form itself. It just helps the user input that data clearer and and more concise and it’s just easier and more efficient.
Scrolling down. So we’re just, we’re just kind of cooking through here, cooking through the form. I mean, these are all selectable options to put through here, even things like date fields. So we do a lot of field validations, right? So if this is a date that we need to put into this field.
This is an actual date keyboard that comes up, so we’re also validating the type of data that goes into it. So if it’s a date, we’re going to give you a date to select from if it’s a somehow a numeric field right that you need to fill out some kind of.
Numeric. Maybe it’s a year, right? So if we put the year in, it’s gonna pull up a numeric keyboard. So again, we’re we’re making it easier for the user to put in that data and find out what they need to put in there quicker.
And again, this is just mirroring exactly what you see here. Scrolling down, we’re going to continue to look at some of these different inspections so we can check one of these off. We can open up the inspection again, place the date, put the place selectable items. So if we have items to select from.
We can also alley those here.
Certified by if we have a list of operators in the system. Again, me as David, I can go ahead and select myself and then keep going all the way down this document and you can see all the different areas here, these different line items.
With all these fields are all just breakdowns now, so we can open these up and see the exact same fields listed here.
Alexandria David 13:15
I think.
Evan Ufkes 13:16
Even if I Scroll down and see, sorry, go ahead.
Alexandria David 13:18
I was going to say, I think it also, I know we’ll again back to the multiple hats theory when we’re selecting different users, it also means we have the ability for different technicians to fill out different parts of the form and and work simultaneously. But again, you know, making this kind of a.
If I process.
Evan Ufkes 13:39
Absolutely, absolutely. And to this point you see now this second page has a huge list of instructions. I’m thinking most of the time that these aren’t necessarily looked through or kept, you know. But what we’d like to do is also have a link to those instructions built right into the form itself.
You don’t go without these instructions. You’ll always have access to this reference material and making sure that it’s all up to date. So this eye button here represents the instructions that are all shown right here and you can see if you zoom in again. I’m using my phone so it’s a little bit tougher to see.
Most of the folks that are using this are using iPads or or larger tablets, so it’s a nice form fitting view that you’ll get of all these instructions, but you’ll be able to have access to all the instructions right here built into the form.
So I’m going to head back to the actual app here. I’m going to say OK and again these are all just areas where we can add in the repairs special notes. So if I need to put notes in according to repairs made, this is where I can start typing away and or using speech to text. This is a great option.
For hands free and it is also supported in multilingual. So if you have folks on your team that may want to use their native language, they may go ahead and do so.
Alexandria David 15:11
I know with the SOP portion as well, I find that the quality assurance teams are always getting particular instructions from various customers on different projects that have to be updated at maybe monthly intervals, quarterly intervals. But this I think does have the ability to ensure the right.
Documentation processes are in the most up-to-date versions of these forms and truly give them the ability to to directly link specific instructions. I think that is very valuable kind of for like back office and specific projects and things like that.
Evan Ufkes 15:49
Absolutely, absolutely. So now that my locomotive inspection, let’s pretend that I filled out all the information that I need to do. Perhaps my next task is going to be the FRA service day requirements form. So this is another form taken right from the FRA website.
I want to go back to the main menu, so I’m going to hit this and I’m going to look into new and I’m going to say this is a new task that I’m starting similar to what I just did and I’m going to find this service day requirements checklist.
Now just like the previous form and any other form that we help digitize is it’s going to essentially match the same fields that you all fill in. We have the owner, we have the operators with the dropdowns that we just covered. We also have a barcode reader. So if there are.
Barcodes associated with locomotives that you work on, or any asset for that matter. We can essentially have the barcode reader keep keep track of these and you can you can put in the locomotive number or the VIN number or any kind of identifying number by simply scanning this.
I’m going to pull up the barcode reader here. I have a little barcode here I can scan as an example and you can see it inputs that data right away.
Now scrolling down again, this is just some some basic kind of checklist. So we have a set of instructions here that are laid out and like we just mentioned, we can also link those right in here. So now we know what good, fair, poor all that means. So if it’s a good, it’s going to be no defects, fair.
Functioning below optimal performance and poor and not in compliance. So now as the user, I know how to accurately rate each and every one of these line items. So if I’m going to say good, good, good, OK, that’s great. But what if this one’s poor? So I’m going to hit poor, but notice that the comment box actually turns to red.
That’s making that a required field, meaning that I have to provide some kind of comment here or perhaps a photo. It could be a photo of was the boiler washed in poor and this is in poor state. So I’m going to add a comment saying yes, this is in poor state.
It’s not washed. Something like that.
Say OK, so now my comment’s been added there, but maybe I want to take a photo of that, right? So I can go ahead and add a photo by selecting the photo icon. Anywhere you see that photo icon within the forms, you can add up to four photos here. Now these are either taking them live with the device.
Or you can upload them from the device library. So you can either select a photo or take a photo live. What I’ll do is just take a photo really quick and I’m just going to take a photo of my mouse.
We can use this photo and do another quick step that all of our users absolutely love across the board, which is annotating on top. We call that circling the problem. So what we’re going to do is come back to the photo and we’re actually going to be able to draw and show notes on top of that photo.
So maybe where you want to highlight something in this photo saying like, hey, you know what, this wheel up here is the issue right here. This is the problem. Or you know, under here I see something else. Or this is the area in which the mouse needs to live. All that kind of stuff you can put in there. It’s just a great.
Way to kind of highlight focal points within the photo showing what’s going on.
Alexandria David 19:28
Evan, funny story. I was on LinkedIn and someone posted how during a visual inspection, mind you not, that they noticed a defect that in the railing software had already been tested and approved. And I think it’s a testament how important visual inspections still are and when.
People are able to maybe use that feature like voice to text, take these specific photos, circle these problems. You’ll find that they’re forthcoming with a lot more information. It’s easier for them to streamline. I mean, it now becomes even searchable data. How often did the word corrosion come up in the in the last quarter?
Evan Ufkes 20:07
Yeah.
Alexandria David 20:07
O.
So I think by having this information even stored digitally, you’re going to get more out of your technicians. It’s easier for them to explain or show the problem, streamline that more efficiency, get that information to a back off or safety teams. But I think, I think that’s really where we’re all at still at these visual inspections or.
Evan Ufkes 20:08
Yeah.
Alexandria David 20:27
Very important and people need a more efficient way to kind of streamline that process.
Evan Ufkes 20:32
Absolutely. And what better way, you know, to to have photos attached in there again with that highlighting the focal points pushed in there so that you have this data that you can look at even later, you know, go back and actually reference when you’re doing the next one.
And see what was going on and what measures we’re taking, having that digital paper trail that you can always reference at any time, right? These are all just built-in features that we can now, you know, empower your teams with even things like signature fields.
Alexandria David 21:03
Oh, get to that.
Evan Ufkes 21:05
Sorry.
Alexandria David 21:05
Get to that geotagging. I was gonna say get to that geotagging with four feet of accuracy. No more. Well, it’s somewhere between mile marker 4951. Make a left after the downed tree.
Evan Ufkes 21:18
Absolutely. In fact, that’s great. That’s a great use case, you know, for all of our, you know, customers and prospects that want to do track inspections or or get a good viewpoint of where these inspections are taking place, where they’re finding defects.
These are all key items you know that we built right into the forms. You can see down here that this actually has a geotag option, so you could geotag even the the complete location of where they’re doing this form. But what I want to do is actually show you the track inspection form.
So I’m going to hop back out to the main menu and maybe this is a recurring type of task, right? This is something that is on a planned basis like hey, we know that every 30 or 40 days that we need to do a track inspection. So I’ll go into my work queue and actually find it on the list view of what I.
I need to do right here at the top. So I’m gonna jump into that and that’s gonna load up the track inspection. Now this form doesn’t apply to this, so I’m gonna hide that really quick and I’m gonna pull this over. So now for a track inspection, this again, we have required fields, we have everything that.
You need or currently use can be built in and digitized into this format. This just happens to be a separate example of one of our prospects and how they perform their track inspections. So here’s the tracks inspected. We have an info button here showing what areas they need to do.
Whether it’s traversed, high railed or walked, we have photos and comments built in for them to put that information in by track. So these are all like track 12345 and again can add as many as you like. Now for defects, this is exactly what you were just talking about, Alexandria.
Is that if they find a defect, these inspectors are out there finding defects. They can actually geotag it, have the exact coordinates built in there so that when they come back to it or when you know someone has some planned maintenance task built in.
To go and fix that defect, they will have the exact location, even things like measurements. So if we have LIDAR measurements built into these forms as well. So as another example, I’ll just kind of pull this up and let’s just measure the mouse here as an example.
Well, let’s just say, OK, that’s how big that crack is that we found there, right? It’s about 3 1/2 inches.
Now we know or that this data will now be accessed by whomever goes back to it. They’ll have photos, Geo tags, and even measurements of what is going on with this specific defect. If there’s remedial action taken, we can pull that up.
Comments, photos, whatever you want built in here, we can do it. We can even add multiple defect line items as they go along. So I pull in all this data, right? I’m going to give the geolocation, I’m going to give a defect code. Perhaps we want a full list of all those FRA defect codes to select.
From we can put the drop down menu in here so that all of those defects have the code, the location, the exact measurements and remedial action all filled in. I’m going to go ahead and save this.
Because perhaps there’s a separate person on my team, right? That’s going to perform the maintenance task or they want to have access to finish this document. So I’m going to go back to the main menu. I’m going to hit OK to leave back to the main menu.
Now, if a separate person is logging in, right, they’re gonna come in and see, oh, there’s one in pending. This is that track inspection that was started by, say, Tim and and I’m Joe and I need to come in and and do the actual remedial action. This is where I’ll come in and update.
And all the information that Tim found that he did when he did that initial walking inspection will all be saved in here and I can go ahead and find all the information and then I can go ahead and put the record of repair in.
That includes a repair date. Maybe this is a separate date. The permanent repair is performed. I can put in here and notice there’s a shopping cart. Now I can actually add parts and inventory, right? So if we have access to your parts and inventory, this is a simple configuration for us.
We have a dropdown menu here to select the parts. We also have that barcode reader, so if you want to scan the parts out of your inventory, we can enable that so that you’re keeping track of everything coming out and that’s being applied to this specific repair.
And if you wanna add items, that’s just a simple configuration here.
Alexandria David 26:15
I like the shopping cart, Evan. You know, that’s my favorite thing. We like to go shopping. We also find that sometimes we go shopping from our neighbors too. Maybe our sister locations, we have to pull public parts from them. We won’t get into supply chain, right? We’ll save that for a report later. But I often find, you know, some of this inventory we’re.
really lacking that visibility into the and genuinely the daily consumption as well as any trends, right? Well, we know this time of year we typically use this many ties, but we’re about 100 over and I wonder why, you know, I think genuinely having the ability to in the use of ease with
code scanning makes the kind of the grab and grow more accurate. I love my short lines, but I know sometimes it’s Carl saying there, well, how much did you use today? You know, well, I think four or five. And again, pulling from other locations, I think it’s difficult when you’re when you’re housing large pieces
Evan Ufkes 26:56
Yeah.
Alexandria David 27:15
of inventory, but to be able to genuinely track that consumption and have that visibility per project, per location, maybe even per like types of equipment, what are we using the most of that visibility? I think it’s truly a great feature. I I love to go shopping.
Evan Ufkes 27:34
Absolutely, absolutely. And some other features we kind of have put in here in the bottom just to showcase some of these other things that we can do. Again, barcode readers, we’ve talked about built in work instructions, reference material that you want linked in there, even, you know, images from maybe a prior inspection that you want as a reference.
You can build right into it and then geotagging and even audio files. This is something that we talk about once in a while that could come up, but if there is anything like a noise related incident or type of defect that you want to link in there, you’ll be able to record it and have it attached to that record.
So what I’m going to do is go back to the main menu. I want to quickly cover this last module here, which is the view. Now something that is I I think very underrated is having access to all of the forms, all of the inspections, all of the maintenance data.
You know, right in the palm of your hands, you’ll have all this reference material that you can look through right in the view. So these are gonna be all these completed documents that we’ve done in the past. We can do detailed searches here at the top to find, you know, by specific asset or address or person that did it, right? You’ll have.
Access to look at the full history of all the inspections, all the work orders, any task that’s performed with the app can be found by going through the view.
And last but not least, one last process that I do want to touch on that has come up at in fact in a lot of recent conversations with both prospects and customers is the billing repair car now.
The BRC, also known as the BRC, is a pretty unique, I would say not unique, but complicated and complex type of process. It does require a lot of different information in here. This is just a quick example of what it could look like for you.
And your crew, again, think of all those options that we just talked about and enhancements that you can build into this process. But the key here is to think, OK, performing the inspection and creating the BRC, those are the two main areas that we’re trying to empower your crew to do.
In fact, I have a great visual of the the BRC process that I’d like to share with you. Just bear with me for a moment while I pull that up.
Alexandria David 30:15
Yeah, I think with the BRC forms, especially where our integrations capabilities lie is, is is the true kind of value, how we’re able to fit cohesively in this life cycle. Those guys at NetSuite, right, they get paid a lot of money for one user login.
Log in, but the have the ability for the two systems to connect and the visibility is saves a lot of money.
Evan Ufkes 30:42
Absolutely, absolutely. Because from, you know, the conversations, Alexandria, that you and I’ve had with, I don’t know, multiple prospects and customers at this point is that these steps are often overlooked and they’re often done on paper.
And they don’t have the necessary data that a lot of these systems need. So this is a quick, I guess, you know, process of the BRC and how that works. What we’re trying to do is simply digitize and most of all, most of all, simplify and enhance those first two steps, right?
So it’s identifying the repair, right, going through a basic inspection and then of course creating the BRC within that system. So these are the two steps that we really like to hone in on and simplify. Now from there we can essentially integrate with any.
System that will allow us with an API connection to push this data into. I’ve talked to numerous teams that have a lot of people that are taking these physical forms, taking all the data that’s written down and.
They’re trying to translate what, you know, this guy wrote, what this guy wrote. Is that a zero? Is that an O? I don’t know. And they’re trying to manually enter this into their their BRC systems. And I know there’s only a handful out there, but think of those forms now clear and digital with.
Photos and everything else that you need to understand and make a a better piece of record in there. So again, we’re trying to focus in on those two and we can work with you to integrate with whatever system you’re currently using to push this into and make it easier for your crew.
Alexandria David 32:33
Well, and I also like to notate, while visibility is great, you also want the controllability in that visibility, right? So I know from some of our friends in contracting, right, they don’t necessarily want to share all the information from their quote or their estimate for for an inspection, but they want.
Be able to have that. So I like the our ability to configure some of these workflows and actually OK if we want to send a customer, these are the only three things we want to see. However, on our back end, Miss Kathy on the quality assurance team has sent that relayed back and forth two times when.
Things can kind of get, you know, misconstrued out there. So I think that ability to enhance visibility and the customer experience I think is key. You know, nowadays everybody wants photos. I mean, when I take my monster to get service, they have a whole little video before they’re, you know, quoting me.
$1000. So I think that the ability for the back office visibility and and to help make it more efficient for your customers or your crews alike with the BRCS though, but that’s my two cents on that.
Evan Ufkes 33:49
Absolutely, absolutely. And just to kind of quickly cover some other things. I know we’ve talked about, you know, basic FRA checklists. We’ve talked about locomotive PMS and inspections. We’ve talked about the BRC, we’ve talked about track inspections.
It’s like what else is out there to digitize, right? So I’d like to kind of quickly show this slide and this is a good breakdown with a handful of our current customers and the different tasks that they’re actually performing using the application. So it’s not limited to these specific things.
That we talked about today. We do cover all of these different areas here that you see on the left hand side with these different customers that we’re working with. You can see there’s parts requisitions, there are work orders, load up tickets.
Daily and PM inspections, state of good repair, condition assessments, even things like job briefings or or safety related type documents that you need your crew to sign off on any form. I mean, I’ve said it, I said it once, I’ll say it again, any physical form that you need or use.
Today can be digitized using the system and synced with whatever back end system that you’re currently using. You can see on the right hand side, these are just some examples right of the results that our customers are reporting to us, right? And I love to put the 20.
Reduction in labor hours because this is an efficiency tool. It is built to take away a lot of the data entry and things like that and break all those gaps of manual data entry that you currently have.
You know, we’re trying to save everybody time, make them more efficient and give them a better tool, uh, to to execute their tasks.
Alexandria David 35:47
I agree with that.
Evan Ufkes 35:48
So I’m gonna go ahead. Yeah, I’m gonna go ahead and close this out and open it up. I think we have a few minutes here left to to maybe answer some questions, so I’ll kind of check it out. I’m gonna look at the Q&A field here.
Alexandria David 36:04
Oh, I got, I got one. I actually, it’s funny. I think Ryan, he called it out and asked about offline mode and I can’t believe we forgot to mention the ability to work offline. As I said with North Dakota earlier, sometimes you don’t always have all that cell phone signal, but that is a great question.
Thank you for reminding us about that feature. So yes, offline mode is one of our capabilities, Ryan, great question.
Evan Ufkes 36:33
Yes, this is a native app, meaning that it truly lives on the mobile device that it’s being worked on, right? So we do support offline mode because we do have customers in the middle of nowhere, underground, in the in the middle of a field somewhere that need to perform their tasks.
They’ll be able to pull up their form, input the data, you know, and then it’s temporarily stored on that device. Then once they come back into a data or Wi-Fi connection, it can automatically sync with our cloud environment and then of course with any other storage or back end system that you.
We currently use. So yes, we do support offline mode. Now I’m gonna go ahead and address some of these questions. I see one here from Anabelle Wu. What is the average time savings realized by technicians by eliminating manual descriptions step by technicians notes? Final confirm work order.
I mean, that’s a great question. Like I just covered in the in the last slide, we’re seeing an average of 20% in time savings. I mean, if you can give your crew a a fifth of their time back in their day or in their hour, right? I mean that’s an enormous time savings. What else could they be doing with that time?
I mean, that’s just a great return on that investment. I feel like just the time that they’re taking, I mean, this tool in and of itself could pay for itself right over a certain amount of time. And that’s truly what we’re trying to give you back is, is time in your day for your crew.
Now I see, I see a question here from Jared. I find a lot of technology is outdated quickly. What types of devices are going to be needed for this digitizing of forms? So that’s a great question. All of our customers and prospects are are usually using this app.
On either both Android or Apple devices, usually an I like a iPad or some kind of digital pad, just because of the ease of viewing it, you know, in their hands and then filling out the data. But the digitization, I mean.
This process for us, you send us any physical form, either in a PDF or in Excel, whatever you have, and we can digitize it in that exact format. Now, once we have it digitized, that’s where you get to be creative.
And actually, you know, you can manipulate the form, you can change the workflow, you can add in all these great features we covered today, and you can also, you know, update them accordingly. So if you have revisions that come out or changes to that workflow, it’s so easy for us to make that change. I mean, it’s a.
Log in, log out the changes made and and off you go. So we are available both on Android and Apple both of those app stores respectively.
Alexandria David 39:29
Evan, I think that’s truly one of my favorite points about Connect is technology does update, it does advance. But I like to think Connect is fluid and grows with you. Nothing that none of our software is so set in stone that you can’t make a modification, add a new form, add a new.
New process and that process in itself, I think having direct access to our technology team and our response system I think is far superior than these larger ERP systems that charge an arm and a leg and yet you get sent a ticket queue or they’re using.
Interface, the buttons just don’t make sense for you. I know I talk about the buttons, but genuinely it’s seconds over the course of hours to save times and we value our technicians input and how they want certain layouts to look and you do not find that from canned software products, you just don’t. So I like that.
Evan Ufkes 40:11
Yeah.
Alexandria David 40:27
Is able to grow with you as your operations grow. So that’s my two cents.
Evan Ufkes 40:32
Truly scalable product, absolutely. I mean, I’ve seen in numerous situations where we’ll start with maybe one or two, three or four different tasks or or types of transactions that you want to do digitally. And then all of a sudden you start looking around like, oh, we can do this, we can do that. It’s a truly.
Land and expand type of product and it can really cover across your full operations. You’ll notice teams on the other side of the business saying, hey, how are you guys doing that? Or I like the way you guys do this. Can we move this over here? It happens every time.
Alexandria David 41:07
Hello.
I think Jared has another one about the geolocation in those rural areas. Is it still gonna be accurate within the four feet if they’re in offline mode?
Evan Ufkes 41:22
Yes, absolutely. So if you notice when you’re using the device, even without a data connection, it still has access to GPS coordinates and it will still be accurate for for making that mark. And the same thing with taking a photo or anything else.
Else, right. So all those records can be saved in there and then accessed later. So yes.
I hope that answers your question adequately.
Alexandria David 41:59
Yeah, I’m trying to think if I have any others. I mean, I think when it comes to technology, we, you know, especially when I do work with some of these short lines operations that are still heavily paper-based, I genuinely believe this is an enhancement. It’s not an overhaul on their entire.
Operation.
We have the ability to connect with those back-end systems that they’re already heavily invested in and have been using for years. However, it’s it’s kind of gives them that extra lift of insight. You know, I know we’re we’re years away from the AI robots doing automated track inspections. So in the meantime.
I think this genuinely is a great investment to streamline operations because again, we wear multiple hats in this industry. Crews, especially within the short line industry, aren’t as robust as some of these class ones who can afford to build out some of these, you know, integrations in-house with these vast IT teams.
So that is genuinely what I’m looking forward. I do know that after this we are sending out our state of maintenance report, which you will find in there. I think it’s under Article 14, the silver tsunami effect, which I genuinely found insightful.
It’s discussing, you know, how there is this wealth of knowledge in some of our crew that have been, you know, within the railroad for 30 years that will be potentially retiring in the next 10 years and how we want to retain this information. So definitely look out for that, how you can build out some of these SOPs to.
Kind of, you know, capture what they know needs to be done. Like I know someone has to walk the yard and make sure everything has the plaque cards. I do it myself once a week. Now how can we actually make this an official process? So that is an interesting one. If you got to read Evan, anything.
Anything else from you, Sir?
Evan Ufkes 43:58
I I think we covered a lot today for people to kind of consume and think about. And of course this is recorded and will be distributed to everybody and it will be up on our YouTube channel as well. So go ahead and check it out if you if you wanna check it out there as well.
But yeah, thanks again for joining us here today. And yeah, Alexandria, if you have anything left, go ahead.
Alexandria David 44:22
No, I’ll let these guys get back to work. It’s not Friday yet. It’s not Friday yet. Happy holidays if we don’t speak. If you do need anything, please let us know. I’ll be reaching out to some of y’all. Maybe if you want to further explore this before the end of the year, let us know. If not, catch you next
I cannot believe it’s two weeks out from Christmas Eve. I have not bought a single gift. I told my friend, I go, I don’t know if we’re doing Christmas this year. I think the love is enough. But you know, hey, let’s, let’s see. We’ll try. We’ll try to get some gifts. But thank you again, everyone, so much.
Evan Ufkes 44:43
Yeah.
Alexandria David 45:01
so much for coming in. I really do appreciate it.
Evan Ufkes 45:04
Thanks everyone.
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