How Didlake Achieved Success with Otuvy | Full Story

So it's been a huge time saver, no doubt about that. I'm Brandiammons Powell, I work with didlake out of Manassas, Virginia and I'm the director of quality development. The thing I would share most about using a tool like OTUV for new users is that you need to know what you want in your end result. The better you know that, the better you are at building out what you need within the system. I've even taken graph paper and charted out what I wanted in the system so that when I go to put it into the system I have a roadmap. And then that makes a much more streamlined process and really cuts down on frustration of mistakes and going back and trying to fix something once you've already put it in. So in working with OTUV, because we've used your software system since 2011, the initial team, I remember we worked really hard putting everything into the system, walking me through things, talking about issues, end user versus input, and it was really a great experience. And in the years since, in working with the team, whenever we've had a question, there have been a few times when I've had reporting questions and we've reached out and said, hey, can you do this for us? And whether the end result has been the success of yeah, we can do that report or not, it's always been a very team like approach that has answered questions and so we've had successes, we've asked for things that we couldn't necessarily get what we wanted. But what we learned from that is do we really need it? So we love work, I love working with the team and again, whenever users have questions, we've used your ticket system and always quick responses, always good answers to find solutions for our everyday users. OTUBI makes our day to day work more efficient because we're not handwriting everything, storing it in a locker, trying to remember if we recorded something. When you can use the system, whether it's through the phone app or you go back and use a computer to do it on the website, it just allows you to document everything. It keeps it streamlined, it's in the system. Then when you need to go back and find something, whether you're running the report to look for something in particular or you're looking for a particular work order, it makes it so much easier than digging through boxes of paper. We basically have gone to a zero paper system for inspections and work orders. In the process we use now, sometimes people do print things and we encourage that if they need it. Handing a work order to an employee and saying, this is what needs to be fixed is helpful. On some of our sites, especially some of our sites, you can't take a phone onto a site, so we sometimes do that, but then it comes back and it goes into the system, and that just makes everything much more streamlined and efficient. So in 2009, we had a customer. We were going back and forth with them about validating and verifying. We were doing the work, and I was fairly new to my position, and I was brought a banker's box full of route sheets. So we're talking thousands of pieces of paper, and they were route sheets, so they like maybe a whole week worth of checkoffs of rooms and spaces. And I was asked to then take that and put it into an Excel spreadsheet and have it all be consistent and make sense, and then to run charts and graphs off of it, and it was daunting. They brought it to me on a Thursday. I had to work for four straight days to have it ready for a Tuesday morning meeting. And I was ready to not do that job anymore. And so I went to the person I reported to at the time and said, I don't think we can't do that anymore. It's so inefficient. And if the customer mentality has changed from, oh, everything looks clean, to, oh, we need proof that it's clean, we need a system. And then next year, I think I went to my first Issa conference. You guys at the time were there, and I got some general information. One of the things I do want to say is we did look at some of the other software systems at the time that were available. And the reason I chose this system is because it allowed us to document not just efficiencies and work orders, but everything we were documenting, and then pull reports on everything, not just how we failed. And so I think we started implementing the system 2010, 2011. We started with three sites, and now we use it across every custodial site we have. And we've started branching out into our landscaping contracts this next year. We're prepping it now, so it has just made it so that when people come to me and say, hey, the customer says, we're not in this building. The flexibility of the reporting allows me to actually go to that building because we've put it in as a location. I can pull a report just for that building. I can pull a report just for those rooms, or I can pull a report for that entire contract and provide it to show what we've done and what we've looked at. So it's been a huge time saver, no doubt about that. We use OTUV to solve and to look at a lot of trend information that allows us to solve problems. So when we look at it, for example, every six months, I pull a report from all the sites. We then take that information, we look at the trend information on where we have our greatest deficiencies. We then prep our training calendar for the next six months based off of that trending report, and we break out each month. It's usually restrooms that are the worst, to be honest with you. So we do it in January and July. So like July, we'll be training people on restrooms. And then if it's corridors, we do hard floor work. We look at that trend information and turn it into training initiatives for our employees to help keep them up to date and to help solve those problems. When we're talking inspection, we don't inspect 100% of the work we do. We inspect a percentage of the work we do. And it's still a huge amount of data. And in using that, our employees, we probably train them more than most commercial companies would. We rotate that every six months. When it comes to fiscal year reporting, I pull that information and I work order statistics. We look at what we call our initial quality level. So we're looking at everything that passed and met contract standards against work order closures at the end of the month. So I'm able to pull all that data, export it to Excel and then turn it into reports. And I can go back as far as we have information in the system. And not that I go all the way back to 2011 to pull that information, but I've done comparison reports five, six years to look, and I usually do at least two years at a time if I'm running the report for each fiscal year so that information can be shared with vice presidents and operational people. So our relationship with the customers and how we use O2V is because we are abilityone and we do have several government contracts. So one of the deliverables we do is we have to prepare a quality control report. And requirements of that is we have to explain how we monitor and survey the work. O2V is a huge part of that. And because it's a secure system and security is such a big deal now, so we use that system and so it gives the customers an element of security in knowing that we can go out and we can look at information. If they want reports, all they have to do is request them, we can turn them around like that. If they ask us in the morning, we'll have that report to them that same day. And frequently they will ask for reports monthly or quarterly. We use O2V to pull that data information. Now, we also provide summary information, but the data is coming from otuvi. When we provide weekly reports and inspection information, we use the quality inspection report. We just pull it from the system and send it over. And I do believe the customers find value in the fact that is a very streamlined system that gives them very specific information based on the work they're expecting to be done and how we're doing it.