How it works

News & Events

Ricardo Kramer a software developer in the Singletouch Calgary office realized an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to carry the Olympic Torch more...

New Business Win
Congratulations to Studon Electric & Controls Inc., who have just been awarded a substantial contract for the Devon Jackfish 2 project in the Alberta oil sands. Studon is a long standing customer of Singletouch and we are delighted the Singletouch project control system played a role in giving the project owner confidence. more...

Marty Hilsenteger CEO of Singletouch will speak about gaining operational efficiencies through technology adoption in a presentation titled “Are Outdated Business Processes Putting Your Entire Business at Risk?” at the Electric West Exposition & Conference at the Las Vegas Convention Center on Wednesday, March 17 from 2:30pm – 4:30pm, Session # W20. For more information visit the Singletouch booth # 706 on the exhibition floor March 15^th- 18^th

Singletouch recognized as one of the top New Products of the year

New Time and Attendance Demonstration

Singletouch exhibiting at the IEC Electric Expo

New CEO Video Message

Chemco contract announcement
Singletouch is proud to announce a new contract agreement with Chemco Electrical Contractors limited.
Click here for the full story.

Singletouch expansion, creating new vacancies across the globe.
See our careers page, for the latest job postings in the US, Canada and the UK

Singletouch explained in simple terms
Click here to read our latest press release which will take the mystery away from the question “how can an enterprise software system benefits your business’’

HOW IT WORKS

Singletouch solutions work on two very simple principles. The first being work flow, it must be from the “field in” not “accounting out”. The second is the solution, it must ensure that we “enter data once” to be completely effective and efficient.

Prior to designing our products we were able to study the actual work flow in an existing sub-contractor operation that was growing rapidly. As the contractor grew they continually added more office support to handle the paper and excel spreadsheets. Simple observation implied, the bottom line profit percentage would not improve with growth because overhead was rising at the same pace if not faster.

Complicating this was the pressure from customers to be more efficient and cost effective. They wanted real time cost updates and cost to complete updates, which were both very reasonable requests. The contractor could not provide these because the information flow was too fragmented and slow.

We knew, that to be effective, we would have to emulate data being produced in the field into an electronic process that was better than the standard paper and spreadsheets. We also knew that our solution could not ask contractors field personnel to enter accounting codes that were meaningless and annoying, because they did not want to do accounting work. Instead, they wanted to provide information to the head office that was relevant to them and more importantly improved their work life.

After several years of prototyping the work flow and listening carefully to the field staff we began to build Singletouch solutions that would exceed their needs. Once the actual flow of information was traced we were able to build a solution that had one simple mission: Enter Data Once

The way our products work is simple. We train the service and construction field personnel on capturing their data in either a laptop or a handheld. In some cases our larger clients will use touch screens. The data they capture is the same old data they're always captured so they know it very well, including time entry, material needed, material used, equipment used, tools used, etc. If it took them 2 hours to produce data before, we wanted to make sure it took far less than 2 hours using our solutions.

Once data has been captured, it flows in one direction to the people that need it next, including supervisors, managers, accountants, procurement, etc. Their job is to simply process the data after it has been thoroughly reviewed and approved.

Data will be further processed, for instance the procurement team may have to check inventory, purchase materials ship materials to a site or have it available in the shop/warehouse for pick up. Same as before but no rekeying of data. The procurement team simply chooses the vendors, prices of materials on the purchase order and orders it.

The next step is receiving the materials in the warehouse, on site, or the distributors location. Again is it just clicking a button and indicating what quantities have been received.

The final step in this integrated process is the accounting team matching invoices to approved purchase orders that are fully received. If they haven't been fully received a backorder is automatically generated.

The key to the procurement process and all other processes used by Singletouch is that the flow of data is one directional, from the “field in”. This logic applies for time entry, equipment, etc.

To see the Impact/ROI click here