Traffic Force is a leading traffic management provider in Western Australia (WA). The business was started by Erin Studsor and Tegan Studsor in Bunbury, WA in 2006 and now they have an additional 2 depots, one in Maddington and another in Albany. Traffic Force sets themselves apart from their competition by offering complete traffic management solutions to the highest quality.
In addition to this massive growth in just over a decade, Erin and Tegan’s dedication to the industry took leaps and bounds as they started a traffic management training business – AusQ Training. Now, Erin is the Managing Director of Traffic Force and Tegan is the Managing Director of AusQ Training. Their team is really committed to supporting local and they pride themselves on being 100% WA owned and operated since 2006.
FROM SERVER TO SERVERLESS
Prior to implementing Assignar, Traffic Force was utilizing another system on the market. Although that was their first step into digitizing their system there were challenges that led to them leaving and moving to Assignar.
Jye Walsh, Customer Relations Manager speaks about their legacy system, “We had a server-based system that wasn’t changing with the times. The design and user experience of that platform was quite poor and very frustrating for us to learn. Although we could allocate based on competency, there was limited functionality for our traffic controllers, leading hands, and supervisors to interact with the software. They would just get notified that they have a job and to come to the depot.
Now with Assignar, all our traffic controllers have access to all their job information. Bulk texting through Assignar, allows us to save time in the chasing upon confirmation of shifts. We don’t need to make 140 calls to all our traffic controllers to notify and confirm their shifts. It just takes 5 minutes to send out a bulk text and then we can run a report on the data visualizer shortly after and see who has confirmed.”
Throughout their search for a better digital system, Traffic Force knew they wanted to move to a cloud-based solution. As well as find a more efficient way to communicate with their traffic controllers.
CONNECTING 3 DEPOTS ACROSS WA
Like many other traffic management businesses in the industry, timesheets were paper-based. This was quite challenging for a business that despite having 3 depots, was still servicing a massive geographical area.
For crews that were on jobs close to the depots, timesheets would be dropped daily. For those in more remote areas that were away for a week, there was the challenge of chasing traffic controllers for timesheets. Sometimes there wasn’t reception to contact them and once they were able to be contacted, Traffic Force’s Operations Managers would have the crew fax or scan the dockets and timesheets through.
Jye shares how the process is now with Assignar. “There is less chasing up for paperwork. The timesheets are submitted in real-time and all our supervisors need to do is approve it before it goes for the accounting process. It is not just our timesheets that are no longer digital, our pre-start forms, communications diary, incident report are now no longer paper-based. Before they would be filled out in paper books and crews would take photos or get them scanned and send them to the depot. Now, our crews don’t need to rush to a scanner or back to a depot for all the important documentation to be accessible to those in the depot. Crucial information can be shared in real-time”.
ROLLING OUT ASSIGNAR
Jye and Tegan worked together to get everything set up. Once they were familiar with the product through self-training and one-on-ones with their Customer Success Manager, they did roll outs to each department. Specifically, operations, finance and then the traffic controllers.
Change management is a hard task for any business but at Traffic Force they incentivised staff through internal competitions to increase usage and receptiveness to the new technology.
“We ran reports and did competitions such as which depot can have the most traffic controllers on digital timesheets between a particular time frame. It made it fun for our team whilst combatting any fears on change. Through this process, our team saw the benefit Assignar’s mobile app has had for them. They are coming well-informed and more prepared for jobs because now they know what job, where and what they need instead of finding out in the morning at the depot. It has really improved communications between our depots and our traffic controllers.”
Learning a new system can be intimidating but Assignar provides the resources to customers to ensure they have different mediums to learn and maximise the platform. Jye compared his experience with their legacy system provider and Assignar, “although our key stakeholders in implementing the system are quite tech-savvy, we found our old system hard to learn and use. We could email support but you didn’t have a dedicated Customer Success Manager as we do at Assignar.
Assignar also has a bunch of resources that are very helpful. For example, just the other day we wanted to go digital with our docket system. I searched and found there were videos and step-by-step documentation on how to start with digital dockets on Assignar. I was able to learn everything I needed on my own and in my own time and reach out to our Customer Success Manager when a line of code was not working on our end. I emailed late at night and got a response in the morning. Assignar support is amazing and they are accessible via the phone, email and intercom”.
