Blakely Construction

Nick Cruz has a long history of leveraging Knack to optimize field services operations. For example, he first leveraged Knack to build a system for submitting, tracking, and fulfilling maintenance tickets from the field at a cable company 14 years ago.

After he gained recognition for building that ticketing system, Blakely Construction, an oilfield maintenance and construction company, noticed. And 4 years ago, Blakely brought Nick onboard to modernize their field services processes that were first implemented in 1960. 

In just 4 years, Nick has built 7 Knack apps to digitize paper processes and connect Blakely’s data, with 90% of Blakely’s employees using Knack each day. Furthermore, these programs have yielded major efficiency gains by eliminating 40 hours of manual data entry each month. 

That’s why we recently met with Nick to learn how he’s successfully used Knack to improve efficiencies and drive increased revenue for Blakely Construction. 

Blakely Before Nick and Knack

When Nick first joined Blakely, they were still relying on paper tickets and legacy systems to track field vehicles, equipment, billing and more. Hence, there was a significant need for Nick to modernize their processes. 

Since Nick had used Knack successfully at a telecommunications company, he turned to Knack to begin building field services apps. 

He first used templates to gain an understanding of how to structure the database of the Knack applications he needed. Once he digested how the field services templates were constructed, he could easily build Knack apps from scratch since he already had a deep understanding of what his workflows should be.

We would be missing out on so much to bill that we weren’t recording. We have to have them remember to do this and remember to do that. If it wasn’t on the paper, they would forget and they wouldn’t put it on there.

Increasing Blakely’s Revenue With an E-Ticket System

The biggest impact Nick made on Blakely was through his construction of a robust e-ticketing system. Before building the e-ticket system with Knack, field technicians had about 7 different paper forms to fill out. 

They would sometimes lose these forms, or when they submitted them, the review team might not be able to read their handwriting. In addition, the technicians might forget to record items that Blakely could bill for which led to lost revenue. 

With the new e-ticketing system, everything that a technician can bill for is available in a dropdown, and it’s a required form. As a result, Blakely has experienced significant revenue gains. 

Field workers can enter job details, labor hours, and equipment usage directly into the app, and it’s integrated with their payroll system to track hours and equipment charges. Furthermore, supervisors can review and approve tickets, which generates a PDF to record that information.

The e-ticketing app has saved Blakely time and shortened time to revenue by almost entirely eliminating the need for ticket and payroll corrections. Also, they’ve achieved better cost recovery by improving their methods for capturing equipment and tool usage.

Everything is there for them to view as a drop down and a required field, so they have to go through the form to fill this out properly. We’ve definitely been able to add more to our tickets to improve our revenue.

Building a Fleet Management App for Blakely

The first project Nick constructed at Blakely was a fleet tracking app. At the time, they were still tracking fleet equipment, like vehicles and trailers, via paper. Because paper processes are prone to inconsistencies and errors, sometimes they wouldn’t know who had checked out equipment, and other times, they may not even know where a trailer was.

Blakely now leverages a Knack app to manage their fleets. The app enables Blakely to accurately track company vehicles and know what’s checked out to which team members. Furthermore, when a vehicle is overdue for a return, the app sends a notification to that field team member to ensure vehicles are returned in a timely manner.

In addition, the app helps Blakely track which vehicles are due for maintenance and inspections. By tracking maintenance and inspections, they can improve the resiliency of their fleet and help ensure more projects are completed, faster.

I created a page that will allow you to sign out keys to a unit. They can assign it to an employee and put in a due date. It will send that employee a text on the due date to remind them that the unit is required back. They also get an email informing field workers when the unit is past due.

Tracking Employee Training Programs

Nick also used Knack to build a training app early on at Blakely. Before Knack, Blakely relied on spreadsheets to track training programs, which often resulted in training not being tracked at all or expired certifications.

By building an application with Knack, Blakely now has a centralized system for tracking and storing employee certifications and training records for over 300 employees. 

Additionally, the app alerts supervisors when their employees have expiring certifications. These notifications help ensure that team members renew their certifications ahead of time, so they can maintain compliance.

Our system tracks all employee training certifications, and it generates reports. It’ll tell you what needs to be renewed, and what’s past due, for each employee. Their supervisor is also notified, so they can make arrangements for that employee to come in and get recertified.

Managing Warehouse Inventory Through Knack

Before Blakely leveraged Knack apps, they had to rely on paper processes to track warehouse inventory. This process led to inconsistencies and a lack of visibility into what items were in the field.

As a result, Nick constructed a warehouse app to track tools that were checked out. This tool allowed Blakely to track inventory across multiple warehouses and check current stock before they issued orders for replacements. 

Hence, that Knack app enabled Blakely to save money by tracking high-value specialty tools accurately and prevent them from buying duplicate tools that they already had in stock at other warehouses.

We have a tool that’s $10,000. We have about four or five of those, and we can’t afford to lose them. We can find out who had those tools last, and then ask them, do you still need that? And if they say, no, then we can get it back, which prevents us from having to go buy another one.

Continuing to Build With Knack

Nick plans to continue his partnership with Knack, and he has many ideas for new things he can build at Blakely. 

Currently, the Blakely team prints eTickets and hands them off to their team to be uploaded into their invoicing system. In the future, Nick is looking at ways he can automate the process of sending the eTickets to the invoicing team, so they don’t need to be printed out each time. This automated process would undoubtedly save the team a lot of time and forgo the need for yet another SaaS tool.

Nick continues to create amazing things with Knack, and we can’t wait to see what he builds in the future.