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By: The Encircle Team
Location: NY, MA, PA, and FL, USA
Lack of documentation to justify work meant less profits.
Using Encircle Hydro to eliminate paper workflows and strengthen documentation.
Time saved, increased profits, and less push back from adjusters.
More paper, more problems. How one restoration company successfully committed to documenting water jobs digitally.
MacFawn Fire & Flood water mitigation crews have stopped using paper dry logs, switching to Encircle Hydro to document water jobs. As a result, field teams are remembering (and doing!) what needs to be done, PMs are monitoring drying progress from anywhere, admins don’t have to chase down missing documents, and the business is increasing its bottom line.
THE CHALLENGE: Missing or incomplete dry logs
Evan MacFawn, Sr. Vice President of MacFawn Fire & Flood based out of Albany, NY, has known for some time that his team was in need of a digital solution for capturing moisture readings and reporting on the progress of water jobs. Unfortunately, none of the solutions they tried were easy enough to use in the field, causing his teams to revert back to pen & paper.
This meant that PMs and admins were having to wait until the end of the day for paperwork to come back to the shop, and when it did, it was often incomplete, and missing key information. This proved to be a costly problem — not only in time wasted tracking down paperwork, but also in lost profits.
You don’t get paid for what you do, you get paid for what you document, and MacFawn Fire & Flood was really starting to feel the effects of that missing documentation. It was easy for adjusters to push back on invoices because his team lacked sufficient documentation to justify the work that was done.
"Missing or incomplete dry logs? Your equipment is getting cut in half. Not enough photos of the damage? You're only getting paid for what the adjuster thinks is necessary. If you don’t document it, it’s as if you didn’t do it," Evan reflected.
The business needed a fool-proof digital solution that would provide them with complete moisture documentation to justify every line item and avoid additional delays caused by back and forth with adjusters. "When it takes them 60 days to even talk to you, any additional back and forth because of missing documentation is only going to further delay getting paid," he added.
THE SOLUTION: Encircle Hydro for digital moisture documentation
To get up to speed on how to use Encircle Hydro, his team leveraged EncircleU, Encircle’s online learning platform, discovering that Hydro was easier to use than any other digital moisture tool out there. Acknowledging that change is hard, MacFawn found that the best way to get everyone used to this new process was to just dive in, and use it on every job — big or small.
THE RESULT: Saving time and making money — without battling with adjusters
Encircle Hydro offers MacFawn Fire & Flood an easy, consistent, and thorough process for moisture documentation, right within the app they are already using for general job documentation, like photos, videos, notes, etc. Because the app is so user-friendly, they’ve been able to complete their digital transformation and eliminate paper processes.
The entire team is seeing the benefits of Encircle Hydro:
- Field technician benefits: Hydro makes it easier to remember and keep track of what needs to be done on each job. With moisture points documented in the app, anyone returning for monitoring visits has a digital record of where to take readings.
- Project manager benefits: Hydro makes it easier for PMs to monitor their projects, even if they aren’t on site. They can see the dry logs update in real-time, instead of waiting and hoping for a dry log to hit their desk at the end of the day. This allows them to be proactive and catch issues before they become big problems.
- Office admin benefits: Having field teams using Hydro means admins don’t have to chase down missing documentation to complete reports. They simply go into Encircle and click a button to generate a Hydro report, saving at least 30 minutes of unbillable administrative time on each job.
