David Bowring for Google Workspace User Advocate Testimonials

Speaker: David Bowring, Managing Director, QIRO

David Bowring: Hi, my name is David. I'm the managing director of QIRO and we are a logistics firm based in Staffordshire in the United Kingdom.

David Bowring: While we were launching the business, we primarily used Google Forms to record information. We really needed a solution that would allow us to record and display our data the way we wanted. We explored having an application built to order, but ultimately that was too slow. Too restrictive in the sense that we need to go back to the developer for any edits or updates, and was ultimately too expensive for a small startup. So, we looked into no-code solutions and found that they were too restrictive in a different way. They have their own learning curve and you need to understand how that platform works in order to get it to display the data that you want, the way you want. As the business has grown, so have our requirements. We started simply recording asset movement, but that's grown to include onboarding, timekeeping, training, performance management and much more. AppSheet has allowed us to do all of that through expressions. As the business has grown, AppSheet has grown with us from one application to six with distinct and specific purposes that we use to run the business every day.

David Bowring: As anyone with employees will tell you, recruitment is tough. Our single biggest challenge was taking control of our onboarding process. I built a custom application to help us manage and keep track of the people joining our business. And from the first call, we record all the details we need to see them through, and the application will automatically update their status based on how far through the process that individual is. So far, we have onboarded almost 1,000 people through the AppSheet application and we're able to view and reference any of them whenever we need to. As well as have the system record when they leave and flag when we are legally obligated to delete their data. It notifies us of everything, from whether a person's right to work or driving license is about to expire, to missing details such as emergency contact information. Whilst all of that is key to the day to day running of the business, the greatest impact it has had is giving us the ability to build applications quickly and efficiently whenever we need to, that allow us to meet the ever changing needs of our business.

David Bowring: The greatest improvements we've seen with AppSheet have been through the accuracy and accessibility of data. This applies across the board from onboarding to fleet and asset management. We are a logistics firm, so have a large fleet of vehicles on the road every day and they all require fuel. Unfortunately, we like any business are not immune to fraud and theft. It became clear that our existing process for monitoring fuel use was insufficient as we began to see costs creep up. I was able to build onto our existing asset management system, a process for recording fuel purchases and mileage. Using this data, we are now able to see an estimate of the current fuel level of a vehicle, taking into account, refueling and reference that against the vehicle telematics. If there is a significant delta, we can launch an investigation immediately. As an additional layer of security, all fuel transactions are pulled out and displayed in another application for cross-reference against our monthly fuel invoice. It is this second process that flagged an instance of theft. We had a driver who was using a company fuel card for their personal vehicle without the knowledge of the business. This was of course, raised to the police who took over from there. Without our AppSheet application, we may never have found that and could potentially still be grappling with the issue today.

David Bowring: As our business grows, so to which requirements. Most recently, we rolled out an application that allows our trainers to complete training on the road, replacing the previous now outdated process and allowing everything to be stored centrally. AppSheet has progressively improved the way we work with our data, making it more easily recordable and accessible. As we see new and more powerful features added to AppSheet, we can leverage those to enhance the functionality of our existing applications and begin to build those that haven't previously been possible. I for one look forward to seeing what comes next.