Victory Fire Door is a fire door inspection and repair company serving hospitals, universities, government facilities and more around the Atlanta area and the American South. The founder of the company, Vickie Evans, is a dedicated leader who wears many hats within the organization, including being responsible for fire door inspections and repairs as well as managing the business as a whole. Vickie had tried other fire door inspection software she had found online, but they simply did not meet her standards for thoroughness in NFPA compliance, comprehensiveness in reporting and ease of use.
In 2019, Victory Fire Door was looking for solutions to better serve their clients in the Fire & Life Safety industry. The business was growing rapidly and increased efficiencies were greatly needed. As the owner, Vickie’s main priority has always been the safety of first responders and the occupants of the buildings she inspects for NFPA compliance. To be successful here, Vickie had goals for Victory Fire Door to improve the thoroughness of collecting data on fire door and damper inspections and repairs and to increase her clients’ visibility of this data through professional and easy-to-read reports. Vickie had experience using pen and paper as well as other mobile applications in the market to record and report on Victory Fire Door’s fire door inspections and repairs in the past. However, she had seen first-hand the shortcomings of these “solutions”. Vickie recalls,
“One of the first inspections we did with the software I tried, we did on pen and paper anyway. It made no sense. I had 3 people inspecting, but only one person could be using our current software at a time, in the same building. So we did about 200 doors, and it was a nightmare.”
Vickie goes on to describe the additional steps in her previous fire door/damper repair process. This process had previously required her to manually create spreadsheets for her technicians, who would then need to record their repair efforts by hand. While Victory Fire Door had previously supplied their clients with good reporting details about these repair efforts, Vickie wanted true proof of work in her reporting that would be highly visible and ironclad. Vickie’s industry expertise and her dedication to constantly improve the quality of service provided to her clients and community led her to keep looking for new technology to pioneer in the form of mobile software with comprehensive reporting. She eventually found it in Krinkle Fire Door®.
Vickie began researching and testing a wide variety of mobile software solutions but was having trouble finding a system that would not only thoroughly address the needs of her business and her clients’ businesses but also her internal tracking needs. Every application she found only addressed inspections and even those were not comprehensive from an NFPA perspective. Additionally, none of them managed the downstream business requirements after inspection, such as automatic repair estimates, parts preparation for the upcoming repairs, tracking proof of repairs and other unique capabilities her growing business could leverage. While conducting this research, Vickie noted, “The software for fire door inspections and repairs is very unique. And so is the process of inspecting and repairing dampers. Our business manages both and we needed software that could manage the unique aspects of both. Because we do repairs on both doors and dampers, I needed a system that would integrate my repairs into the inspection system and automatically update as we went.” Some of the solutions Vickie researched handled door inspections but not repairs. Some solutions allowed users to capture data on doors, but not dampers. Other systems could automate reporting, but none of the reports provided were thorough enough or organized enough, to meet the high-quality standards Vickie sets for herself and Victory Fire Door. Vickie states,
“Other software we looked into had inflexible reporting features that didn’t give you access to the backend system. Meaning we had to go through our software provider to generate reports which could take a week to ten days. Customers just didn’t like that. We needed a system with lots of professional reports that covered all aspects of the process, and we needed them right out-of-the-box.”
What Vickie was also looking for was speed without compromising detail. She needed a system that allowed her to capture high-quality data without slowing down her inspectors and repair people. Vickie needed a system that could automate reporting, but in a professional manner that would clearly and thoroughly layout the work completed, and ensure her clients were compliant and protected in the case of a government audit. Finally, she needed all of this to be done in a manner that was as cost-effective and easy to adopt and deploy as possible. What Vickie needed, was Krinkle Fire Door®.
Krinkle Fire Door® is an innovative software application that guides fire door and damper technicians to easily adhere to NFPA standards, speed up work, and automate fire door and damper inspection/repair reporting. The system tracks customers, buildings, fire doors (single and double), fire door frames, and fire dampers, as well as all associated inspections. An additional module even tracks the repair process associated with deficiencies found in the inspections, including parts and labor costing. The mobile app comes with all the reports needed to thoroughly prove NFPA compliance. The professional reports layout the inspection data for every asset inspected as well as the repair data if the repair module is used. Reports even automatically match the deficiencies recorded to their specific NFPA codes and lay them out for clients in an organized and easy-to-read manner. Together, these features effectively addressed Vickie’s software needs, leading Victory Fire Door to deploy and adopt Krinkle Fire Door®.
Vickie states, “Adjusting our process to Krinkle wasn’t difficult at all… It was simple to learn and welcomed by my workers… The trainer was very patient and answered all of my questions.” Shortly after receiving training and deploying the mobile app, Vickie soon began seeing results.
“From a day-to-day standpoint [Krinkle] probably saved us about 20 hours of paperwork per ~200 doors inspected. And that was just the tip of the iceberg as far as efficiency and thoroughness were concerned. Now everything falls under the Krinkle umbrella… Basically, it took about 4-5 steps we previously had to do and automated them for us. It’s saved us time and reduced human error.”
Not only did Krinkle Fire Door® help Vickie improve the quality of data her users were collecting, but it also made the data more visible to her clients. “[Krinkle Fire Door®] has really improved our ability to share with the customer the repairs that we’ve made and what is still non-compliant on their doors (if anything). Krinkle addressed the repair needs that I had; it allowed me to show my repairs and the work we had done in color-coded, easy-to-read reports that the customer could understand.”
Over the last year, Krinkle and Victory Fire Door have continued to advance their partnership and improve the mobile app and reporting system. When asked for her experience working with Krinkle’s other departments, Vickie had the following to say: “In regards to support after the fact, I just recently submitted a support ticket…and [customer support] addressed and fixed the issue within the day. Customer support has been very responsive to the needs that I have, which is awesome because most of the time customers aren’t willing to wait a couple of days for the turnaround. They want it done instantaneously. All of the departments I have worked with within Mobile Epiphany have been very gracious and helpful.”
Mobile Epiphany, and its Krinkle brand of mobile apps, enable businesses to create and/or adapt existing mobile solutions rapidly and cost-effectively. Contact us today to see how Mobile Epiphany can help solve your business challenges.