ALPCO Recycling is a recycling company operating in Upstate New York. They have become the leader in Upstate New York in the areas of residential, commercial, and industrial recycling.
Because of the variety of their services, ALPCO Recycling uses multiple databases to track everything that needs to get done. Donna Figel, the IT, Safety and Compliance Director, was asked to tame the chaos and bring order into the system they were using.
Before they started using Trello, ALPCO Recycling used an ad-hoc system to track all the work that goes into managing recycling pickup and disposal. Since the company relies on a third party for everything that requires a truck, keeping communication and visibility going between the dispatcher, the drivers, and ALPCO Recycling’s in-house team was a challenge.
“We had this meeting where everyone said what they were doing, and the owner looked at me and said ‘you see the problem?’ It was a lot of using spreadsheets, phone calls, emails, and text messages.”
Donna Figel, IT Safety and Compliance Director
The initial challenge: no dedicated process and too many boards
Donna started looking into Trello. Being able to build boards to house all the information that previously existed in spreadsheets, emails, and text messages was key in providing the dispatcher a bird’s eye view of all the jobs going on while being able to drill down into specific jobs if needed.
Trello wasn’t solving all of ALPCO Recycling’s problems. Namely, because so many departments needed to work in tandem, many sets of eyes needed the same information. But keeping all the information on one board wasn’t feasible, since anyone looking for something specific needed to sift through a ton of cards just to find the piece they needed.
Beyond that were security concerns; giving everyone access to every board meant something might get deleted accidentally, or specific information might go somewhere it wasn’t meant to.
And as soon as that information was split up on several boards, it made keeping visibility on all the jobs more difficult. After all, a specific card might have to go from one board to the other and back.
“I needed the ability for the dispatcher to have a dashboard where she could see everything. So while splitting cards among multiple boards might have made sense for each department, it didn’t make sense for the dispatcher. “
Donnal needed a way to limit the information each department saw on their individual boards while still giving their dispatcher full visibility of all jobs and their status.
The solution: Automating everything with a Trello master board
The concept is simple; start by giving each department their own Trello board. For example, ALPCO Recycling’s accounting department needed to see cards when accounts needed to get billed or paid, but they didn’t necessarily need to be aware of them before that.
Likewise, a department responsible for specific jobs didn’t need to see the cards other departments were responsible for. Donna was able to set this up with Trello.
But sometimes the cards needed to go from one board to another as a specific job changed hands. And on top of that, there’s another piece of the master board that Trello couldn’t handle out-of-the-box: the dispatcher’s board.
When a call comes in, it needs to get processed and dispatched. But the dispatcher still needs a way to keep an eye on that job. Say a truck is delayed, and the customer calls asking what’s going on. With Trello, the dispatcher would need to find out which board that card is on before getting the info they needed.
By using Unito to build a master board, the Trello cards the dispatcher needs access to are all synced with the other department boards. That means all the information they need is at their fingertips. The dispatcher can easily find the card for a specific job and either check for updates or find the customer’s contact info. No switching from one board to the other, no potential disruptions to a department’s workflow.
Sorting Trello cards with rules
Beyond building a master board, the depth of Unito’s Trello integration means that Donna was able to get the most out of Trello’s key features, such as labels and custom fields: “We use labels primarily to identify the type of job, but also to finalize a job. Once a job is done, it comes off of the dispatch board and over to a follow-up board. From there, we needed the ability to send a card back to a specific department if it didn’t have all the required information. So we have labels that say ‘needs more information from scale house’ for example.”
With Unito, Donna was able to build rules to sort cards by these labels, making sure they end up where they needed to go. That meant no more checking spreadsheets, fewer phone calls, fewer emails and the added ability to work remotely if needed.
“During these challenging times, this process was a true blessing and enabled the dispatcher to stay home when needed and her job wasn’t affected because she could do it all remotely.”
Here’s how to set up this Trello workflow yourself:
The results: Better visibility and a more flexible, responsive process
By bulking up ALPCO Recycling’s Trello boards with Unito, Donna was able to bring a great deal of order to the chaos that was the company’s dispatch workflow. That meant no more spreadsheets, fewer phone calls, and better security. Before Unito, Donnal was worried that all teams would have to have access to every Trello card to keep information visible, but with Unito’s rules that was no longer the case.
How did the rest of the company see the addition of Unito to their workflows?
“The dispatcher sees how much easier the day is and feels more secure that everything is getting done in a timely manner. Everyone involved in the workflow feels less stressed and more productive knowing that everything is being documented in Trello. The workflow is now there, and the visibility amongst all of the departments is finally there.”
Using Unito made other aspects of the workflow that much better. Day-to-day occurrences that might once have created huge headaches now fit into ALPCO Recycling’s workflow nicely.
“When a load comes into receiving, and it’s a hot mess, now they have the ability to take their phone out, take a couple of pictures and attach it to the associated Trello card. The dispatcher understands what they’re talking about and can address it to the customer.”
Everyone in the company is empowered to communicate in an archivable way, so everything they say can be referred to later.
Unito’s internal estimates of the team’s usage (a combination of items in sync and users working with Unito workflows) calculates approximately 16+ hours and $1,900 USD saved per week in time that would otherwise be spent on manual input.
Recycling jobs have a lot of moving pieces. From the initial customer call to the dispatching of work and the actual moving of the recycling load itself. There are plenty of hiccups that can happen along the way. But by using Unito as the nexus of their workflows, ALPCO Recycling and Donna Figel were able to bring an incredible level of order to the chaos and throw out their spreadsheets.
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About ALPCO Recycling
ALPCO Recycling is a recycling company that services residential, commercial, and industrial properties.
