How Resolver Transformed Incident Management for a Leading Supply Chain Company

• Lack of incident tracking: No comprehensive incident tracking tool within a mobile workforce of nearly 900 employees.
• Manual processes: Manual data entry and report creation were time-consuming and resource-intensive.
• Lack of standardization: The absence of standardized incident reporting led to inconsistencies and data integrity issues.

The Director of Loss Prevention and Compliance at this leading Canadian supply chain operations company wasn’t merely dealing with occasional mishaps. He was trying to find a system to comprehensively track, measure, and derive value from these incidents.

“It wasn’t so much, ‘Bad things are happening’ — bad things always happen. But how do we track all the bad things happening and put value behind it?”

The pursuit of answers, data, and numbers began as a very manual process for the Director. “It takes up a lot of my time to create graphs and charts from work that I have to input manually.” He found himself creating all of the company’s incident reports. With no central reporting mechanism, staff would come to him to explain and log incidents.

The lack of standardization in reporting also presented challenges. “You have one person submit a form from 10 years ago, and another person submitted a form that I created, and somebody submitted a form that they accidentally edited, and nothing was standardized.”

In addition to internal challenges, the Director needed to consider the big picture. With so many items being shipped across the country, incidents of theft, damage, or other nefarious activities are expected. However, these incidents can create problems for an entire ecosystem, from the supply chain business to its customers and even to its customers’ communities. “You want to make sure you’re giving law enforcement a package they can work with. We need to support our community, especially the police, in closing their stats.” He knew a more comprehensive solution for evidence tracking would help simplify cooperation with public safety authorities and help the company’s corporate responsibility ethos.

The Director had a strong desire to create trends and maps of what was happening in the business and share them with executives. “Why don’t I have a system that everybody can get to?” Familiar with corporate security technology solutions from previous experience, he knew there was a better way and pushed for a centralized incident management software solution. “With the technologies available today, you can have a whole cloud-based system, which could then be connected to dashboards… and be able to pull information, create charts and graphs and percentages and calculations, that can eventually draw a very beautiful picture for somebody who doesn’t understand the back-end.”

Given the complexity of the business and the way incidents were reported, the Director was also skeptical about the accuracy of the information reaching executives.

“Resolver now allows us to present the clear number. Resolver was really good at taking what I had and implementing it into the incident reporting system that we have now, which I think works great. Everything that I needed, I’m getting now, and I’m getting it in one spot.”

Now, two years into the Resolver partnership, the Loss Prevention and Compliance team is extending Resolver’s capabilities to deliver more value to their business. “We are rolling out phase two of Resolver, where it will be hooked up to our payroll system so that we can not only track dollar losses and incidents with damaged property, theft, and things like that. But also time loss from employees who aren’t working. And we can show how much we’re losing in that respect.”

He underlined the importance of demonstrating the economic value of safety measures: “Everyone’s very much worried about people’s health and safety. We all want people to go home the same way they came to work, if not better. But there’s a dollar value that comes with an injury, and I think that’s what’s super important to highlight to the business — to show why safety is important and why we should invest in safety.”

The adoption of Resolver’s Incident Management software transformed this leading Canadian supply chain company’s incident reporting and risk culture.

1. Centralized and standardized reporting: Resolver provided the supply chain company with a centralized and standardized incident management process, simplifying incident reporting for employees and offering a comprehensive incident view for the Director of Loss Prevention and Compliance. Gathering information has never been easier, and Resolver’s system has indeed made him busier — in a good way. “It’s funny because I didn’t have a last year to compare the incidents to, except for what I have manually recorded. I probably had in the ballpark of maybe 30.” The Director illustrated the benefits of centralized, standardized incident reporting with an example, “’ My name’s Joe. I got a paper cut. I administered a bandage, and I’m fine.’ Now, if the cut gets infected, I go to HR.” The employee would share the need to take time off to see a doctor. The HR team would reopen the existing incident file in Resolver and connect the dots to the initially tracked paper cut.
2. Significant increase in reported incidents leading to positive outcomes: Within the first seven months of implementation, the company saw a remarkable 783% increase in reported incidents, demonstrating the software’s effectiveness in capturing and managing incident data, which subsequently led to proactive safety measures. “While it wasn’t nice that we had them, it was nice that I had reports of them.” Using the incident management reporting data in Resolver, the team could see a correlation between some preventable “slip and fall” incidents, for example. The data helped secure investment to launch a “Freeze Program,” which proactively alerts the operations team of freezing or icy conditions so that appropriate safety actions can be taken.
3. Empowering a risk-aware, incident-reporting culture: Today, over 400 team members use Resolver’s Incident Management software. The power to report incidents via various devices, from phones to kiosks, has simplified the process and empowered employees to contribute to the organization’s overall risk culture. Moreover, Resolver has played a pivotal role in fostering a culture of risk awareness within the organization. “I think the software is really driving that culture, which is huge in a company that’s trying to build an internal culture with their team members. Those team members are saying, ‘Hey, we’re seeing this health and safety shift, we’re seeing this security shift, and it comes from us.’”

Effective incident management is essential in the highly complex, interconnected supply chain operations industry. Resolver’s Incident Management software has emerged as a game-changer for this leading Canadian supply chain operations company’s journey from manual incident tracking to a streamlined, data-rich, and centralized system. By investing in safety and embracing innovative solutions, they not only improved their risk awareness culture but also demonstrated the tangible value of safety investments. Through Resolver, the company has improved incident reporting efficiency and ensured that safety and security remain at the forefront of their organization.