Client background

Founded in 2003, ArborWorks is a professional vegetation management firm that has experienced rapid growth in utility line clearance and wildfire hazard mitigation services for utilities, highway departments, municipalities and forestry departments. In November 2021, ArborWorks was acquired by a private equity investment firm to aid in their growth and support expansion. The foundation of scaling the operations to support expansion includes the implementation of digital platforms to improve efficiency of historically manual processes.

The business challenge

ArborWorks wanted to accelerate its digital transformation by gaining increased real-time visibility and reporting from its field operations. They needed to execute strategic transformation in their people, processes and technology in order to support the necessary growth and scaling of operations. To achieve a more modern, digital experience, critical areas of focus included field service capabilities with significantly enhanced billing processes and field management.

Internally, the need for improved data management and production tracking drove the need to pursue digital and cloud-based platforms in order to phase out their analog and manual processes. The competitive nature of the overall field services market perpetuated the need to improve and capitalize on existing margins.

Strategy and solution

ArborWorks made the strategic decision to invest in KloudGin, a digital platform and enterprise system. Understanding the challenges and difficulties associated with implementing a new enterprise system, they engaged Baker Tilly for assistance.

Baker Tilly operated as ArborWorks’ advocate in managing the KloudGin implementation. We partnered with the technology vendor during system integration to address future state process considerations, configuration decisions, testing and verification of the software. We also provided future state training and organizational readiness services to support the company in the adoption of their new modern digital platform.

Several of the critical business impacts associated with the project include:

• The ability to transparently demonstrate the specifics of an invoice to customers and prospects relative to vegetation management (trees removed, shrubs removed, etc.)
• The ability to quantify staffing needs across jobs instead of relying on prior manual processes and spreadsheets for staffing information
• Improved data management and memorialization of work by removing the need for over 12,000 pages of paperwork requests per month based on modernized process and technology
• Real-time location and production tracking of over 47 multi-man field crews across central and northern California
• Data-driven cost accounting and margin optimization through an improved reporting platform and analytics dashboard

The next steps involving ArborWorks and Baker Tilly include the continued development and nationwide rollout of the KloudGin system across all ArborWorks’ customers, field crews and scopes of work.