Continuous Improvement Hours

What are they?

Continuous improvement hours are allotted time you can spend to push what’s possible for you in Katapult Pro – with our team by your side. These hours are provided on a monthly basis with your Site License subscription for custom work. This includes custom consulting, coding, configuration, and specialized training. These hours do not accrue; they are a “use it or lose it” benefit of having a Site License. 

If you want to learn more about the purpose of continuous improvement hours, the process, or how to leverage them to get big wins for your team, schedule time with our Client Success Manager, Noah Shreiner, on his calendar.

Why do they matter?

With continuous improvement hours, you can mold Katapult Pro in response to the industry’s complex problems that you wrestle with, the ever-changing demands of the clients you serve, and the sustained growth of your team. Katapult Pro isn’t just a static, uniform tool; it’s an evolving ecosystem. We’ll be your expedition guide to help you discover untapped value from Katapult Pro. When we get to engage directly with your team, you’ll experience more meaningful collaboration, deeper insights, and real solutions with lasting impact. By optimizing workflows and increasing efficiency, you'll produce better, more valuable data, leading to increasingly reliable utilities.

How can I use them?

Consulting

Bring your unique needs and parameters to a conversation with us, and we’ll make sure you walk away with a solid foundation and the confidence that you’re in the best position to thrive. Our consultants have expertise not only in the industry and Katapult Pro, but also in coaching clients with their workflows and processes. All our clients are unique with different challenges, conditions, and criteria, so consulting will often be your first step in deciding how to use your continuous improvement hours. We’ll ask the “why” questions to uncover the root of what is slowing you down or causing issues, challenge potential solutions, and find holistic options that help your team win, help your clients win, and help improve the industry. Sometimes consulting is the solution itself, while in other cases, it establishes what the best next steps are. 

Want to schedule time with one of our consultants?

Reach out to Josh Gerber or email him at jgerber@katapultengineering.com.

Training

Personalized training from our experts will get your team up to speed faster, retain knowledge longer, and avoid usage errors sooner. There are a variety of formats: virtual consulting calls are focused on providing training to strengthen your knowledge of the existing tools and features in our platform and increase the effectiveness of its use; training equips clients to make informed decisions on continuous improvement initiatives (such as features to develop) and to stimulate ideas for workflow enhancements.

Need a starting point?

• Some topics we’ve hosted training sessions for are…

  • …data collection and best practices for accurate, quality data.

  • …the extraction workflow and tips for extracting efficiently.

  • …how to perform Make Ready engineering and pole loading analysis.

  • …reviewing work completed on jobs and identifying any missteps.

• Book weekly or monthly “office hours” with our training staff. 

• Work with us to curate a custom training curriculum.

• Get job followup/feedback on real projects. 

Want to connect with our training staff?

Schedule time on the training calendar or email us at training@katapultengineering.com.   

Configuration

Custom configuration to design or refine your workflows will improve efficiency and profitability while using Katapult Pro. We can assist with configuring the foundation of your data in your job models, create custom logic for querying and reporting, and help set up many other customizable aspects of our software.

Need some examples?

• Clients with unique workflows – like tracking underground equipment – may struggle with figuring out how to make Katapult Pro work for them; with our specialists, they configure specialized job models to eliminate friction and satisfy their needs

• Typical data collection methods in Katapult Pro aren’t as straightforward with inspections and audits; clients collaborate with us to create dedicated Mobile Assessments to streamline such data collection methods

• Manually reviewing work done by designers for completeness can create bottlenecks for project timelines; looking to save time and effort, clients come to us for tailored QA/QC tools that automatically check for incomplete data and display results

Coding

Gain access to our developer talent to streamline your workflows through the code itself. We accomplish this by developing tools (mapping tools or external integration tools) that may not be in our road map for the near future but provide real value for your team. Custom automated exports are tailored to your requirements, producing valuable, uniform deliverables that save time and increase the effectiveness of data presentation.

Need some examples?

• Existing exports don’t always satisfy every requirement from utilities, so clients have asked us for custom additions (such as additional columns to the Make Ready Notification export)

• Manual entries for applications consume focus from high-priority tasks, so clients seeking to free up time for higher-impact work will request automated deliverables for specific utilities

• Custom mapping tools can eliminate much of the repetitive groundwork in your processes – such as selecting a random sample of poles meeting specific criteria for auditing and quality control – so you can focus on more strategic, high-level tasks

Want to connect to discuss coding or configuration initiatives?

Reach out to Josh Gerber or email him at jgerber@katapultengineering.com.

 Business Development [NEW]

Leverage our RFP and bid expertise to land the projects of your dreams. Our team has extensive experience submitting formal proposals to IOUs and putting together workflows, strategy documents, examples, graphics, and pricing tactics that can help your business development team win.

Need some examples?

• Technical writing to clearly explain project workflows, methodologies, and technologies.

• Bid organization and timelines, generating questions for pre-bid meetings.

• Pricing and alternative proposal tactics based on various bid strategies.

• Quoting custom implementations/configurations and timelines for new features.

Want to connect?

Reach out via email to Adam Schmehl - aschmehl@katapultengineering.com.    

So What Now?

We’ve seen the use of continuous improvement hours and a commitment to making incremental  improvements yield great results in terms of efficiency, profitability, and growth for our clients. While getting wins for your team, you simultaneously help create more reliable utilities for people in the communities you serve. Ready to jump in?

Get connected with our Client Success Manager, Noah Shreiner, by booking a meeting on his calendar.