Vulcan Materials Crushes Inefficiency with Notability

Daniel Johnson is a 33-year veteran at Vulcan Materials Company, the nation's largest producer of construction aggregate like crushed stone, sand, and gravel. With a long career spanning procurement, fleet management, and now digital transformation, Daniel has continuously sought new ways to improve efficiency and solve operational pain points.  His mission? To bring better digital tools to construction management that save time, reduce waste, and keep critical workflows moving.

While pockets of users like Daniel have relied on Notability for years, Vulcan officially adopted Notability for Business about 18 months ago, providing an enterprise-approved solution for its managers and executives.

Drowning in Paper and Dropped Details

Before Notability, some critical processes at Vulcan were manual and cumbersome, including:

• Document Approvals: Signing a document meant printing, signing by hand, scanning, and then reattaching it to an email. This outdated, multi-step process was slow and created unnecessary paper waste.
  
• Information Silos: Notes were scattered across physical spiral-bound notebooks and Post-it notes. Finding a specific piece of information meant manually flipping through pages, a time-consuming and often fruitless task.

This inefficiency came to a head when Daniel was managing Vulcan's fleet of over 5,000 vehicles. He received constant calls from drivers with urgent issues, like a non-working fuel card or an expiring registration. 

"It would wind up being whatever I had closest to me, I would jot down the note on it," Daniel recalls. "[I would] have to trust and believe that I carried that with me wherever I was going so that I could still go back and follow up on it." Missing these notes would directly impact employees' ability to do their jobs and create unnecessary logistical delays.

A Digital Hub for Notes and Documents

In an effort to eliminate paperwork and improve productivity, Daniel adopted a digital-first approach using his iPad, Apple Pencil, and Notability. He challenged himself to become completely paperless, and Notability provided the perfect toolset to make it happen.

Daniel and his colleagues leveraged Notability to:

• Eliminate Paper: By importing PDFs directly into Notability, they could annotate, highlight, and sign documents digitally, completely bypassing the print-scan-send cycle.
  
• Centralize and Search Notes: All notes, from meeting minutes to quick reminders, now lived in one organized, searchable library. The ability to search his own handwriting was a game-changer. "Once you have the search capability—now that opened up a whole new realm of how I can leverage this to help me be more efficient," Daniel says.‍
• Organize on the Fly: Features like built-in templates helped structure his thoughts for to-do lists and project planning. He also uses his phone to scan physical handouts directly into a note, allowing him to annotate them instantly, even when he doesn't have an ink pen.

Improved Productivity and Employee Experience

By replacing physical notebooks and printers with Notability, Daniel transformed his workflow, leading to significant improvements in productivity and efficiency.

The most impactful result was the ability to instantly retrieve information through search. Notability’s handwriting search function allows Daniel to instantly find driver requests and other information he jotted down. By quickly capturing and recalling details, Daniel could ensure every issue was addressed promptly, which vastly improved fleet management efficiency and the experience for Vulcan's drivers. They were able to stay on the road and on schedule.

"The ease of being able to get more information in a shorter period of time with less effort," Daniel states, was the most significant improvement he saw in his productivity. He successfully achieved his goal of a paperless workflow, streamlining everything from taking Bible study notes on a Sunday to managing complex business logistics.

A No-Brainer for the Modern Business

Daniel is "extremely satisfied" with Notability's capabilities and its continuous evolution. For other businesses facing similar challenges, his message is clear: success hinges on fostering a culture that embraces technology and managing the change effectively.

He advises that organizations need to be willing to invest in the right tools. For companies with the right tools, Daniel says adopting Notability is a "no-brainer." With a solid foundation and a tool as powerful and versatile as Notability, any business can improve team documentation, streamline operations, reduce paper waste, and digitally transform fieldwork and approvals.

For any business owner or operations leader looking to go digital, boost efficiency, and support their teams in doing their best work, Notability is ready to help.