Cloud Inspections: Improving Productivity, Safety, and Reducing Costs

How important are inspections to your business? Does your business need to track the condition of materials moving through a process to avoid disputes over who might have damaged what? Do you have a private fleet that requires vehicle inspections? Or do you need to inspect finished products, either at the factory, or when they are being delivered?

Keeping up with inspections for a private fleet produces a large burden of paperwork. Not just to create the forms, it’s also important to be able to quickly find the completed forms. Physical documents are cumbersome to distribute to fellow employees near and far, susceptible to misplacement, and simply take up office space. Many companies complete paper inspections, and then scan them. There can be a big increase in operational productivity when all these inspection documents can be accessed through one streamlined location. That’s the promise of new cloud-based inspection systems available today, which improve productivity by simplifying the traditional inspection method and compiling important data to be accessed at any time and any place.

Here’s how cloud inspection works: log in to an inspection app via a smartphone or tablet to view your company’s lists and check boxes for what needs inspecting, whether it’s a shipment of specialty lumber, a backhoe, truck, trailer, or container. After the inspection is completed and documented with photos or notes, the system securely saves the finished inspection data to the cloud.


Following completion, a copy of the inspection is automatically forwarded to the point person in your organization, repair shop, or state agency to be viewed at their convenience. Faster information processing and the ability to see uploaded photos of defects leads to reduced time to get your fleet or product back on the road. Necessary parts for repairs or maintenance can also be automatically ordered, thereby reducing costs and providing faster time-to-value.

Cloud inspection data drives optimization by improving internal information flow, as inspection records can be accessed by anyone in the organization, and at any place. Thus, cloud inspections are a solution particularly useful for commercial fleet vehicles spread out around the country. Daily DOT inspections are required for every truck, bus, and utility-truck. Now companies can easily keep track of these records no matter the location of the vehicle, and produce documentation quickly on demand.

“We love having cloud inspections,” says Angie Dunavant, operations manager of Joetex USA, an over-the-road carrier based in Mt. Vernon, Texas. “It doesn’t matter where a driver is, as soon as he inspects, we know what the problems are, and we can jump right on it, which helps us keep our CSA Scores up.”

“This new technology based solution saves a lot of time and improves efficiency,” says Steve McBride, CMO of cloud inspections company Inspection Data Systems. “Because all documents reside in the cloud, inspectors can quickly pull up current and past due projects, and coordinate across teams due to widespread accessible information.”

“Ease of communication improves transparency, as the modernized system diminishes the chances of manual error. Lastly, automated regular backups to the cloud ensure version control and privacy of company data with full reporting capabilities,” says McBride.

Inspection Data Systems provides electronic fleet inspection solutions for public and private fleets. Inspection Data Systems was founded to support the growing demand for fleet inspection solutions through the utilization of cloud based technology combined with the power of “smart” mobile devices. For more information, click here.

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