Wawa
Automating Store Inspections With Windows Mobile
The Client
Wawa Inc., a privately held company, began in 1803 as an iron foundry in New Jersey and grew into a milk producer/delivery company. Today, Wawa operates more than 560 convenience stores in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.
The Business Need
The business measurement team from the Wawa Internal Audit Department visits each Wawa store once per quarter. During their visit, they review the overall appearance of the store, the back room, cold box and gasoline islands for compliance with Wawa operating, environmental and safety guidelines. Diamond Technologies was commissioned with the task of replacing an aging Palm-based system with state-of-the-art mobile technology.
The Solution
Working in collaboration with Wawa, Diamond Technologies designed and developed the Mobile Internal Audit Survey application built on a Windows Mobile 6.0 platform; Motorola MC75 ruggedized handheld computers, Microsoft SQL Server and ASP.NET. This cutting edge solution enables the Wawa Internal Audit staff to efficiently perform store inspections and automatically synchronize the inspection data with corporate databases. This system not only automates the posting of new inspection data, but also automatically updates the mobile application with new survey questions when requirements change. When a survey is finalized, the data is published to the My Wawa extranet website for the store mangers to review and become compliant.
Business Impact
By automating the inspection process with new mobile technologies, Wawa auditors now spend more time inspecting stores instead of traveling to the home office. Cost savings in workflow efficiencies, communications, software updates and travel expenses, have helped Wawa realize a high return on investment while increasing customer satisfaction.