TAAP wants to make paperwork extinct – and it’s succeeding

A mobile app company aiming to make paperwork obsolete has announced it is in talks with leading retailers and commercial firms across the UK.

TAAP’s software allows firms to use handheld devices such as smartphones and tablets to log important work events such as merchandising, incidents, security and cleaning, instead of filling out paper forms.

The app, which uses a number of Microsoft products such as Azure, helps workers be more efficient, saves businesses time and space, and cuts down on waste paper, which is also good for the environment.

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Construction firm Morgan Sindall and two of the UK’s leading motoring organisations are already using TAAP’s program, and the company has now revealed it is in talks with a large number of others who are looking to digitally transform how they work.

“The world runs on paper and that comes with a lot of difficulties,” said Tony Leach, Director of Business Development at TAAP. “Combining TAAP and Microsoft solutions enables organisations to move from paper and digitise their businesses rapidly, cutting costs, increasing efficiency and giving them valuable insights into their business.

“The TAAP platform is supported across a range of devices, from phones to tablets to specialist ruggedised devices and is developed using Microsoft technologies. The digitised data collected from these devices is stored in Azure and, using tools such as Microsoft Power BI, organisations are learning much more about their business.”

All the information that companies write down is now stored in Azure’s cloud platform, while Microsoft’s analytics tools and Power BI keep track of what staff have added to the system.

Morgan Sindall’s property services arm switched to TAAP more than a year ago, and it has transformed how its staff work.

“We had a hugely paper-intensive business, so when we were looking at how to get rid of that, we were introduced to TAAP,” said Stephen Holden, Head of Systems Transformation at Morgan Sindall Property Services. “We complete hundreds of projects an hour, and historically it was a nightmare to do anything with that data. We had lots of paper in filing cabinets, and when we needed to find something we would have to search through those.

“TAAP allows us to capture lots of small pieces of information and log them in a database. We can search for issues around compliance, track our performance, know where our staff are and the tasks they have completed, manage cost and much more, all through this incredibly simple platform. Plus, 80% of our staff now use mobile devices, including all our customer-facing employees. We got rid of all the paper they had to deal with and gave them tablets with all the data on them.”

TAAP hit the headlines in 2015 when it announced it was teaming up with “the UK’s largest retailer” to give unsold food to charities.

Retail staff check stock levels and use TAAP’s FoodCloud app to notify charities of items that are close to their sell-by dates. Charities then select what they want via the app and go to the store to collect the items, before distributing them to those in need.

To date, the Food Donation Service is used in 1,300 stores and has saved the equivalent of 5.1 million meals from going to waste. According to the European Commission, around 88 million tonnes of food is wasted annual in the European Union, costing around €143 billion.

TAAP has now announced it is rolling out its food donation programme to companies across the world.

The service, which also runs on Azure, is now being adopted by other food companies as well as firms in the electrical and clothing sectors in the UK, Europe and beyond.