In crane services and other physical operations, technology rollouts have historically been long, expensive, and painful. Companies spend months preparing, scheduling weekend training sessions with union reps, hosting makeups for crews that miss training, and creating reference guides. By the time the system goes live, the workforce is frustrated and adoption often fails.
The cost of delay is staggering. In U.S. construction alone, contractors lose $30 to 40 billion dollars annually from labor inefficiencies (FMI, Labor Productivity Study, 2023). Global construction productivity has grown just 1 percent per year over the past two decades, compared with 2.8 percent for the world economy and 3.6 percent for manufacturing (McKinsey Global Institute, Reinventing Construction, 2017).
Paper-based processes make this worse. Manual forms slow billing, payroll, and inspections, while causing lost records and compliance risk (WorkMax, Why Leave Paper Behind, 2025).
If you feel like technology has been harder to adopt in your industry than in others, you are not wrong. A joint study by Harvard Business Review and McKinsey ranked industries by digital adoption and found construction near the very bottom: second only to hunting and agriculture (Harvard Business Review, A Chart That Shows Which Industries Are the Most Digital and Why, 2016).
This is not a reflection of poor leadership. It is systemic. Most construction technologies have been complex, rigid, and disruptive to adopt. Not to mention, just different. Crews are forced to learn unfamiliar systems, driving up costs and resistance. As the study shows, the industry has been set up to struggle.
This is exactly why Ribbiot takes a different approach. Instead of asking you to change how you work, we digitize the forms your crews already know. Adoption is instant, and value is realized in days, not months.
Bragg Crane in Long Beach, California faced these same challenges. As a union-heavy crane service provider tied to IUOE Local 12, traditional software rollouts were not just difficult, they were nearly impossible. Crews resisted new systems and union reps pushed back on disruptions.
Bill Green, VP of Crane Service at Bragg, recalls the old way. “We would spend thousands on training, bring in everyone on a Saturday, and still face backlash. Crews hated new software.”
Ribbiot took a different approach. Instead of forcing Bragg to adopt unfamiliar software, we digitized the exact paper forms their crews already used. Optimized input fields made the forms easier to complete. Nothing felt new or disruptive.
Bragg went live in 24 hours. Within one week the entire operation was digital. Nine months later they simply added three more fields, proving that growth and optimization can be incremental and painless.
The Benchmark ROI: Paper Eliminated
Simply removing paper creates a positive return on investment. Companies no longer need to purchase expensive carbon copy templates, manage stacks of forms, or lose money on misplaced tickets. The cost savings and efficiency gains of digitizing just one form category are enough to justify the transition.
The Sprinkles on Top: Compounded Value
Beyond eliminating paper, digital forms multiply ROI across every part of the operation:
Together, these improvements can easily quadruple the initial ROI from paper elimination alone.
The gains are not just anecdotal. Crane service providers that adopt digital forms cut paperwork time by as much as 50 percent and reclaim over 40 hours of admin time each week (GoFormz, 5 Essential Digital Forms for Crane Servicing, 2019). Utilities report 15 to 20 percent cost reductions after adopting digital workflows (Gitnux, Digital Transformation in the Utilities Industry, 2025).
The industry is moving fast. Digital transformation in utilities, crane services, and equipment rental is no longer optional. Companies that wait lose money every day. Those that act see results in days, not months.
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