Kluge Elektriker EMB GmbHFrom carbon-copy pads to a signed PDF the same day
How an electrical contractor with 34 employees and three teams produces around 310 inspection and service reports a month on site, releases them in five minutes of office time and finds every record in seconds.
The business at a glance
- Company
- Kluge Elektriker EMB GmbH
- Region
- Köln
- Employees
- 34
- 22 of which field staff
- Users in ProtocolHero
- 26
- 22 field · 3 office · 1 management
- In use since
- March 2025
- Hero (annual licence)
- Teams
- Inspection (8) · Installation/service (11) · Site team (3)
Before and today
Reports per month
≈ 310≈ 190 inspections · ≈ 120 maintenance and service reports
Office time per job
Inspection jobs with many readings used to take up to 45 min
Time to signed PDF
With foreman approval by the next morning at the latest
Share captured on site
≈ 90 %Tablet or phone · 10 % on desktop
Paper, Word and WhatsApp – until the audit
Until early 2025, inspection reports at Kluge Elektriker were written on carbon-copy pads. Inspection technicians filled them in on site, the sheets arrived in the office in a Friday batch and were typed up in Word. Maintenance reports lived as Excel sheets on the foreman's laptop. Photos went to the office via WhatsApp and were pasted into the documents by hand.
Each job cost 25 to 30 minutes of office time, up to 45 minutes for inspection jobs with many readings. Five to seven working days passed before the customer held a PDF: processing started the following week, and questions back to the technician stretched the lead time further.
The error sources were known and still could not be eliminated: at least one transposed reading per week, photos that could no longer be matched to a job, and two or three sheets a month that never turned up – each one meaning another trip to site.
The trigger for the change was an audit in 2024: an industrial customer requested the inspection reports from the last three years. The office searched for two days; three reports were never found. For managing director Murat Ekinci it was clear afterwards that proof could no longer depend on a binder.
Four days to the first live inspection
Timeline
- 1
First live inspection
After 4 days
- 2
Inspection team fully switched
After 3 weeks
- 3
Installation & service
2 months later
- 4
In-house champion
Ayla Reif, head of office & order processing
The rollout was driven by Murat Ekinci himself together with Ayla Reif, head of office and order processing. She built the templates and knew every question that used to bounce between site and office.
They started with the DGUV V3 inspection of portable equipment, the most frequent job in the business. The inspection of electrical installations to VDE 0100/0105, including emergency lighting, followed, then the maintenance reports. The first live inspection ran after four days; after three weeks the whole inspection team worked in ProtocolHero, and installation and service followed two months later.
The existing Word layout was carried over as the PDF template, so reports look the same to customers as before. The Excel maintenance list became a database: technicians pick the system from the list instead of retyping designations and locations.
One process for three teams
Today the business produces around 310 reports a month, roughly 190 inspections and 120 maintenance and service reports – 14 per field employee on average, up to 25 in the inspection team. Around 90 percent are completed on site on a tablet or phone, 10 percent on desktop.
About five minutes of office time remain per job: check completeness, release, file. The customer signs on site and has the PDF before the technician leaves the yard. Where approval runs through the foreman, the PDF is ready by the next morning at the latest.
Beyond inspection and maintenance reports, fault reports, the site diary, handover records for tenant changes, time-and-material sheets and the quarterly tool inventory now run through ProtocolHero as well.
How ProtocolHero is set up
- Approval workflow for all inspection reports: the foreman reviews before a report is released.
- Board: defects from inspections land as cards with the service team.
- Databases: system and customer lists as pick lists in every template.
- Web form: property managers report faults directly via the company website.
- Hero Agent: creates the follow-up card from every report with a defect and sends a reminder after 14 days.
Usage per month
- PDF exports per month
- ≈ 310
- Shared submissions to property managers
- 40 / month
- Web form submissions
- 25 / month
A commercial customer suffered water damage after a short circuit. The insurer asked for the most recent inspection. The report – with readings, photos and signature – was found and sent within two minutes.
Features in use
- Custom PDF templates
- Mobile capture
- On-site signature
- Approval workflow
- Report board
- Databases
- Web forms
- Shared submissions
- Hero Agent
“The report used to be finished when Ayla had time. Today it is finished when the customer signs. And when an auditor shows up, I don't search anymore – I click.”
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