Parts ASAP Achieves 122X ROI and $6.82M in Benefits with ActivTrak Workforce Analytics
Discover how Parts ASAP improved efficiency and productivity through remote work technology and manufacturing ROI analytics.
Overview
Parts ASAP is a North American supplier of parts for agricultural, construction and industrial equipment, including tractors, combines, skid steers, hay balers and planters. Over the past several years, the company has undergone rapid expansion, acquiring 18 companies and increasing its operational footprint to more than 65 locations across the US and Canada.
During this growth period, Parts ASAP consolidated operations to boost efficiency. By late 2024, the company had reduced its locations to 33, with plans to decrease that number even further. Transitioning to a work-from-home model was a key component of the plan, but the company needed a way to measure success and maintain high productivity and performance across a distributed workforce of 700 employees.
Challenge
The consolidation of Parts ASAP’s numerous acquisitions presented several challenges:
Employee productivity
With employees working from home, measuring productivity became more complex. Some positions could be evaluated more easily while others lacked clear KPIs.
Data security
Protecting company data across a dispersed workforce was essential. That meant identifying the different tools people used and how they used them.
Technology usage
The integration of various technologies from acquired companies had to be streamlined and standardized. This required pinpointing overlaps for evaluation and deprecation.
For some positions, understanding productivity is quite easy — you can look at sales results, the number of phone calls made, etc. but for other positions, it’s harder to come up with those KPIs. You need to have some leading indicators that help you understand, What are people doing with their time? What are they doing on their computer? Are there security risks? What different tools and technologies and tools are they using? From maximizing productivity to maximizing security, ActivTrak was able to do all of that for us.
John B. Fraser, CIO
Solution
Parts ASAP chose ActivTrak’s workforce analytics solution to tackle these challenges head-on. CIO John B. Fraser led the product evaluation and selection process and was particularly impressed by ActivTrak’s compelling demo and free trial access. “The fact that I could get in there and play with it without having to invest was absolutely key to our success.”
Parts ASAP uses ActivTrak’s live reports to understand the productive and unproductive behavior of employees in accounts payable, accounts receivable, project management, development, marketing and sales. The company also integrates ActivTrak data with its HR platform to better understand schedule adherence, and with Power BI to populate automated reports that arm leaders with insights to inform decision-making.
Productivity
One surprising finding about employees’ work patterns was that some seemingly productive employees were working second jobs on company time, while others perceived as less productive had just developed bad habits. ActivTrak gave Parts ASAP managers the insights to have constructive coaching conversations and help underutilized employees become more productive. Fraser noted, “Eighty percent of the employees we have conversations with come back around to being highly productive.”
Security
Parts ASAP also uses ActivTrak to set alerts for risky behaviors, such as plugging in a USB stick or visiting file-sharing sites. The company made a point of being transparent and communicating its use of ActivTrak to its employees, who understand the value the product provides in keeping Parts ASAP secure and protected.
Technology
Just as importantly, ActivTrak helps Parts ASAP optimize technology usage and simplify the operational aspects of its business. Using ActivTrak, the company took tools it knew would be deprecated over time but were still productive, and created a unique category for them: productive but obsolete. It then tracked category usage to identify which employees to migrate to preferred technologies — in this case, from Google Drive to OneDrive — and ensure a smooth changeover.
If you work from home and you need to go do something on a break or a lunch hour, we don’t want to stop that. But clicking a phishing link on your Facebook profile on your work computer puts us all at risk. The usage of this tool has helped keep our ecosystem safer.
Results
In just four months, ActivTrak delivered remarkable results for Parts ASAP, helping it consolidate acquisitions, boost productivity, reduce costs and enhance security, which led to:
122X ROI with $6.82 million in added benefits
18% increase in overall employee productivity
42% decrease in non-productive time
28% improvement in per employee productivity
12,000 extra hours of productivity per month
Enhanced security and compliance
We measure revenue by headcount and have had a constant increase in that, translating to $6.82M in added value through expense reduction and revenue gain. We’re talking about a 122X ROI which is practically unheard of. I will only move forward with a project if I can find a 6-10X increase in ROI, and this one blew it out of the water within two months.
Future Plans
Through its strategic implementation of ActivTrak, Parts ASAP successfully transformed its productivity tracking and security management, turning challenges into opportunities for growth and efficiency. This workforce analytics solution has become an integral part of Parts ASAP’s operations, driving significant value and positioning the company for continued success.
Looking ahead, Parts ASAP plans to further leverage ActivTrak by using its data to compare against revenue, sales calls and other metrics to identify people who are overworked, underworked or exhibiting behavioral changes that may indicate a potential for leaving. By addressing those situations early, Parts ASAP believes it can reduce turnover, improve training and increase employee engagement.