Getting the Plods in

Executive Summary
1) Plod+Pay is a management tool that just happens to produce Invoices and Payroll as a by-
product
2) It is perfectly feasible that all Plods, Timesheets, etc., for shifts finishing prior to 9:00am
should be entered into the system by mid-day the same day.
3) This can be achieved.

Read on to see how.

The detail
To get the full benefit of Plod+Pay you should enforce a regime where Plods are entered into the
system every day. Ideally, by mid-day all the Plods for shifts finishing up to, say, 9:00am that
morning should have been entered into the system.

Do this and:
You will avoid backlogs at Pay and Invoice period ends.
You can have Employee pays in their bank within 48 hours of period close.
You can have customer invoices on their desk within 24 hours of period close.
At any point management can review data within Plod, confident that it is up to date. eg:
o Entry Stats is a snapshot of actual metres drilled at each Rig on every Shift up to
and including last night!
o $xRig/Shift shows actual $revenue earned by each Rig on every Shift up to and
including last night!
o Proformas will show the chronology of what is happening at a Job or Rig up to and
including last night!
o PlodSniffAll can be used to analyse all sorts of interesting trends up to and
including last night!.

Management can only react to abnormal circumstances if they know about it as it is happening its
too late if they find out a week or two later. You need to enforce a timely data entry regime so that
your managers can be confident the data they are reviewing is up to date. If the confidence is there,
then they will use it more.

Can it be done?
In a word: Yes! But you need to allow for human nature.

Left to their own devices:

Drillers, and even Supervisors, will take the view that paperwork is not important.
Office staff always have something more important to do. They are inclined to put
anything to do with payroll off until pay-day, and anything to do with invoicing off until
period-end.
You must change this culture so that staff accept that data entry is the most important part of their
job.

Im not exaggerating here consider:

The objective of your company is to make money it is in the drilling business as a means of
making money.
The objective of your employees is to earn money they turn up at work so they can get
paid.
Its no good an employee drilling holes in rock if you dont know what hours he worked (so
he can make money) or what he did (so the company can make money)
He can be drilling the prettiest holes in the world, but there is no benefit to him or you if the
paperwork isnt done.
The Plod is the paperwork. Over the past hundred years the Plod has emerged as the most
efficient way of recording what happens at a drill site.
Because you are a progressive company striving for industry-best-practice, or perhaps
because you are seeking to reduce your costs, you have chosen to use a computer system
that just happens to produce invoices and calculate pays as a by-product of what it does best
which is help you manage your company so it can make more money. If the employee
cant accept that, then he shouldnt be working for you.
The Plod is of no benefit to the employee, or to the company, until you enter it into the
computer Data Entry.

You need to get the point across to all employees that the Plod is important to them (its how they
get their money), but only after it gets into the computer.

So how to speed it up?

Again, human nature comes in to play.

Drillers/Supervisors will offer all sorts of excuses as to why Plods havent been sent in:
The customer hasnt signed off yet
Were flooded in here, and cant get to a fax machine
Our fax machine broke
A dingo ate it
etc

These are simply rationalisations to cover a lack of motivation on their part. Get them motivated
and they will find a way of doing it. eg:

a) If the geo hasnt signed off, then send in the unsigned copy with a note. They can always
advise any subsequent alterations if they arise. As a precaution the data entry clerk can
make a point of confirming the details before period-end.
b) If they cant get to a fax then:
a. Use the phone (satellite phone?) to phone thru details.
b. Implement a procedure where Plods can be scanned into a laptop and sent as email
attachments (this will work via satellite phones)
 c) If they dont have a phone onsite then put a satellite phone in. You can hire one from
around $70 per week. If youre not prepared to do this as a minimum then I cant help you
I expect its an OH&S requirement in any case.

Office staff always think they are busy they will always want to put things off till the last moment.

You need to enforce a regime where data entry is always done as the data comes available. I
recommend:
Separate the role of Data Entry from Pay Clerk and/or Invoice Clerk.
o None of these roles needs to be a full-time job for any individual.
o Organise your office so an individual may have several roles, but the person doing
Data Entry doesnt wear the Pay or Invoicing hat (except as a backup operator). If
you must violate this arrangement then make sure the person involved understands
that special rules apply when they wear the Data Entry hat.
o Data entry should not stop simply because the Pay Clerk is having a pay-day panic.
When data entry stops:
Pays can be delayed
Invoicing can be delayed
Management loses confidence in the tools they should be using.
Tell the Data Entry clerk that it is a condition of their employment that ALL Plods be entered
by the midday after a shift change:
o I f the Plods have arrived then they must be entered
o If the Plods have NOT arrived then the Data Entry clerk must initiate corrective
action (Contact Rig, alert GM/Supervisor, etc). A case of make it happen.
You (or someone the Data Entry clerk reports to) should make a point of running Entry Stats
on a daily basis so you can review the status of Plod entry (you might also learn something
about whats happening out there in the field). Make sure, on a frequent basis, that the
clerk is aware you do this.
Encourage your managers/supervisors to use the stats and analysis features of Plod+Pay as
part of their day to day routine. Once they accept this is useful, they will start applying
pressure if the data is delayed.

Its not only Plods

The above principles can be applied to all forms of data entry:
Timesheets
Leave applications
Incidents
Training Courses
Performance notes

It can be done
The above techniques do work Ive seen it happen. Ive also seen a good situation fall apart when
the pressure is taken off due to staff changes or when a sloppy attitude to procedures creeps in.

The situation is resolved by simply going back and reinforcing the above.

Geoff McMillan
2/7/2010