Working with residents and commercial operations, such as schools, care homes and holiday parks, Fords has evolved during its 100-plus year history and now offers a complete home services package including heating, plumbing, and electrical, as well as kitchen and bathroom design and installation, and Home Cover packages. Since implementing BigChange, which live-links operatives and engineers with back-office support staff and management using the BigChange app, Fords has achieved a 10-20 percent increase in jobs, is saving hundreds of hours a week, and has gone from 100 percent paper based to 95 percent paper free.
Before adopting BigChange, Fords relied on a dated CRM system which had been in use since the 90’s.
Our previous system held the details of every job we have created in the last 30 years, including the first ever trial job which was to bake a cake.
Commented Jack Caine, Contracts Manager at Fords South West.
As you can imagine this made it very slow; up to 15 minutes to retrieve client details or job records, and it was also going to be very expensive to update.
Having visited the BigChange offices, our Directors were impressed with what they saw; they liked the system and the features it offered, and the people they engaged with, and they felt comfortable with the ethos and atmosphere.
By automating routine processes, and removing the company’s reliance on paper, BigChange has removed much of the daily admin resource required to run and support Fords’ mobile operation.
Jack continued;
Looking at our routine tasks and processes we knew what we needed to change but we didn’t realise how much impact this would have,” Caine continued. “We knew our system was slow and outdated, and as a result so were our workflows, but the difference is amazing. Now we are up to speed with the system we are seeing measurable improvements across the board.
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Since implementing BigChange, Fords has transformed the management of its mobile workforce from being 100 percent paper based to virtually paper free, realising both financial and environmental savings. The move to digital has also resulted in significant operational and administration efficiencies.
Before BigChange engineers and field operatives had to physically collect paper work packs from the office, and plan their day accordingly. Worksheets and test results were then written up on-site and transcribed from paper to the CRM by the engineer at a later date or by an admin resource. When you factor in time spent trying to locate the customer site, calls from customers requesting updates, ordering parts required, and scheduling future works, it amounts to a significant number of hours spent planning, communicating, and reporting, rather than doing the actual job.
A conservative estimate is that using BigChange to automate routine tasks has reduced the number of hours per engineer, per day, spent on administration by at least two.
Jack concluded.
When you scale this up across the workforce and factor in back-office savings as well I would say BigChange has saved in the region of 25,000 man-hours per year. These are tangible savings that we can feed back into the business to support future growth in terms of geographical coverage and service offering.
ABOUT
Fords South West, based in Sidmouth in Devon, is an independent, long-established business, which has been operating across the South West for more than 100 years. Since the late 19th century, Fords has gradually expanded its operations and now provides a ‘complete home service’ for homes and businesses across Devon, Somerset and further afield. Offering a range of services, including Plumbing, Heating and Service Repair, Electrical, Kitchen and Bathroom Design, Consultation and Installation, Fords has expanded its portfolio to include renewables, air conditioning and wood burners, and has recently launched a small appliance repair service. Fords also has a regionwide contract with National Grid to test, repair, or replace appliances following a power surge.
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