FIELD SERVICES

Company
Based out of London, Essential Repairs is a leading property maintenance company offering a multitude of maintenance services under one roof. Run by seasoned industry specialists, the company offers end-to-end project management through a highly skilled team of plumbers, electricians, gas-safe-registered engineers, builders, decorators, and handymen. Clients include homeowners, property managers, as well as commercial and residential tenants across London.

Challenge
Essential Repairs, as a thriving property maintenance company with a rapidly expanding team and range of services, faced several challenges around the lack of automation, visibility, and accuracy, akin to several growing businesses in the Facility Services industry.

These challenges presented themselves in 3 core areas in particular.

Lack Of Automation
The previous software that had been deployed to manage incoming jobs was incapable of effectively converting client requests into job orders. As the software was simply too basic to convert every client request accurately, the back-office team had to comb through the requests one by one, to ensure they were converted into job orders and dispatched to the right technicians promptly. For a company that thrives and prides itself on attending to repairs quickly and achieving the highest percentage of first-time fix rates, such an issue was a make-or-break factor in whether or not the serviced client became a repeat customer.

Visibility
The second issue was that the aforementioned software did not provide Essential Repairs Director, Fotis Kaimakamis, granularity in tracking issued jobs or KPIs of completed jobs. Nor did it provide clarity in terms of job performance. This meant Fotis did not necessarily know the status of the jobs until he checked in with his team through a call or text, let alone how well or poorly his technician had performed at a given job. The gardening and landscaping teams were most affected due to the several added steps that were required from client requests for job completion.

Accuracy
Last but not least, there was a serious disconnect between the job order and the invoicing systems, as invoices had to be manually processed upon the technician notifying the back office of the completed job. This meant there were completed jobs awaiting collection from clients, that the Accounts team then had to individually contact to move things forward. This challenge was further exacerbated when a job involved the use of materials, as the technician would have to make a note of the type of materials and their quantities used concerning the job, send it to the back-office team and once the invoice was ready, check if the line items corresponded.

Solution
Given the set of issues faced day in and day out, Fotis and his team realized that the growth ambitions of the company required a new way of thinking and were thus ready to raise the ante for their operations. It was clear that the necessary plan of action was to disrupt the status quo – in other words, question existing processes, and do away with the old and what was no longer working.

Even though the software in use had served them well up until a point, it was obvious that they needed to embrace technological advancement to thrive and provide a higher level of service to new and existing clients.

This is where the work of Arrow Labs began.

Fotis, Director of Essential Repairs stated, “We knew with the initial presentation of MIMS that there was a strong fit in terms of what we were looking for and the value add the product brought to the table. Because quick turnarounds and customer satisfaction are key to our business, we needed to get on board with technology that was sophisticated, seamless and capable of tracking the right metrics.”

Once the challenges of Essential Repairs were further analyzed by the Arrow Labs’ team, the required MIMS modules of Tasks, Ticketing, Incident Management, Asset, and Dispatch were activated.

Results

Automated processes
Upon deploying MIMS, the challenge that confronted converting client requests to job orders disappeared immediately. By plugging MIMS into the Essential Repairs website, client requests upon completing the form were not only immediately turned into job orders, but also automatically assigned to the right available technician with the right skill set.

According to Fotis, “MIMS enabled us to streamline client requests from job order to service completion, thereby providing a significant reduction in turnaround time and increase in client satisfaction.”

Adherence to SLAs
Fotis also had much to gain on the visibility of his team and their jobs. With the granularity provided by MIMS in tracking issued jobs or KPIs of completed jobs, Fotis can easily track the progress of a job from creation to completion, along with the performance of the technician on the job and adherence to the execution workflow.

Fotis stated, “The MIMS mobility suite with its mobile app and innovative smartwatch provides unparalleled real-time visibility into our operations, giving us the tools to respond and adjust to client needs instantly and effectively.”

Accurate information
As the final step, MIMS was linked up to their invoicing system so that jobs marked as completed on the MIMS Watch by the technician were immediately moved through to the next step of invoicing.

While solving the disconnect between job orders and the invoicing system meant minimal follow-up for the Accounts team, it went an even longer way for the technicians. It allowed for keeping track of materials used, and reporting correct quantities and labor hours to the back office, an automated solution that seamlessly integrated the two worlds proved to be just the answer they were looking for.

Covid-19 Response
An unexpected perk for Essential Repairs with the deployment of MIMS has been the timing of the digitization. During a time when most of the world was going under lockdown to contain the spread of COVID-19, and businesses were shutting down, as a result, Essential Repairs was just getting started. They were preparing to offer essential services across London in the most effective way possible while being fully equipped to handle remote management of jobs and the team – for now, and in the future to come.