Hodge Clemco, the manufacturer and supplier of surface finishing equipment, has rolled-out a fully-digital job management system from BigChange.
Using the cloud-based system, Hodge Clemco has doubled the size of its mobile workforce, without having to increase its back-office support, and is close to achieving its goal of paperless working. The Sheffield-based company has also deployed the BigChange customer portal that allows customers to directly access service and site history information and book engineer appointments.
“Before BigChange we relied on carbon copied worksheets, which meant we had to wait for the completed paperwork to make its way back to head office and then had to manually enter the details for quotations, invoicing, payroll, customer reporting, etc, etc,” commented Andy Peart, Sales and Service Director at Hodge Clemco. “This was time consuming, labour intensive, and had the potential to introduce errors into our systems.
“Using BigChange our engineers automatically receive job sheets which are completed, using the mobile app, whilst on-site and are instantly available for the back-office team to access,” he continued. “This means we are currently about 80 per cent paperless, and improving all the time, we have doubled the number of engineers we employ without having to add any additional support staff and we are hitting KPIs for quotations and customer reporting.”
Hodge Clemco has been designing, manufacturing, installing and maintaining surface finishing solutions, including blasting, abrasive blasting and coating equipment, since 1959. Through acquisitions and mergers, Hodge Clemco has grown and now employs 120 staff, located over 2 main sites, and is the only UK company to offer the full customer portfolio of ‘total service and solution’. Now part of the Surface Prep network of companies, Hodge Clemco is proud to have worked on many prestigious installations for the Ministry of Defence and Rolls Royce.
Since rolling out the BigChange job management system, which incorporates a mobile workforce app, customer relationship management (CRM, job scheduling, live tracking, job finance and business intelligence, Hodge Clemco has quickly re-engineered many of its workflows. Feedback from site visits is automatically shared with back-office staff in order to produce quotations within a defined timeframe. Once accepted, jobs are scheduled and worksheets, together with supporting site and equipment histories, are issued to the engineer.
Completed job-sheets including, where required, time and location stamped photographs and customer sign-offs, can be accessed, in real-time, by the back-office support team and are used to inform customer reporting and produce invoices, stock updates and more.
“As we introduce different elements of the BigChange system we realise more and more benefits,” Peart concluded. “Each feature has the potential to improve efficiency, boost productivity and raise our customer service levels and, as we continue to roll BigChange out across the Group, these will have a significant impact on the growth and profitability of the business.”
About BigChange
Launched in 2013 and based in Leeds, UK, BigChange is a leading Field Service Management Software Provider trusted by more than 2,150 field-based organisations around the world. BigChange employs over 220 people and is recognised as an outstanding employer with a 2 Star Accreditation from Best Companies.
In 2020 BigChange was awarded a Queen’s Award for Enterprise: Innovation, one of the highest business honours in the UK awarded for the company’s contribution to international trade, innovation, sustainable development and promoting opportunity. The company has also featured in the Sunday Times Tech Track 100 in 2018, 2019 and 2020 and was named in the 2018 Deloitte Technology Fast 50.
BigChange is the complete Job Management system that’s helping field service businesses across the UK to win more work, take control of their operations and deliver winning customer experiences. Bringing customer relationship management (CRM), job scheduling, live tracking, field resource management, job finance, business intelligence into one simple to use and easy to integrate system, BigChange liberates customers from inefficient paper-based processes and the complexity of multiple different technology systems that hold their businesses back.
For more information please visit www.bigchange.com.
