Founded in 2002, Relative Groundwork has attended planned maintenance services and responsive repairs at over 250,000 homes across London and the South East. It employs 45 people and serves a variety of customers including councils, schools, housing associations and private homes. Initially a groundwork company specialising in patios, drives, roadways, concreting and fencing, Relative Groundwork has expanded to include services such as drainage, plumbing, carpentry, plastering, decorating and roofing.
With an expanding workforce and growing customer base, Relative Groundwork needed to find new ways of scheduling and recording jobs and managing field workers. “With more customers and field workers coming along, we inevitably found ourselves dealing with more paperwork and admin, which could have a negative impact on business productivity and efficiency,” explained Tony Gallifant, general manager at Relative Groundwork.
“Quite simply, we wanted to make the process of turning a quote into a job and a job into an invoice smoother and be able to handle jobs more effectively, which is vital when it comes to responding to emergency calls.”
Mr Gallifant has estimated that, since Relative Groundwork started using Fleetmatics WORK in September 2012, the number of jobs that the company is able to complete each month has risen from 800 to a minimum of 1,800 per month.
“We’ve been able to reduce our paperwork and associated admin times and costs dramatically and the whole process of assigning and recording jobs has become easier and smoother,” he explained. “We are now in a position to go from quote to invoice in just a few clicks, with no paperwork or calls involved and we’re able to assist our customers more effectively.”
Using the WORK app, Relative Groundwork’s field workers can receive and access all the essential information they need to carry out their next job remotely. While performing their jobs, they can quickly log vital details such as descriptions of tools and equipment that have been used, take and upload pictures of the site and digitally capture the customer’s signature on their mobile devices. All this information is immediately saved on to the Fleetmatics WORK system, meaning it can be used to process invoices on-the-go.
According to Relative Groundwork, another key benefit of using Fleetmatics WORK is that it provides an efficient and accurate way of recording and monitoring the field workers’ starting and finishing times. The solution provides a range of reports and dashboard metrics, improving accuracy and visibility into work order arrival time, actual on site time and more.