Airco Case Study
Airco Limited are an air conditioning and refrigeration contractor based out of Kingston upon Hull. Formed in 1991 the company has grown from a small local specialist contractor to a nationwide service company offering full building maintenance services including heating, plumbing and electrical works. In 2006 the company was experiencing 'growing pains'. Although the customer base was growing significantly the office administration was struggling to keep up with the workload. This was mainly due to the fact that information was being stored in a combination of manual systems and spreadsheets. Whilst Sage Line 50 was being used to manage the accounts there was no database installed to manage the core of the business operation. Call logging and planned maintenance scheduling was a completely manual operation. There was no simple reporting mechanism for profit analysis, contract performance or engineer efficiency. Purchase orders were raised manually and quotations were raised in MS Word and tracked in MS Excel.
In October 2006 Airco got in touch with Tracer Management Systems based in Birmingham and decided to implement the JobLogic service management system to centralise their data and streamline their back office operation. JobLogic enabled all enquiries, jobs, costs, purchase orders and invoices to be logged into a single database. JobLogic was integrated with Sage Line 50 to avoid the duplication of financial data entry. Paul Lough General Manager at Airco explained, " we needed to get away from disjointed systems, finding simple information such as site history or parts orders was laborious and inefficient." Over the last two years Airco has grown their customer base and their engineer workforce by 30%. Paul Lough points out that JobLogic has had a big part to play in the company's growth. "JobLogic has been a wonderful acquisition for the the company. Job history, job status tracking and powerful reports are available at a click of a button. The support team from Tracer are always there to assist at the end of the phone and any issues are quickly responded to and resolved."
In October 2008 Airco have continued to grow their use of the system by integrating Tracer's mobile engineer application (PDALogic) with the JobLogic system. PDALogic enables jobs to be sent directly to the engineer's PDA device (handheld computer and mobile phone combined). The engineer provides the office with real time status updates using his 'touch-screen' application. The PDALogic application captures time sheets, parts used, parts requested, photographs, notes and customer signatures. James Whatmore Sales Director for Tracer commented, "Airco have realised the true benefit of investing in the JobLogic system by enabling remote communication with their engineers. The working day for both office staff and field engineers has been maximised by removing the paper chase from the day to day operation. Jobs can be invoiced on the day of completion rather than waiting days for job sheets to be returned therefore improving cash flow."
Airco plan to continue their expansion of the JobLogic system by implementing the WebLogic module. Paul Lough explained, "WebLogic will compliment our PDALogic investment by allowing our clients to access real time job information and download copies of their signed job sheets via our website. It's a strong selling point for our business as client's are increasingly looking to have visibility of their jobs and associated reports without having to make enquiries by phone. They can actually view the progress or history of a job from anywhere with an internet connection."
For more information about the services offered by Airco please visit www.airco.co.uk
