Case Study - Digitising an Engineering Office

An engineering company sought out our services to help them modernise their systems.

They were using paper job sheets that had to be printed for the engineers, hand-written on site, brought back to the office to be scanned and then emailed to the customer. 

They were using outdated email accounts that weren't connected to their website and were running out of storage space.

They were expanding the team, and getting fed up sending documents back and forth to each other for editing. 

Digitising Their Job Paperwork

We sat down with the client to discuss their current systems and create a brief for field service software going forward. We researched the software options on the market, made appointments with each of their sales teams and ran through demos, eventually selecting Commusoft as the most suitable (please get in touch for a referral code if you're looking at Commusoft).

With the client's approval, we signed up with Commusoft and booked the training and onboarding. We assisted with setting up the user accounts and bulk-uploading all of their customer details, including work addresses, equipment at each site etc. 

The new system allows them to create jobs, schedule them into the diary for each engineer and send the job report directly to the customer. From there, they can create quotes and invoices, keep notes and photos filed against customers and work addresses, effectively giving a full CRM system. On the engineer's side, they can view their diary through the app on their tablet/phone, automatically record travel time, arrival time, notes on the job, upload photos, provide feedback and either close down the job or book another visit. 

It has completely changed the way the office and engineers work together, and has streamlined their processes, freeing up plenty of time for other important work. 

Moving Across to Google Workspace

Solving both their email and collaborative working issues, we set them up on Google Workspace. Through this, we created new email addresses using their website domain, which gave a more professional feel. We also helped them setup their Drive for document storage and creation, and provided full training on how to use it in a way that made sense for them. 

This again helped them work more efficiently. The documents are all live, so they are always seeing the most up-to-date version, and can see when any changes were made and who by. Their own processes mean that all documentation that's not created in Drive is uploaded there so that they can be accessed from any device. This was especially useful during the COVID pandemic when sudden lockdowns meant that people were having to work from home - they all had access to everything they needed and the transition to remote working was seamless. 

Working Through COVID

The digitisation was mostly complete before COVID hit, which meant that they were well prepared for the changes in processes, including remote working. With the old phone handsets in the office only having the ability to divert to one mobile number, they were struggling to keep on top of phone calls, so we researched VOIP options for them and set them up with a user-friendly app. This means incoming phone calls ring on each available staff members' phone so there's no bottleneck, and they can also use the hold and divert function to put the call through to another team member if required. Also, phone calls made through the app will show to the recipient as coming from the office number (maintaining staff's privacy with their own phone numbers). 

Here's what they had to say about the projects:

'AGCS digitised all of our systems, which helped us streamline our processes and made tasks easier for our engineers and office team. They set us up with Google Workspace, which has transformed the way our team works collaboratively. Documents are available to our engineers on their devices, and any changes made to these documents are in real-time so everyone is always seeing the latest version. They also researched field engineer software, after creating a brief with us. We still use the software six years later and couldn’t be happier. The AGCS team are patient, professional and extremely knowledgeable. We are very grateful for all their help and training.'