News
Re-flow Field Management Review by Gregory's Water Services
Context
- Gregory’s Water Services (GWS) is a Devon-based utilities company providing a variety of water-related services and specialising in leak detection, repair, and replacement.
- Founded in 2014, the two-man outfit has steadily expanded through providing stellar services which have enabled the firm to work with a greater number of contractors across the county.
Challenge
The team at GWS identified that their consistent and rapid growth was quickly outstripping the capabilities of their current, manual systems. Their team had been steadily expanding for years, and the firm was able to tender more work with larger clients. Having collaborated with large contractors in their sector, the trend of digital transformation became clear to the growing company.
As such, the team began to look for a system that could provide them a reliable structure for all major operational processes. Aside from streamlining administrative processes, increasing efficiency and providing better oversight, adopting a field management solution would most importantly enable the company to grow more sustainably.
To ensure they settled on a platform that would grow with them, GWS needed to be confident that the solution was flexible and able to integrate into their existing processes seamlessly. This meant cost-effectiveness, but crucially, user-friendliness. The team needed a solution that could be easily adopted by their operatives in the field without bringing works to a halt.
Solution
Re-flow is a comprehensive, cloud-based field management platform that unites all major operational processes into one piece of user-friendly software. The system is split between a browser-based desktop dashboard and a mobile app, facilitating processes and communication between the office and remote sites respectively.
Re-flow facilitates numerous field management processes, beginning with simple functions such as job creation. Users can easily create job packs through the system, compiling data from the knowledge base including PDF manuals, plans and drawings to flesh them out. Using the scheduler, events, such as site visits, can be created against jobs, where individual users or groups can be assigned.
The system automatically tracks key information such as availability, holidays, fatigue and qualifications, raising conflicts if the assigned operatives don’t meet requirements for a job. Once the right people for the job have been assigned, they’re able to access all relevant job information directly through their app, online and offline. To further streamline the process, common events can be scheduled to automatically
recur, with the timeframe and parameters fully customisable by the dashboard user.
In addition to jobs and tasks, all major health and safety functionalities can be handled through Re-flow. Users can select from a pre-built catalogue of over 40 common forms and tailor them to their unique needs through the user-friendly form builder. Truly bespoke forms of all complexities can even be built entirely from scratch, all to regulatory standards.
Once assigned to jobs and tasks, operatives can access forms through the app. Enforced completion processes, geofencing, as well as time, date and location tagging ensure that no corners are cut on-site. With submitted forms instantly fed back to the office, businesses gain greatly improved oversight and auditing capabilities thanks to real-time data.
All data harvested through Re-flow can be collated into exportable reports, be that surrounding operatives, assets, HSE processes or job progress. The system is fully flexible when it comes to harvesting data on the specific KPIs a business requires to sustainably grow. Going a step further, this data can then be shared as part of a wider ERP through pre-built accountancy and CRM connectors, or through the comprehensive REST API.
Outcome
Having adopted Re-flow, Gregory’s Water Services streamlined their operative processes and gained the tools to grow more sustainably. With HSE, vehicle plant checks and ordering greatly focused, teams are able to do more on-site with the same amount of time. Real-time data enables greater oversight, in addition to expediting the building of robust audit trails, increasing auditability by 75%.
Moving from manual paperwork, the system has established new processes for the company that weren’t present before. This includes a fully comprehensive asset management system that enables the business to track the status, locations and condition of all of their plant, equipment and operatives – a feature that will only become more powerful as the company expands and undertakes multiple projects across a wide geographical area.
With digital forms and data instantly fed back to the office, team communication has begun to greatly benefit, increasing by 15% so far. With a centralised solution for contact, processes have become more efficient and uniform, with forms themselves being completed to a far higher standard thanks to strictly enforced compliance.
Re-flow is an adaptable tool that flexes with the needs of our business and our clients. The data harvested greatly assists us in evidencing our works and ensuring operatives are following best practice; ensuring qualifications are tracked and equipment is maintained at all times. The adaptability of the system simply means it can handle everything we need for the projects we undertake.
General Manager
Gregory's Water Services
Most importantly to GWS, Re-flow has provided them the flexible tool they needed. The business is able to adapt to both their business needs, as well as the needs of their clients. With new features constantly rolling out and a dedicated team of software specialists a phone call away, the team is completely confident that their business won’t outstrip the capabilities of the software.
Gregory’s Water Services now joins a community of hundreds of businesses nationwide who have embraced digital transformation and ensured sustainable growth for years to come. All of this, and more, can be achieved with Re-flow’s award-winning field management software for utilities.
