News

Context

• iKon Electrical Group is a utilities firm based in Bournemouth, providing full design & build services for both commercial and retail customers.
• Founded in 2008, the business has since become a market leader in commercial electrical and associated services, increasing their customer-base year on year and winning bigger and better contracts.
• The team prides itself on going that extra mile to ensure the service they provide exceeds their client’s needs and expectations, earning them a stellar reputation backed by years of experience.

Challenge

iKon was operating on a variety of siloed systems to capture and record job information, meaning their various operational processes could not operate based on the same data. Without a centralised point for hosting information, the completion of administrative tasks would take longer as staff had to seek out specific data across several disparate systems.

Compounding this was the company’s constantly growing suite of clients, all of whom required job information be delivered to them in different formats. Operatives and office teams alike would have to stay current with this themselves, delivering much of the harvested data through paperwork. This opened field teams up to errors, and without a reliable way of communicating data, administrative staff would often find themselves chasing information from site to keep themselves up to date on job progress.

Having recently switched to a direct-to-retailer market, the business also required a system that would adapt to its needs. Their current frameworks lacked the flexibility to be reactive and adaptable in response to sudden changes to client delivery without hindering the work of their operatives, something that would be crucial if they were to ensure sustainable growth within their new market.

Solution

Re-flow is a fully integrated, cloud-based solution that provides businesses complete control over all their major operational processes. From creating jobs, scheduling, managing assets, enforcing HSE compliance and more, all of Re-flow’s powerful features draw from the same centralised database which can be freely accessed anytime, anywhere through the software’s desktop dashboard.

The software’s team communication capabilities also mean that chasing job information or incomplete forms becomes a thing of the past. Re-flow has a proprietary messaging system that’s fully integrated with the system, allowing dashboard users to send messages with documents, forms and photos attached and stay current on who’s up to date through read receipts. Forms themselves can be assigned from the dashboard when events and tasks are scheduled against a job. Users can select from a catalogue of over 40 pre-built forms, including RAMS, dynamic risk assessments and daily work sheets.

For more specific needs, users can also customise and build their own forms from scratch to regulatory standards using the system’s intuitive, block-based form builder. When operatives log into the app and commence their daily work, all forms and relevant information is accessible through the app, both online and offline. With drop-down fields and enforced processes that leave no room for confusion, administrative staff can rest assured that high-quality data will arrive back instantly upon submission.

With a digital system, it’s also easier for all teams to remain reactive and adaptable when needing to make sudden changes according to customer requirements. Jobs, events and tasks

can be amended on the go, and changes will be instantly communicated to operatives upon their next synchronisation. Features such as live user tracking also streamline this process, allowing office staff to quickly re-assign operatives based on proximity to a job should the need arise. Since work progress is harvested in real-time, users can use this information to compile exportable reports that can be easily customised to fit the clients’ specifications and sent to them instantly.

Outcome

After adopting Re-flow, iKon gained complete control of their processes, uniting them all under one, comprehensive system and doing away with the many siloed systems they had used previously. This, along with the software streamlining tedious administrative tasks, enabled the business to increase available time by 30% and reduce the amount of ‘middle management’ needed to track work progress and billing.

Instant communication and strict compliance has also freed up the time of office teams, no longer needing to chase up operatives for updates on work progress or form completion. Digital forms and instant submission tagged with time, date, location and the operative submitting has enabled the building of robust audit trails. Filtering by specific criteria and parameters means data can be easily accessed and referred back to at a later date, increasing auditability by 80% while almost completely eliminating the need for paper recordkeeping.

This has also had an effect on HSE management. With access to all the latest information through the app’s knowledge base, operatives can remain current on best practice and take safety into their own hands. Strictly enforced form completion and compliance, as well as increased reactivity to nonconformities through better auditability has increased HSE reporting by a staggering 100%.

iKon Electrical Group now joins a community of hundreds of businesses nationwide who have embraced the digital age and transformed their operational processes, ensuring sustainable growth for years to come. Streamlining tedious administrative processes, mastering HSE management and increasing job turnaround. All this, and more, can be achieved with Re-flow’s field management software for utilities.

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