Background Information
Until they adopted Draggon, passive firestop products installer, Pro Fire Systems Ltd, were managing their on site surveys through a torturous combination of smart phone forms, Microsoft Excel and many hours manually piecing all of the required information together. All of that has now changed, and the way they conduct the surveys has been completely revolutionised by Draggon. We recently caught up with Pro Fire Systems MD, Steve Howarth, and he was able to tell us how the past few months have gone and how the business has been transformed since using Draggon.
The business problem
“We were using an online system that we found that enabled us to design our own forms on a smart phone, and by and large this was an improvement on what we had done previously,” Steve explained, “however there were some significant drawbacks. Firstly, there was no automatic pricing and none of the products we selected rolled up into a quotation. Secondly, the photographs we took were only transferable as links rather than images, and that was far from ideal. Neither did any of this approach help us in any way to produce the marked up drawing of the floor plan. So, basically, we had one lengthy onsite process which would then be followed up by three further office processes before we were able to submit a fully priced quotation, along with the fully marked up floor plan.”
The vision
Steve came to us and explained his business problem but also what he had in mind as his ideal solution. “I had this vision for what I wanted, which was a system that I could use on a smart phone or tablet that would allow me to create markers on the drawing which would indicate where the products were specified. Following that, each marker could be “opened up” to allow me to enter the products, quantities and photographs. The system would be pre-populated with my products and pricing and would be auto calculating and building my master quotation as I went along”.
The solution
We were very happy to meet Steve and hear of this business requirement. We already had customers using our software in a very similar way and we were able to create additional
functionality on the app itself to meet Steve’s particular needs. Steve and his team of surveyors have been using Draggon now for about twelve months and the results have been stunning. Steve takes up the story, “Since using Draggon, we now have one comprehensive on-site process which captures everything we need downstream of the process. All of the data, marked up drawings, photographs, pricing et cetera is all synchronised back up to the Draggon cloud where we can access each record back in the office and quickly select and print off the documents we need. We have literally saved weeks and weeks of time. For example, we won a contract with a major university in the north-east of England; we have conducted something in the region of 80 separate surveys – with our old system we would probably still be doing them, but with Draggon we were able to conduct the survey and turn around the quotations and related documentation within 24 to 48 hours. This has helped us massively to turn those surveys into remedial works. It has absolutely transformed the way we work.”
We always set out to deliver solutions that are easy to use and we are delighted to hear that Steve and his team are so positive about the speed and ease with which they can use the software. “Our customers such as universities and NHS Trusts put us under immense pressure to deliver the results of the surveys and Draggon has been superb in that regard. We have had several positive comments from customers who are both intrigued and impressed by the software we are using and are extremely grateful that we can turn their reports around so quickly.”
Next Steps
Steve has begun the process of rolling out Draggon to his team of installers so that they can use the tool to capture the products they have fitted, take all of the necessary photographs and be automatically generating the corresponding marked up floor plan and accompanying documentation.
We look forward to bringing you further news from Pro Fire Systems in the near future.
Contacts
If you have any questions, please contact us at:
Draggon
Unit 18, Kirkby Stephen Business Park, St Luke’s Road, Kirkby Stephen, Cumbria, CA17 4HT
enquiries@draggon.co
Tel: 017683 72716