Kynection: What were the key problems Creative Plumbing faced before working with Kynection as a technology partner?
Horton Poulter: The problem within Creative Plumbing was that we were still using paper-based systems across the business, which required a lot of hours spent manually sorting, sifting, and allocating our teams.
Kynection: What was at stake if you didn’t fix these problems?
Horton Poulter: The reality is that if we hadn’t fixed it, the business would have become non-competitive. The whole idea was to minimise the costs of employing a person to do data entry and sort through paperwork, as the data entry can now be completed automatically by staff on-site.
Kynection: How did Kynection approach customising the system to suit your requirements during the implementation phase?
Horton Poulter: At the beginning of this project we had a concept that we put together, but it was easy to modify these requirements as when what we wanted changed since the modular systems were easy to customise. With business, it’s not a matter of saying “here’s the box, this is what you get”. Being a small business means you have to be flexible and you have to be able to shift with the times and adapt, and the beauty of Kynection is that they can adapt, change, or modify the system to suit your business.
Kynection: How long did it take before you started seeing results from Kynection’s technology?
Horton Poulter: We started seeing real results after around 3 months of the implementation. Initially there were a lot of things that we hadn’t thought through and things we thought we had covered. The modular system as such allows you to be able to adapt as you go along. If we needed to make a change that was possible with Kynection.
Kynection: What are some key examples of how the technology helps your business on a daily basis?
Horton Poulter: One of the main examples is the fact that we can load a current construction plan into the system and the team out on the job can see it instantly. Secondly, timesheets are a lot simpler now because the staff can fill out a timesheet with their task codes rather than filling out a paper form.
There are other simple benefits like annual leave forms as well. Rather than walking onto site and saying “I want a holiday next week,” the staff member will submit a form that gets approved and then we put it in the calendar and it’s locked in.
Another one of the major benefits is that we’ve created an RFI (Request for Information) form. If anyone comes across a problem on a job, instead of just talking to the site manager they can also send off an RFI. This form will come to the head office instantly, which means we’ve got coverage on when they’ve asked that question and if there’s ever feedback that we’re delaying a project, we can show the client that we’re not because we sent them an RFI that they never responded to. It gives us extra protection on jobs.
Kynection: How would you summarise the benefits that Kynection’s provided to Creative Plumbing?
Horton Poulter: The beauty of this application is that it is primarily a smartphone application, which is a big benefit for us as everyone has a smartphone.
The second advantage is that data is accessible in the office almost instantaneously. We’ve got jobs spread all over Victoria, so having to go to those jobs to get that information could take a day or two previously.
Kynection’s system has been able to speed up our processes in a lot of ways. These days, every minute counts towards making a job come in on budget so saving time is a massive advantage.
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