FEATURE
SHOP TILL IT DROPS
Simply Solutions is using Urgent to increase efficiency, enhance client services and save customers money – recently reducing maintenance costs at one blue-chip retailer by more than £200,000.
Simply Solutions has been providing facilities management and maintenance solutions to international clients for over 15 years. Customers include major retail brands such as Fat Face and Pets at Home and some of the UK’s largest care home companies, including Care UK and Caring Homes. The company looks after around 25,000 properties and offers a full range of services from helpdesk and reactive maintenance to compliance and planned maintenance.
Objectives As a fast-growing business, Simply Solutions had outgrown its existing CAFM software and needed a more advanced platform to underpin its future growth. The company was keen to invest in robust infrastructure that would help it deliver best-in-class services for clients.
“We wanted new FM software with a solid development roadmap and an international platform,” explained Colin Wilson, CEO of Simply Solutions. “Finding a progressive company that could be more of a strategic partner, rather than just a software vendor, was a critical factor in helping support our ongoing expansion.”
Urgent impressed Simply Solutions due to its technology but also from a people perspective, as Wilson continued: “We spent almost a year examining different vendors and it became clear Urgent was the most suitable technology platform. In addition to its existing FM capabilities, we saw that Urgent could also be more of a business management tool and cover elements of financial reporting in the future.”
Solution Simply Solutions uses Urgent to gain more control and visibility of maintenance activity across its 100+ clients. On a day-to-day basis, the Simply team use this to manage maintenance tasks, create purchase orders, track the purchase order through to completion and subsequently register invoice costs.
30 | TOMORROW’S FM
Wilson commented: “Urgent allows us to understand exactly where our customers’ maintenance costs are in a highly efficient way. The reports allow us to reveal things about their business, which enable them to make major decisions about budgets.”
Benefits Since going live, Urgent has delivered business value in various ways, most notably by highlighting areas for improvement. “As a strategic FM services company, one of our key differentiators is being able to use Urgent to analyse client data and reveal inefficiencies and where savings can be made,” explained Wilson. One example was a large client where Simply Solutions manages a £2m maintenance budget. By analysing data, Simply was able to save the company over £235,000 in planned maintenance works by recommending a revised schedule.
“We will be looking to use the system to help clients reduce their fixed overhead costs and not just save money on maintenance services, as we are today,” said Wilson. “For example, we can reduce a client’s helpdesk function, automate it and manage it within Urgent. This means the staff become empowered and free to focus on more complex areas, such as health and safety. Efficiency also improves as you only need one person involved in the helpdesk process instead of two or three.”
“Overall, the benefits of working with Urgent over the past year have been significant – not just in technology terms but the team is extremely supportive too. We enjoy more of a partnership approach instead of the traditional software vendor/customer relationship,” concluded Wilson. “The platform has enabled us to move our business from an analogue to digital solution and helped advance our strategic offering, which helps keep us ahead of our competition.”
www.simplyeu.co.uk www.urgent.technichegroup.com
https://urgent.technichegroup.com
twitter.com/TomorrowsFM
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