Westway Reactive Ltd Case Study
Tell us about your role in the company
I do everything admin. Any emails that come in – I’m the person who deals with them. I upload all the jobs onto the Okappy app, and send out the reports, quotes and invoices. I also deal with any customers’ inquiries. We’ve been using Okappy since June and it’s amazing!
I used to work for another company that didn’t have anything like this. The process involved having to email the job description to the engineers. Then they’d send their reports in an email format and I’d have to type them up onto Word documents and resize pictures.
The system I used at the previous company had no way of managing digital records, so they used to print out every single email that was sent! The amount of paper we were using was ridiculous, but with Okappy you don’t need to print out anything, so it saves money on paper and ink. There’s an initial payout but you’re saving money in the long term because of how much more efficient you are. Everything used to be so time-consuming, but Okappy is just quick and easy.
How did you discover Okappy?
We heard about Okappy through one of the contractors we use. They gave the idea to my manager and I was asked to look into it. We did the free trial and decided that we really liked it. So far, it’s been brilliant!
Do you use Okappy as a network to connect to your subcontractors?
We have all our main subcontractors on our system that we assign jobs to. At the moment, we haven’t got all the bigger companies involved just yet, because we don’t use them often. Moving forward, if we did start getting a lot of abseiling work, for example, I’d encourage them to start using Okappy as it cuts out the duplication of information between systems.
Could you estimate how many hours a week it has saved your job?
Without exaggerating – hundreds. To do everything manually for the amount of jobs that we get through would take a huge amount of time. Obviously, with Okappy all the job information is already on there. All I do is go through and check for spelling and grammar, then just click send. It saves so much time.
Our company has been growing and that’s partly down to having an efficient system in place to help us allocate some of that time that we were spending on admin to onboarding new clients.
We are in the reactive maintenance sector, so obviously it is reactive. Everyone wants things done fast. When you’ve got a manual system, it’s hard to get everything done in the time scale that the customer wants it. Now, if they say, “Can you send us over a report?”, it’s easy to go onto the app and just click send.
I don’t have to type the job sites out every time because the system remembers the address details. You just type in the first part of the site and then it brings up the address. That also helps to save a lot of time.
It just makes my life much easier. It’s like a godsend!
What would your message be to any companies thinking about using a system like Okappy?
I’d just say – give it a go. You’ll be surprised how much time it will save. People might be apprehensive and think “Why not just have it done in the office?” But with Okappy, you’d actually save money on staff. We’d need at least two other people to deal with the amount of workload coming in if we didn’t have Okappy. So you’re actually saving money! With the app, everyone who needs to access it, can access it from wherever they are.
People might also feel stuck in their ways of managing work with a paper-based system, which I can understand, but I’ve had no issues with things falling through on Okappy. It’s easier to keep on top of knowing when jobs need to be done. Even for people who don’t consider themselves to be “computer savvy”, it’s not that difficult to work out. There are apps that are really confusing, but Okappy was straightforward. You pick it up really quickly!