Edinburgh-based Dunedin Canmore Group has reported savings of £140,000 per year following the implementation of a Civica mobile working system for its tradesmen. The project took 12 months to complete and cost around £64,000, £6,000 less than the original budget.
Dunedin Canmore handles over 24,000 repairs jobs every year, with its 65 tradesmen previously having to use manual paper- based processes to manage their workloads. With increasing work orders from its tenants, Dunedin Canmore’s workers found that information from job sheets was regularly lost or not returned, incorrectly added to the system or, in some cases, the work was not done at all.
Robert Buchanan, head of IT, Dunedin Canmore, explained, “During the previous three years, the number of works orders for tenants had grown significantly. We needed to become more efficient when processing and handling repairs work.”
Having decided that a mobile working system would simplify and automate many of its repairs processes and improve the accuracy of the information sent to and from the tradesmen, Civica was chosen to supply and implement the new system.
The Civica Mobile platform enables all jobs to be automatically sent to the operatives’ handheld devices. This not only gives them greater flexibility, but also more control as they can now clock in from home, receive their daily jobs and go directly to their first appointment saving on time, fuel and travel costs. Dunedin Canmore’s contractors can also manage the stocks of materials in their vans directly through the PDAs, allowing extra materials to be booked for certain orders and once jobs are completed, they are automatically updated in real time on the back-office systems.
Buchanan said, “The biggest saving was eliminating the collection and return of paperwork to our workshop. We estimate that this saves at least £140,000 per year – the automatic completion of jobs on the PDAs has saved one working week per month in administration time.”
Following the successful implementation of the Civica system, Dunedin Canmore won the Herald Scotland Digital Business Award 2010, an annual award which recognises the work carried out by organisations around Scotland who have used digital innovation and technology to benefit their businesses.
