This was a big year for Okappy and we couldn’t be more proud of the product we’ve been working hard on over the last 3 ½ years! Reflecting upon our journey, we thought we’d share a review of how far we’ve come this year.
Improved Performance
On the technology side, 2018 has seen improvements to the reliability and performance of the system as usage has grown dramatically. Part of improving performance is understanding where the bottlenecks are.
Over the year we’ve implemented better monitoring so we can improve our understanding of the performance and reliability of the platform. This has allowed us to dramatically speed up certain aspects of the system and better handle large spikes in traffic. We’ve also implemented automated testing across the platform with over 1,000 tests now running each night!
New Developments
Highlights of the features and improvements we’ve rolled out this year include:
- The ability to link jobs
- A more in-depth auditing to the system
- Improvements to reporting functionality
- Enhancements to search throughout the platform
- Improvements to the calendar and scheduling
- Improvements to the performance of the iOS app when in poor network conditions
- Enhancements to Android app for more consistency with the iOS app
Over the next quarter we’re planning to work on the following:
- Optimising our onboarding through the website and apps
- Allowing customers to add/edit their own templates
- Enhancing invoicing, calendar and scheduler
- Improving location functionality within our apps
- Improving performance across the platform
- Automating and promoting referrals
Thought Leaders
This year we’ve been invited to give over 8 seminars to industry leaders on how companies can adapt to the changing world of work. This included speaking at UK Construction Week and being shortlisted to speak at the Mayor of London’s TechInvest event for smart city technologies. We were also selected to be on the innovation trail at UK Construction Week. This year we’ve more than doubled our social media following and continue to generate interest across the Trades media.
Out and About
This year we attended 4 trade shows including the Facilities Management show at Excel, Construction Week at the NEC, Drain Trader show in Glasgow and HVAC show at Excel. These shows were a great opportunity to meet with industry leading companies and raise awareness of how Okappy is helping businesses to better collaborate.
In the Press
We’ve received a lot of coverage in the Trades press over the past year and have also taken part in a number of marketing collaborations with other businesses. We’d like to thank FM World, FMJ, Drain Trader, ThisWeekinFM, iOffice, Elevation Magazine and UK Construction Week for their support and promotion of our core work.
Seeing Our Customers Thrive
It has been very heartwarming to see our efforts reap benefits for customers. We have received a number of reviews from customers who have really benefited from the system. Here is a selection of our favourites…
“This app is superb, it’s changed the way my business operates. I run a building and maintenance firm. It has saved us a lot of time and money in the past 9 months. I can’t rate it highly enough. The support is also very good.” – Leo, Director LA Rosser Ltd.
“Okappy has reduced the amount of paperwork by about 90% and, on an even better note, it has reduced my workload by about 80% as a Service Manager who manages multiple engineers… The Okappy system has improved the service we provide whilst helping to make us super efficient and provide the best service for our customers.” – Lee, Services Manager at BEC Security Perimeter.
“With Okappy, we now collaborate in a whole new way! We get the job done far more efficiently than we’ve ever been able to, which has had a real positive impact.” – Anthony, Director of Convert Water Ltd.
“We can always see what is going on with each job at a glance. We get job information back straight away but I always have the option to change it if I need to.” – Mark, Managing Director, Maclin Pumps.
“Okappy helps us build better relationships in the industry. It’s not just job management, but a network to connect with our employees, customers and subcontractors!” – Kris, Director of MW Lifts Services Ltd.
The A-Team
And, of course, none of this would be possible without the hard work of team Okappy behind the scenes! This year the team has really grown. Earlier in the year we welcomed Joe who has been leading on the Sales front and Zeeshan whose wealth of expertise on frontend development has helped us accelerate building a software we are truly proud of. We’ve also had a number of interns and short term employees including Noah who helped us work on our API and Ren who worked across testing.
Not only do we feel we have the right balance of creativity, technical know-how and fine-tuned business acumen, but a group of people who share the common goal of creating a product that really helps improve people’s working lives. We believe we have an opportunity to help millions of companies around the world collaborate and communicate in a better way. So on that note, we wish you all a happy new year and look forward to what 2019 has in store!
To end, here is a selection of some of our personal highlights and lowlights from the year…
Robin, iOS Guru
“My low points involved
unnecessary anger
upsetting people
My highest point was
getting a sneaky haiku
onto the app store”
Joe, Chatty Sales Guy
“My lowest point was when I gave myself whiplash whilst I flung my bag over my shoulder running for the train in my excitement to get to work. But the high point was that I found a good Osteopath…”
Naomi, Artsy Fartsy Person
“My highlight involved working closely with Joe to work out the perfect coffee blend for our coffee breaks. My lowest moment was one day when the office manager announced there was no more coffee… we really lost the plot that day (a bit like this).”
Zeeshan, Frontend Dude
“My highlight was speaking at a Raspberry Pi Conference about importance of AI and presenting a Raspberry based solution for loading bays at busy industrial units. My lowlight was sticking my car’s wing mirrors with scotch tape after motorcyclists broke both of them and I did not have time to go get replacements. Mind you, this could easily be a highlight as three months on, the scotch tape is holding strong.”
Richard, Everyone’s Boss
“My low point was getting Robin angry when I noticed he posted a haiku onto the app store. My high point was seeing the look on Naomi and Gerry’s faces when they realised that Joe spent more time doing his hair in the morning than they did.”
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