RPS Drainage Services Ltd is a highly professional Drainage maintenance company with a proven track record in both planned preventative drainage maintenance and reactive emergency call outs, providing a 24 hour 365 days per year service to an impressive client portfolio which includes Arcus Solutions, CBRE, The Royal Household, The Crown Estate, Spie, Nuffield Health and Team Q. The company has around 22 staff, all skilled in a particular discipline.
As the company expanded, Phil Turner, one of the directors, saw an opportunity to differentiate from the competition, provide better customer service and really lead the market. In order to do this, he wanted to streamline their processes, get rid of paperwork and ensure all his information was in one place, easily accessible and updated in real time. Equally important, he required something simple and easy to use for his engineers who may have to compile reports in difficult challenging conditions.
“We wanted to centralize all the job sheets and keep everything in one place. There was always a time delay for the engineers to bring job sheets back to the office, especially when they worked overnight.  This always meant we were not able to provide relevant crucial updates and invoice work completed immediately,” says Clare, Accounts at RPS.

Why did RPS Drainage choose Okappy?

RPS looked at a number of different systems but the majority appeared to be overly complex, requiring multiple screens in order to complete the simplest of tasks. Okappy stood out to them as it appeared very user-friendly. All the relevant important information was easily accessible and the Okappy staff were always available to assist if required.

“The people at Okappy are professional and ready to help, they listen to the needs of the individual and action any query speedily. I fully recommend this system to any business owner that wishes to streamline the information they receive from onsite engineers, the service they provide their clients and ultimately the rate at which they can invoice works completed.”

How is RPS using Okappy to streamline their business and reduce costs?

A job typically comes in by phone or email. It is immediately logged onto the system by the office staff. The job is then available to all administrators via the Jobs dashboard. Each member of the team can see at a glance what jobs are booked in, including customer details, job description, who allocated the job and to whom.  At that point, the job can be assigned to the relevant engineer who sees it pop up on their phone or tablet. As soon as the engineer has viewed the job, the status is updated in real-time all the way through to eventual completion. The details of the work undertaken are available straight away, no more chasing paperwork and invoices can be raised immediately.
“With a real-time update of the job’s status, we can see very easily if the engineer has viewed their job, when they are on site and when they finish the job without having to ring them up to find out what’s going on,” says Phil, Director of RPS. “We get information back straight away which means we know what work was done and can see whether an image, video and or signature have been taken, one of the things our clients like most is the photographs depicting the ongoing work which can be easily attached from the engineer’s phones. Similarly, we are able to email completed job sheets and info to all parties on completion of any work.”
Once the invoice has been raised and paid, it is exported to Sage Accounts without having to duplicate information between the two systems.
“Okappy is very simple to use. When a customer rings up for information, we can quickly search or run a report from Okappy without having to go into different folders or mailbox to look for it, which means we can get back to our customers’ queries straight away” says Becky, Accounts at RPS. “It is good for the engineers too as they can get on with what they do best rather than having to field calls from management or fill out lots of paperwork.”

How has this benefitted RPS?

“The turnaround time from accepting a job to invoicing it is now a lot quicker. Before Okappy, raising an invoice could take weeks. Now we invoice minutes after the job has been completed. Since the job details complete with signature are instantly available, any invoice queries can be instantly answered by anyone with system access, levels of access can be set as required. We also reduce costs through less paper. We don’t photocopy documents anymore. The franking machine has almost been made redundant,” says Clare, Accounts at RPS.”
Phil, one of the directors, can finally focus on other business aspects as well, such as bringing in more clients or thinking about their long-term strategy.
“The people at Okappy are professional and ready to help, they listen to the needs of the individual and action any query speedily. I fully recommend this system to any business owner that wishes to streamline the information they receive from onsite engineers the service they provide their clients and ultimately the rate at which they can invoice works completed,” says Phil, Director of RPS.