Find out how Hot Off The Press Ltd has benefited from using Okappy, a leading job management software application to help them grow their business.
Hot Off The Press is a young, up and coming Mobile Laundrette which offers a fast, friendly and reliable ironing and washing service which can include washing and ironing or a combined wash and iron at a discounted rate.
The friendly team arrive at your place of home or work at a time that’s convenient. They currently cover Burnham, Slough, Windsor, Eton, Cippenham, Taplow, Maidenhead, Cookham, Marlow, Beaconsfield, Langley, Farnham Royal, Wexham and Stoke Poges and are expanding into other areas with the launch of new franchises across the UK
In order to grow, Thomas Rogerson, the Founder and the Director, realised they needed to have a better grip on their data having information available to all their operatives in a simple and easy to use way.
“Previously, we had to copy information from one application to another. We’d copy the information from our online calendar and put it in a notes application which we could all access. We’d then message each of our operatives via WhatsApp.” says Eleni, Manager of Hot Off The Press. “We were continually scrolling within Notes and WhatsApp and trying to check information between both places. Jobs could easily be missed and in the worst case lost altogether if our notes app went down or someone deleted something by mistake.”
Why did Hot Off The Press choose Okappy
Tom looked at a lot of different software but couldn’t find any that fit his needs, or could be tailored to their business requirements. His drivers need to be able to log into a dashboard so they can add and view jobs. They need multiple different job types including ironing, washing, washing and ironing, dry cleaning, repairs and alterations and other. Within each job they wanted a reference field and weight field along with the due date, who the job is assigned to and any notes for that job. They didn’t want to enter customer information as they have a separate system for that and don’t want any notifications to be sent to anyone. They also didn’t want anything location related. Hot Off The Press also wanted to be able to see the status of each job and whether the job has been paid (and how i.e., cash, card, online, paypal or direct debit).
“I was really impressed by how flexible the Okappy platform is.” says Tom, Director of Hot Off The Press. “Our business is different to most, but we love how Okappy can be configured and adapted to our needs”.
Ultimately using Okappy meant that Tom and his team had real-time visibility over what was going on his business. There was no more lost or missing information or searching through multiple different systems to find what was said about a particular job.
How are Hot Off The Press using Okappy to streamline their business and reduce costs
Our drivers collect the clothes from the customer and add the job onto the Okappy system via the Okappy Monitor iOS App.
Back in the factory, they can see all the outstanding jobs in date order on a 50” screen. All our ironers who are working on our premises can view the jobs and then select one to start work on. The ironers mark the job as on site when they start ironing, using a wall mounted iPad. Once finished, they mark the job as complete. At this stage, we know it’s ready to be delivered back to the customer.
We also have Ironers who work from their own homes. They can also access the list of jobs on their mobile telephone, and update it in the same way.
The admin team monitor the progress of all the jobs on a wall mounted screen above our desks which is set to display todays jobs. “At a glance, we can see the status of all our jobs”, says Eleni. “We can see if there are any problems and follow up on that job rather than worrying about every single job.”
Currently Hot Off The Press don’t use the invoicing functionality of Okappy as some of their jobs are too complex to rely on importing to Kashflow. They create an invoice manually on Kashflow then archive the job once it has been entered.
At the end of the month they import specific employees jobs into Kashflow in order to calculate the wages. (which is based on weight of clothes ironed).
In addition, Hot Off The Press now has its first franchise in Essex. Using Okappy they can send jobs to the franchise and see the status whilst keeping the separation between the two businesses. Sometimes when they are busy, they might use our ironers. With Okappy, they just add and send the jobs to us. Our ironers will pick up the jobs then complete. Our franchisee can see the job progress without having to ring to find out when it’s done.
How has this benefited Hot Off The Press
By having a big screen on site, everyone knows what everyone is doing. “It’s so simple and easy”, says Tom. “The ironers just click on the job, update the progress or make a note and attach a picture if needed then click complete”. This means no more arguments, no more searching for information and no more missed communication.
“As the ironers are paid by weight, we can run a report for each ironer, look at their jobs and the weight of clothes they’ve ironed and quickly work out how much to pay them”. Says Tom. “It used to take days to pull everything together, now it only takes 30 seconds for each ironer. It’s amazing!”
This enables Tom to spend more time thinking about more important things such as how he can grow the franchise and take on more businesses. They’re now even looking at expanding into other sections such as cleaning.
More examples
Check out other examples of how Okappy can be used to benefit your business.
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