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Excel Environmental Technical Services Ltd (Excel ETS) is a pest control company operating within the M25. They offer planned maintenance and pest control inspections for the food and catering industry.

We interviewed Ian, Operations Director at Excel ETS Ltd about how they use Okappy to manage work in the pest control industry. Read on for more…

Tell us about your company

Excel Environmental Technical Services or Excel ETS is a pest control company operating within the M25. We offer planned maintenance and pest control inspections for the food and catering industry. The ongoing maintenance of restaurants makes up 80% of our business. These services are pre-planned in advance.

On our main schedule, some people may have weekly, monthly or quarterly visits depending on the service they are offered.

How do you use Okappy?

Every January we spend 2 weeks planning the whole year for all of our engineers via Okappy’s workforce management platform. Each engineer will have a schedule laid out for the next 12 months for each customer. They simply work off of their dashboard on a weekly basis, taking the calls that have been pre-planned for them.

Do you spend any time revising that plan?

It’s amended on a daily basis because customers will phone up and say, “I need an emergency visit,” or we’d have new restaurants that open and close. In the pandemic, customers have often suspended, reenacted or changed the frequencies of services. However, our office staff can work flexibly around the original framework we have in place.

Do your engineers use the Okappy mobile app?

Yes. They use Okappy’s mobile app to take photos and videos to document work done.

They’ll also create their own emergency jobs. We receive it all as live data – so we know when an engineer is on site or a customer has signed for a job.

The client can’t then say that no one’s been there, because we can prove that an engineer was there at an exact time.

How did you discover Okappy?

Before we started using Okappy, we had our own in-house system which we’ve outgrown. I surfed the internet, found lots of people that offered a similar system to Okappy. Then I downloaded all the free trials and purposely didn’t download any instruction booklets. I tried each one to see if it was intuitive enough that I could just use it without being taught. The reason I chose Okappy was because I found that I could understand what I had to do without sitting and reading the manual. It’s really easy for staff to understand. We’ve been using Okappy for over 3.5 years now.

Could you elaborate a bit more on the problems you were facing with your in-house system?

It had no flexibility and it was unreliable. It was bought when there were only 2 staff, but we’ve now got 10 and it was just not capable of managing the complexity of work for that many people.

Have there been any noticeable differences before and after using Okappy?

The main difference is in how much more efficient it is to find the job information you need. The other difference is how much easier it is when it comes to working with our subcontractors. Subcontractors can log into Okappy themselves at their own office to retrieve any information they need about the work that they’ve got to do for us or that we’re doing for them.

Do you use Okappy as a network?

Yes. We’ve got subcontractors on the platform, but we’ve also got our customers using it as well. Every restaurant has a login so that all of their paperwork, which we do for them, is available on Okappy. The idea being that the customer can then go paperless. If the health officer comes in, they can see everything that’s available for the whole year at the click of a button.

How did your customers and subcontractors find using the system?

The main subcontractor that uses it had no training and found it very easy to use and understand. Plus, they can then keep track of the work they give us, so it’s made their life a lot easier too!

How does Okappy cater specifically to the pest control industry?

I believe that it’s a very simple to use scheduling tool, and every pest control company will need to run a schedule. Compared to some of the scheduling tools that are out there, it’s affordable. I know people that have spent excess of £100,000 on a pest control scheduler.

How much time has it saved you?

I would say that the biggest efficiency it gives us is how easy it is to check what work we’ve actually done to make sure we invoice correctly. That’s the biggest time saver. It’s been very easy to just prove to people that we’ve done the work for them, and then send them the invoice. As a consequence, it’s kept our cash flow going.

What would your message be to similar companies thinking about using Okappy?

I would say to them that if they want a system that’s intuitive to use, reliable – because we’ve had no system failures – then have a look at Okappy. It’s easy to use. It’s a bit like an iPhone, you just work your way through it. It’s simple to roll out and we’ve not had problems with the systems crashing – it’s always available.