Why go digital? Crate client "saved over ￡200k on one project"
We spoke to Graeme Wicks, Founder of Crate, about using digital tools to increase productivity and save businesses money. Crate is an all-in-one solution designed to help fleet operators working in waste management reduce costs, while increasing safety, efficiency, and compliance.
Or as Graeme put it...
"We're a waste transfer management system that helps the construction industry with productivity."
Where did the idea for Crate come from?
"When I graduated from university, I got a summer job working on a tipping facility and I did ticket collecting. I saw all the process’s flaws, collecting pieces of paper off the tipper drivers, stapling them to a wall until they came back out so I can give them a delivery receipt, all that fun stuff! Copying and manually typing over 200 lines of data into an Excel sheet every day in my car because there was no cabin or welfare on site for the first few weeks.
"I went from the work face to using my experience and help build better systems, understanding what the user wants and how we can make it easy to use and makes their job quicker and easier, whether that’s recording a delivery or signing a risk assessment on a tablet or phone."
Why is productivity so important?
“Productivity is one of the only routes out of inflation and high costs. If you can improve productivity, the rest will follow.
How can Crate support businesses' productivity?
"There are many benefits, but productivity, compliance, and safety are the main three.
"Mobile platform deployments and live data in the field have increased, so time to invoicing is reduced. If there's an issue with somebody's ticket, you can spot it by the time they've left the site, rather than waiting for them to be pulled over by the EA and having a fine put against your company for carrying the wrong material to the wrong place."
领英推荐
"I think we'll see a push for clients wanting digital systems to be mandatory, rather than dealing with paperwork."
Adopting digital to improve productivity (as well as compliance and safety) has a knock-on effect on the bottom line as Graeme points out:
"Another reason is the costs you can save. Administration costs, paper costs, filing costs, physical time spent on tasks, the list goes on. Issues are spotted sooner which means they’re fixed earlier meaning they don’t snowball and end up costing more, further down the line."
"one company that went fully digital, saved over ￡200,000 on one project for using digital inspections and mobile reporting."
How has I-Construct mentoring helped you to be more productive?
"I-Construct has mentors with a wealth of experience in the construction industry who helped run businesses, some of them big tier one contractors. Our mentoring has been fundamental to the way that we've grown our business in the first few months of being live.
"I've been used to managing software products and I'm very confident around that, but now I'm running a business, it's a completely different world. I wouldn't say I was na?ve, but there's no rule book. I have a friend who runs a business and that's about it. The actual day-to-day guidance of what I should be doing and then how I organise myself and my day, that's probably been the most valuable.
"It’s helped me understand how to get started – I think that was the biggest issue. For the first few weeks I would just open my laptop and just respond to emails, procrastinate. The barrier of procrastination will never, ever go away but it's more manageable now.
"Honestly, if we hadn't received the mentoring, I don't think we would've been as productive as we are today."