Glass News Interview Business Pilot

BUSINESS PILOT, AN INSTALLER’S CRM SYSTEM DESIGNED BY INSTALLERS

Business Pilot’s Elton Boocock talks to Glass News’ Editor, Chris Champion, about CRM systems and their benefits to installers.

CRM systems are not new: they’ve been around for many years. Indeed some may argue that the Excel spreadsheet that everything has been recorded on for years is all they need. They may have moved on to a software package of some description but has it given visibility of every element of their operation from leads and conversions to job scheduling, cost of installation, service calls, and financial reporting? Does it evolve, responding to changing requirements of its users, helping them to maximise productivity and profitability, within their operations? It was this reasoning that brought together installers Cherwell Windows and Thames Valley Windows and persuaded them that they needed a CRM system that was for installers, and designed by installers. Enter Business Pilot, a system that has been developed and released, built on the day-to-day realities of running a retail installation business. Basically, they have taken the process from each business, developed new ones and brought it together in a digital business management tool, built for the home improvement sector. It was launched in 2019 as a cloud-based CRM and management system that has continued its development as Covid changed the way we sell and interact with our customers.

As Elton Boocock, Business Pilot’s Managing Director says: “CRMs and business management tools are fundamental in underpinning and providing a foundation for this shift. They are changing how systems companies, fabricators - and retailers - are running their businesses. And that revolution is accelerating faster in retail than anywhere else. We believe that window and door retail is entering a period of rapid change, driven by digital innovation and redefined consumer expectations of service and customer experience. We are already seeing early-adopters come on board. Retail businesses are harnessing the power of digital business management tools to run their operations more effectively and more profitably - and most importantly to deliver a better customer experience. When you digitise your business, you put the processes in place which drive new consistency in customer experience and safety net, which makes sure things that need to be done are done and at the right time. Customer experience isn’t a new concept - the way that it is being delivered by progressive installation businesses, is. And it is that which we believe will define future success in window and door retail.

It’s about effective targeting and management of prospects, transparency of process, the visibility of each element of your operation, and individual job and most significantly, effective communication. Business Pilot and other CRMS, are driving a step change in how retailers manage and use information to improve communication internally, and with the customer to deliver better customer experience.” In May a new dashboard was launched that gives visibility to a variety of important business functions such as an Ops Dashboard showing headline financial performance details including sales, cash in the bank, balances, outstanding, orders, invoices fitted value, costs and gross profit - each automatically updated with every new sale made, job completed, or bill paid. A Status Dashboard gives installers instant visibility of where a lead/sale or installation is and access to their lead-to-contract or contract-to-delivery pipelines. For example, installers can see the value of leads allocated, how many jobs have been quoted, the value of quotes followed up, the value of quotes waiting for a demo etc. The Sales Dashboard flags unassigned leads and highlights who assigned leads have been allocated to, tracking their individual performance and hit rate. The People and Area Sales Dashboard provides a broader helicopter overview of who leads have been allocated to, whereas the Leads and Products Dashboard allows you to track performance of products and your lead generation activity and provides a headline overview of which products are selling best and where leads were sourced. The Marketing Dashboard provides a more detailed insight on how much each lead costs you to acquire and the effectiveness of any campaign at any given point, allowing installers to maximise return on investment by understanding which channels are not only delivering the highest number of leads – but most cost effectively. “There’s no fluff here.” Says Elton. “The Dashboards give you the metrics that really count. At the same time, while Business Pilot allows you to extract data against almost any stream, we have focussed on the things that every business actually needs to know to keep things simple and avoid overload. We want to be the cure for data anxiety, not contribute to the problem.” This cloud based system continues to develop apace with Heat Mapping allowing installers to identify which geographical areas deliver the best returns, highest values and conversion rates, colour coding hot spots and representing them by location. The Status Progression Tool lets installers map their lead-to-contract or contract-todelivery process - the things they do every day in their business - but digitally. The new Email integration tool is a real boon! Basically it allocates a unique email address to every job and integrates with every email platform. As they say: “A unique email is assigned to each lead or job as soon as it’s created. You can copy and paste it into your preferred email client in the cc or bcc box, or send direct from within Business Pilot.

“Either way you get an instantly accessible and shared record of each email correspondence within the CRM. You, and anyone in your team can see exactly where each job is, what was said, and even automate those emails that you send on a regular basis through integration with our Status Progression Tool.” Business Pilot will continue to develop and already an FENSA API is being developed allowing installations to be registered inside Business Pilot without having to then log into the FENSA system. There is also a Pricing Software API on the stocks that allows the best in pricing tools to connect seamlessly with the best in CRM…. and that’s Business Pilot.

Watch the interview with Elton Boocock to gain more insight into cloud-based Business Pilot and how easy it is move to and adopt this system.

Elton Boocock