Partner profile: simPRO

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Building strong industry relationships, such as the one with simPRO job management software, is key to Heron Plumbing’s success.

Heron Plumbing has been operating in New Zealand for over 60 years. Current owners Dale and Andrea Lovell took over 10 years ago, though Dale has been with the company for 40 years. “Dale literally started from the bottom and worked his way up,” says Andrea.

He joined Heron Plumbing as a labourer when he was 14 and moved through different roles in the business. When his old boss decided to sell the company, Dale took it on with Andrea coming on board as Office and Marketing Manager.

As a lifelong plumber and current member of the national Master Plumbers Board, Dale has always understood the importance of partnering with the right organisations to build business success—which is why he and Andrea decided to adopt simPRO job management software. “We have been running simPRO almost as long as we have had the business,” says Andrea.

“When we took over the company, it was mostly a paper-based system. They did have software in place but everything still

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got printed out. We looked at it and decided it was throwing away money hand over fist.

“We did the research to see what kind of systems we thought would work for us, and Dale found simPRO. He immediately thought it might be a great fit. Specifically, we wanted a software system that was easy to use and that allowed our field staff to add job notes and photos quickly. It also needed to have features for simple sign-offs so we could quickly send invoices from the office.”

In the nine years since Andrea and Dale implemented simPRO, they have seen plenty of change but their strong industry relationships have helped them grow their business and take on larger projects. “We have tripled our turnover but haven’t had to increase our office staff,” says Andrea.

“We like to think of ourselves as a familyoriented company and, because simPRO has cut down a lot of our back-end admin, it has allowed our team to take on other roles within the office.”

The other major improvement they have seen is streamlined purchasing and invoicing from industry suppliers that integrate into their operations software. “Our major suppliers are Plumbing World and Mico, both of which integrate with simPRO through the Supplier Catalogue feature,” says Dale.

“It’s great for us because our invoices can be over a page long with different parts listed. Instead of having to manually enter all that information, it automatically transfers into our simPRO system.”

As a tool for bringing together these important connections between the different industry players, simPRO has provided the support Dale and Andrea need to help their business thrive.

“I would recommend simPRO hands down to any company like ours because it is so easy to use,” says Andrea. “The support is very friendly and approachable, and the system will end up saving you a lot of time. Time is money, and by saving time you become a lot more efficient and cost-effective.”

simPRO is dedicated to building great relationships across the industry and offers all Master Plumbers members 20% off the initial implementation costs when signing up as a new simPRO customer.

Visit www.simprogroup.com/nz/ master-plumbers to find out how simPRO can support your business.

NZ