H2GO: A Journey to Regain Control of Your Business

H2Go Think Water’s custom made ERP software has just celebrated the two-year milestone of its first introduction into the group. The software was initially trialed by Whitsunday and Northern Rivers who took on the massive challenge of implementing the platform into their business. Both were confident in attacking this massive undertaking and two years down the track they now have a very strong handle on their business.

To say the software hasn’t had its challenges and caused some sleepless nights for all involved would be an understatement. In fact, when introducing any new software into a business it needs to be understood that this causes major change, upheaval and uncertainty. One key learning from our Members is that it’s vital that you take an active interest in the implementation and continual use of the software to ensure a successful integration. We now have approximately 20% of the group using H2GO, with a further 4-5 Members looking to implement this into their business before the end of the financial year.

From a high level, the software covers all areas of the business including, but not limited to, inventory management in your showroom, on projects, in warehouses and mobile vehicles.

Users can assign work to mobile service technicians and give them the ability to upload images of jobs and OHS documents on the road.

It’s fair to say that the basic software shell that we started out with has greately evolved into what it is today. In fact, Think Water Members are heavily involved with the developers in shaping the software into the cutting edge platform it is. When it comes to software we have a continuous improvement mindset, and are making regular updates and changes to make our Members lives easier. This year the NSO in conjunction with our software developers have scripted up and introduced a new pricing control matrix which reduces time spent on controlling and managing your margins. We have also introduced pre-set / designed reporting on “hot key” functionality for each part of the business such as retail, warehouse, sales, management, inventory and back of office. This was designed to show users knew which parts of their business they should be measuring and how often, because if you are unable to measure it, how do you assess the performance of individuals and the business?

As part of the continuous improvement journey, we are currently in the process of introducing a new consumer alert function to enable automatic customer alerts via SMS or email for upcoming jobs. These are a few of the improvements that are being implemented at the request of our Members via the free fortnightly Members forum. We strongly recommend that you join in, ask questions and have a say in the software development. If you are interested in taking back control of your business by inplementing H2GO, I strongly suggest that you talk to Noel at Whitsunday, Lee at Northern Rivers or Jenny at Noosa to learn of their experiences and understand what a difference it has made to their business. In turn feel free to contact me to take those first tentative steps.

Chris Rehm

Operations Manager AU