How Firemark cut defect quote turnaround time from ~4 weeks to 1 day

Based in Bridgwater, England, Firemark is a provider of fire safety solutions with over 50 years in the design, development, manufacture, and maintenance of fire extinguishers.

It serves businesses and public sector organizations all over the UK, with a national network of service technicians who have full third-party accreditation and are trained in the latest standards, legislation and industry changes.

Since switching to Uptick, Firemark has cut the time to send a defect quote to its customers from 3-4 weeks to just 24 hours. And that's not the only benefit the team's seen so far.

Built for every kind of customer

"We've got quite a complex business for extinguisher maintenance," says Managing Director Stephen Ward.

"We've got large customers, universities and NHS trusts - that are large, campus-style, big beasts. Then at the other end of the scale, we've got small, one-off customers. And then the retail customers in between, with hundreds of sites nationwide. So we wanted something that gave us all the flexibility."

Firemark's previous software couldn't keep up. "From our experience, the last system we had was very restrictive, and all we ended up doing was making workarounds and trying to get there in a different way," Stephen explains.

"It costs you money, it costs you time. So a system that enables you to get to where you want to be is a great thing."

From office to field & back

"Scheduling is done in Uptick. Tasks go from Uptick. Quotes are raised in Uptick. It all goes out and comes back in through one system," says Commercial Support Manager Chloe Hyett.

"It's huge really, because the engineers aren't trying to go through Excel sheets, to write locations down, and then matching back to the system. They're not trying to add up what they've done, to put through the products they've used. It's just seamless. They do it as part of their workflow."

Out on site, the engineers work in the Uptick mobile app. "We can use the barcode, we can pass and fail, we can take photographs," says Lead Engineer Lee Stewart. "So at the end, when we meet the client, we can show them, and the service report is ready to go. It's in their hands that day or the next day, no questions asked."

More time for planning

"Sending quotes out to customers previously was a very lengthy task," adds Chloe. "On average, we'd work to probably a three to four week turnaround on quotes. Now, we're looking at 24 hours' turnaround, back with the client again."

For Operations Director Michelle Tuxford, that time goes straight back into the business: "The admin time that we're going to save, we can then convert it to the other end of chasing the quotes, forward planning, and making the decisions that we need to do to make the profits, rather than doing the booking and the manual scheduling," she says.

"Take out the manual work, get the system to do it for you, and we can use our time more efficiently."

A smooth switch

Moving to a new, business-critical software is never easy, but the team didn't wait around to make the switch. "We can constantly resist change or we can take the leap," says Michelle. "And the quicker we can do it, the quicker we can start using the system, to get the results that we want for the business."

"We had no data issues at all," says Chloe. "When we were up and running, everything we expected to be in Uptick was there. We'd mapped everything to the right place. Our Onboarding Specialist was awesome. He knew exactly what needed to go where."

"We recognize it's a little bit more. We could get something cheaper," says Stephen. "But we felt it was the right decision...The transition from where we were to Uptick has been fantastic."