Balloo Hire, one of Ireland’s leading tool and plant hire companies, has significantly reduced the resource required to manage its mobile operation whilst boosting customer service and minimising its environmental impact thanks to mobile workforce management technology from BigChange.
With depots across Ireland offering an island wide delivery and service operation, Balloo Hire has saved hundreds of man hours per week scheduling planned deliveries and responding to ad-hoc requests since implementing the 5-in-1 cloud based BigChange solution. Using BigChange, Balloo Hire has also transformed its customer interactions with real-time updates and intelligence sharing, has achieved its goal of a paper free transport department and realised significant savings in fuel consumption.
“Before BigChange we had many long and tedious paper trails,” commented Mark Grundy, General Manager at Balloo Hire Centres. “Each job could take up to 15 minutes to plan and allocate which equated to at least 350 hours per week; a significant resource for any operation. In addition, changes to the schedule or ad-hoc request were difficult to manage as we had no visibility of or the ability to change drivers paperwork once they had left a depot.”
Since implementing the JobWatch mobile app from BigChange, Balloo Hire has removed these paper trails, digitising many of its workflows. Part of an end to end cloud based solution, the JobWatch app replaces paperwork and synchronises in real-time with centralised management software. Providing a single platform CRM, Job Scheduling, Mobile App, Tracking and Customer Portal, the BigChange solution allows Ballooo Hire to automatically plan, plot and share schedules with a driver’s mobile device at the start of each shift. Changes or additional tasks can be instantly communicated, resulting in savings of around 40 working days per month.
BigChange has also made a real difference to Balloo Hire’s customer interactions. Real time progress updates and delivery notifications are sent directly via email or text and automated POD gives customers greater visibility of their hired in equipment. The BigChange CRM functionality is also helping the Balloo Hire sales team personalise and inform customer interactions boosting service levels, giving a competitive edge and shaping the Balloo Hire future product range.
“Put simply BigChange has allowed us to do more with less!” continued Mark. “We’ve eliminated a huge amount of time-consuming admin work, reduced our paperwork production and saved miles with lower fuel bills and emissions. On top of this we are able to take on further logistic and delivery jobs, we can close sales more effectively and answer customer queries more efficiently.”
The Balloo Hire team of around 50 mobile engineers and delivery drivers operates from depots in Bangor, Belfast, Lisburn, Ballyclare, Glenavy and Dublin. Driving a fleet of Scania trucks, Mercedes Sprinter and Ford Transit vans the team uses Samsung mobile devices to support the completion of more than 800 delivery and service call outs per week.
