With PTSG’s 1,350 industry specialists serving 20,000 customers, the administrative function of the company is huge. For each project delivered for a client, a certificate of completion is issued, along with an invoice. Remedial works are also quoted, following a test and inspection of a particular piece of equipment – for example, a lightning protection system or a fall arrest system at a building.
Clarity is a software system that is unique to PTSG. It was developed to streamline the administrative function, simplifying processes for PTSG staff and, crucially, vastly reducing the time in which customers receive their certificates, costings and quotations. It has transformed the service delivered by PTSG to its customers.
Due to the size and complexity of PTSG, which encompasses four different and ever-growing divisions, Clarity is being rolled out gradually with the Group, in one area at a time. Electrical Services is one division in which Clarity is seeing great benefits for customers. PTSG’s Lightning Protection engineers and office staff now routinely use Clarity in their everyday work.
Before Clarity, handling very large quantities of paperwork was time-consuming and vulnerable to human error. Engineers would receive job packs in the post to their home address, which included blank worksheets, quotation sheets, drawings and a programme of work including specifications/ RAMS. This was inefficient and subject to loss of data on occasion.
Rather than employ more administrative staff to try and meet this ever-growing challenge, PTSG chose to go to the root of the issue and change the whole administrative culture through technological innovation.
Clarity has completely removed paperwork, enabling engineers and office staff to work far more efficiently with a mobile and a cloud-based system that inform each other – and the client – of the progress of each job.
Clients now automatically receive order confirmations, email booking requests and attendance notifications, plus worksheet(s) and provisional certificates on the same day, along with their invoices.
PTSG has grown over the last 14 years from a handful of specialists to 1,350 people working at 37 locations nationwide. Therefore, it is vital that Clarity is scalable to be able to manage the further growth of the company.
Scalable means Clarity works equally well for a project with 100s of data as with projects involving over a million data. This has proven to be the case, with no errors or problems at either end of the scale. Therefore, if PTSG continues to grow as expected, Clarity will be an integral part of its future.
For engineers, they required a way of communicating quickly and efficiently with office staff on the progress of the test and inspection of a lightning protection system. Clarity, used on a hand-held device, was the ideal solution. It is known within the Group as ClarityWork.
The benefits of Clarity for PTSG’s lightning protection customers
Office staff needed a way of receiving information from engineers, enabling them to provide comprehensive group-wide resource planning and customer relationship management (CRM) functionality.
Above all, clients needed a way to stay informed of the progress of their job, communicate with PTSG staff and make requests. After the job was completed, they needed to receive their certificate and invoice quickly, and be informed of any work that was required as a result of the test and inspection of their lightning protection system.
Clarity issues clients with everything they need within ten minutes, compared with ten days or more before the system was implemented.
To demonstrate how Clarity has made a real and measurable difference to PTSG’s lightning protection customers, Andy Baskeyfield of Entrust was kind enough to say the following:
“PTSG has been undertaking routine lightning protection works and repair works for SCC and Entrust since 2011. Thankfully with the help of new IT innovations we have progressed from receiving and processing hard copies of engineers work reports, defects sheets and invoices to downloading and processing electronic documents on a web based portal platform.
“I can confirm that since the introduction of the new Clarity system, that we have noticed a vast improvement with how quickly PTSG personnel are now able to:
- Communicate with clients to confirm notifications of maintenance appointments. (An agreed date is then uploaded to the Entrust portal which the client has access to)
- Clients receive an e-mail confirmation of the scheduled maintenance visit date, time and engineers details.
- Clients receive immediate notification of order acknowledgements.
- Engineers now have the ability to undertake a maintenance visit and to be able to send their observations and recommendations electronically to PTSG’s IT hub where it can be processed by PTSG personnel within hours.
- Clients then receive electronic copies of the engineers work reports, defects sheets(where applicable) certificates, invoices and quotations for remedial works (where applicable) within 48 hours or less following the completed maintenance visit. (Previously we could wait up to 2 weeks before we received this information).
“I do believe that the Clarity system has hugely improved the lightning protection maintenance and remedial works service which PTSG provides to Entrust, Staffordshire County Council and its clients.”
