Game-Changer for Pest Control Admin!

0:00 Fair. I mean back last year we were all paper you see now we're on all our input, all our reports as in treatment reports and so on, all digital. We've gone digital completely with with commercial and we were you say sorry. What was the reason for that? Was that a time saving thing for you or was that trying to be more kind of I guess planet friendly and reduce your paper? Like what was your the driver for you to go digital? My idea because my dad didn't want to go digital, it was all about the paper diary and now we still use the paper diary as a backup but breaks the system down.

0:40 I imagine if you bit company you could never get away with that and then we won't pass tech in November. Rather look around and my dad thought that I would. Now system was the back that the one that we should go with. They went with that and we played with it for a long time until February where we basically told customers, you we're going digital. You've basically if you want to print it out and put in your folder, you still can do that, but we won't be doing it. And to be fair, which surprised my dad, most businesses weren't too fussed.

1:16 They were like, yeah, I like this. Actually, I can see that They've got like a portal. They can send you messages, they can you can put photographs in there and everything. It's quite good. But also my dad has realised that it's when you're doing a treatment report, it's actually easier and faster than writing it out in pen and paper because it on, on contracts. Like you obviously go to the same things like that, but the IT memorises a lot of words. So it will suggest on the tablet suggest the words to you.

1:49 I'm not saying every visit is the same, because it's not, but it has. It has helped a lot with it going digital. You said you do it on a tablet. You don't. Can you do it on your phone if you're sort of doing it quickly?

2:04 You can, but what I because I said to my dad, I said it ain't it's difficult on the phone. It's not that it's. Your screen. It's so I said, can't we get a tablet? I'll just I'll see if I can get it on. I won't show you, but it's much easier. It's on the mobile it don't get me wrong, but it's on the it's on the PC and the so where are we? So just go to it. So it's it's like that. You've got, it's difficult to say, but it's it's easy. It's easier. Yeah. So. You can see what you're doing, it's not not like the screen.

2:52 We've fully, we've fully, we've fully embraced it and it's something that I never thought we'd be doing digital. It's made it, pushed it, but my dad's all on board. We're digital now. So now we've got this digital trial which I got involved with because, yeah, again, that was my mouth on LinkedIn and I thought digital was rubbish and incorrect. Well, we'll see, we'll see. But I am liking it so far. Stefan said power of now customer service is fantastic. I had a trial with them last month but I am heavily invested in Service Mate and decided to stay with him.

3:30 That's fair. It's each of the own because the problem is once you're on these systems to move, you've got to move all that data over to another system. And it's and it's not easy. Once you're in, they know, yeah, they won't be bothered. They won't be bothered with changing. It's a lot to change in it. You've got to change everything. And that's what I. Bet they don't talk to each other either. So I bet it's not like, you know, like when you get a new phone these days, you just you just log in and it just remembers everything you had on your old phone.

3:59 It's really easy. I bet when you're changing systems like from powered now to service mate or vice versa, I'm sure they don't talk to one another properly. So it's just probably in mind field. I can understand where you'd stay with where you're invested, but still good to try the solutions and, and, and see what features you would like and maybe feed that back to your existing supplier. So like, you know, for example, Stephen said the powered now customer service is fantastic. If there was something about Powered Now he likes, he could go back to service mate and say, I've seen this.

4:27 Is there any way you can integrate it? And then they might, you know, take the feedback on board. One thing I will say about power now is they do listen to you. I gave them a long list when I joined. It's like this is all I want. And to be fair, they have over time been introducing more and more. They've actually got a feature now where you can actually draw your own maps within the app. You've got your own maps you can edit. If you've got a map, you can edit it. You can dot in where the boxes are.

4:57 I've got to play a bit more because they've had a load of upgrades recently, but they do listen. I'll give them that. They do listen. They do. Which is good. The technology is only going to change over time, isn't it? So to know that they listen and you know, we'll take new ideas on board, I think that gives you a more future proof option, doesn't it? It's definitely good that is. But yeah, I don't think I've got digital, but yeah, small businesses can because I thought it was too, you know, you think it's too expensive, but it's, I mean, if you want, but we don't do it.

5:34 But if you want to use their system, you can just take payments straight through their system. We don't do that, but you can do that. What's stopping you from doing that? Is that just personal choice? Personal choice, that is. Yeah, Yeah. That's personal choice. Yes, we have, we have our system set up the way we run things and just just reports and we can't send them if if a client's paying by backs details, we can't send them an invoice and they can pay through the bank. But obviously there is a system there.

6:07 But that's just personal choice.