Business Pilot ‘does give you the feeling of security’

A bit of a bonus for this episode of ‘Elton chats to’, which features both Eric Knappet and Kim Holloway from Conserv-A-Tech! Early adopters of Business Pilot and huge advocates of the system, Eric says: “I can’t tell you how much I think has changed our lives and my business.”

Conserv-A-Tech are home extension and double-glazing specialists based in Stevenage and they work on homes across Hertfordshire.

The interactive scheduling board has been the biggest game-changer for Finance and Administration Manager Kim:

“The first thing I do is open BP up. I go to the diary and into the schedule board. So I know exactly what’s going on that day and who’s where.”

The FENSA API link is also proving to be a great benefit for the Conserv-A-Tech team…Eric says: “You don’t have to come out, log on to FENSA and then register the installation. I mean, it’s all auto-filled forms. Everything’s there. You literally just put how many windows you’ve fitted or how many doors. And click it’s done. Without even leaving the BP…it’s fantastic!”

If you’re ready to change your working life, why not get your free trial and take Eric’s advice:

“Jump in! Jump in, jump in and embrace it. And it will return you the investment back with saved time and efficiency. 100%.”

You can watch the interview on our YouTube channel or you can read the full transcript below.

Elton Chats to…Eric & Kim from Conserv-A-Tech

– My name is Eric Knappett. I am the owner or proprietor of Conserv-A-Tech.

My role within the company is everything, basically!

-That’s what owners get to do, Eric.

– Absolutely, yeah. But obviously I’ve got a safety net of people below me in place, which sometimes even kick me up the backside. So, namely one of them is the next person that you’re going to be [talking to].

– Kim.

– Hi, I’m Kim Holloway. I work for Conserv-A-Tech. I’m the finance and administration manager and sort of do anything that’s admin, everything from finance, HR, trying to look after health and safety, any ad hoc, you know…

– And try and look after Eric, because it sounds like he needs a team around him to kick him up the backside.

– Absolutely.

Exactly.

– As we all do. As we all do.

– Yeah. What was the person saying, but behind every successful man?

– Well, for me, Eric, there’s a whole group of women, because behind this guy, you’d need more than one woman to make me successful.

There we go. So, guys, all I want to do today is just literally just chat about sort of your experiences with Business Pilot, the team, the system, just everything. The purpose of it being, there’s people looking at Business Pilot and obviously they’ll see things like, I don’t know, either the barometer or they might even do like a free trial.

What I want to do, and you guys obviously know this, I mean, we know each other well now, I want to give a feel of what it’s like to be part of Business Pilot. So, we will talk about stuff like the system and so on.

But I want it a bit wider than that. I just want to open the doors, really, to show people what it’s like to be part of what we’re doing. So we’ll start with some of the more practical stuff and look at the system. But just bear that in mind, really, I’m just wanting honest, authentic conversation.

– So, not bad or ugly.

Life Before Business Pilot

– Yeah, exactly that. In fact, funny enough, in one of the other chats I’ve had, I said, “Look, literally, the good, the bad and the ugly.”

But just to kick it off, we’re obviously talking now, and especially with you guys, as a position of people who are well-versed in Business Pilot. So, to give people like the, I suppose, the contrast or a reference point, let’s go right back. What were you guys doing before Business Pilot?

– How far do we go back?

I can go back. I can go back to a T-card system, not in my company now, but with a previous company where we were moving T-cards about on the wall, as you’re probably aware, and a lot of people are aware of it.

My first, not experience, but my first booking system I used to use in Conserv-A-Tech was on the Outlook calendars. And then I used to colour them all, basically the same as you would the T-cards and move them around appropriately. But the problem with that was, I was the only one that could see that.

So, I did actually try to share those calendars with the sales guy and Kim, but that wasn’t very successful. So, I was the only source.

– And I never used to know what was going on. I never used to really have a clue what was being scheduled. I was always having to ask because we’ve always worked remotely. So, I was not very clear what was happening from one day to the next, to be honest. So, I felt that I wasn’t completely involved with everything.

– And that’s obviously quite a common story. So, the thing here, and funny enough, Eric, T-cards, even now, people are coming to Business Pilot from T-cards. They haven’t even done a step in between.

– Yeah, keep that window closed!

– Yeah. I remember when I first started this, and we were looking at how we would be transferring people’s data from one system onto our system. And we do get a lot of that. But actually, we also get a lot of people who are like, “Well, it’s all on paper.”

Wow. Because we just get used to where we are at. And that’s why I was saying, before we get into Business Pilot, let’s have a think about what it was like before because we can forget what it used to be like.

And like with you guys, so many stories of customers would be phoning up, and I’d have to say, “Okay, I’ll get the surveyor to call you back,” or the sales guy. And all that stuff is normal if you haven’t got a system like this. But for us, it’s not normal at all. So, it’s interesting to see what was before. So, okay.

Choosing The Right CRM

– From the Outlook calendar, we then obviously realized that between us, we needed something CRM-based where we could log onto it. I had also, if I can use the words, “experience with Adminbase.”

– Yeah, sure.

– We did investigate a little bit on Adminbase, and then we stumbled across this guy who apparently used to work for Adminbase, apparently. And he devised a one-off purchase of a CRM system, and it was Excel based.

– Right, wow.

– Which… And what was it called?

– It was his initials, wasn’t it? It was his special something system. But, you know, it was good for, what, a couple of months, Kim?

– Yeah. It still didn’t really centralize everything, did it?

– No. And it would only allow, I think, two of us on the system at one time, otherwise it would kick the other one off.

– Yeah.

– So, when we started loading our data onto it, we quickly realized, although I can’t remember, well, it was a one-off payment. It was around about £1,800.

– Yeah.

– And that was it. So, there was no ongoing support. There was no, with you guys, we get loads of updates. And we quickly realized between Kim and I that that actually probably was £1,800 down the drain.

– Yeah. And we did go with it for a few years, didn’t we?

– Yeah, but it was just the nightmare trying to get the guy to even answer the phone, let alone, he had a couple of yappy dogs in the background as well, didn’t he, remember?

-Yeah. Yeah.

– You’ve picked up on an interesting thing. Obviously, our model is that, you know, I suppose the modern-day software as a service, we’d call it, it’s a rental. And some people don’t like that. They like to buy out right. But actually, like you’ve also said, it’s the updates.

– Yeah, but if you buy out, in my opinion, it’s like buying a, you know, it’s almost like buying a food source. It has a shelf life.

– Yeah.

– And you will quickly come to a point where you do need something more.

– And for me, I’ve always thought with Business Pilot, actually, if we don’t keep staying at the top of our game, you haven’t paid this massive one-off thing. And therefore, you could go somewhere else. You know, so actually, you know, and of course, we hope nobody ever gets to that feeling. But actually, the point is, that makes us keep developing the system, even if we didn’t want to.

And as you guys know, you know, as well, actually, we’re passionate about it. That’s what excites me the most is not what we’ve already got. But what I know is coming down the line, you know, and that’s always, I suppose, be my nature. I’m very future looking at, you know, I’m never satisfied with what I’ve got now, which I don’t know. I need to sort that maybe there’s a shrink somewhere can help me but um, you know, it’s um, yeah, but, but that’s what wakes me up, you know, that’s what I get excited about is what’s coming down the line. So and that model helps that for sure.

– Absolutely

– Okay, so, so we’ve spoken about what it was like, brought to me the contrast now in terms of Business Pilot, you know, how’s it made the difference? What you know, as specific as you can be.

Fundamental To The Business

– I can’t tell you what a difference it’s made. I was talking to Eric the other day, and I said something about Business Pilot, and he said, you need to tell Elton that and neither of us now can remember what it was, but it was something like I couldn’t live without Business Pilot, or it was something like that. It’s just so fundamental to business.

– I kind of, I kind of relate it Elton, you know, you know, the feeling you get when you lose your mobile phone.

– Yeah. Yeah.

-If I can’t access the BP, that’s the kind of,

– That’s what it’s like.

– That’s what I’m getting now. You know, within my head, I just think my God, we need to, this needs to be open. I mean, I’m not saying that you can’t access it, but you know, if I’m in a position where, I mean, I’ve even tried, well not try, I’ve trained my brain now to take my iPad out onto every site visit.

Because although I can get it on my phone, it’s easier, isn’t it, on an iPad. When you’re talking measurements and architect drawings, which we’ve loaded up, we can expand them and go through them with the bricklayers and that.

– Yeah.

– So it does give you the feeling of security when you know that you can latch onto that at any point, anywhere, anytime. It is, yeah, I can’t tell you how much I think has changed our lives and my business.

– Yeah. So there’s a couple of things to unpack from that. I was talking to somebody earlier and he was saying, you know, I don’t want to give the wrong impression because we need to have a work-life balance. But the fact that I’ve got Business Pilot with me all the time…

-Exactly.

– And if something’s playing on my mind when I’m on holiday, I can just look at it. Yeah. And then it’s forgotten about. Yeah. I thought that that’s true, isn’t it? And I know that with myself, you know, you do worry about this stuff. So it’s easy to say, switch off from it. But actually, that’s really easy said and difficult to do. Sometimes you just want to check into it so that you can release your head from thinking about it.

– Yeah, exactly.

Favourite Business Pilot Features

– You know, so, no, that’s good. Okay. Try and do one each. There’s loads of different features in Business Pilot. What’s your like favourite feature or probably most important, which is probably what makes it favourite. But if you had to pick one, what would it be?

– I just think from my point of view, I like to go to one…I mean, we’ve all been there with the ring binders and the box files in the archives. I just like the fact that I can, I can slowly start to feel relieved of not storing a load of paperwork. Because as long as everything is uploaded to the BP, I just know that I just have to do that customer’s contract number or name, and everything is there in front of me.

Yeah, it’s just the accessibility of everything. Like probably you’ve got in your blurb somewhere, everything is in one place.

– And it’s the way it connects as well. I went in on a training session. So, you know, Rebecca, so, you know, for people listening, obviously, the guys know Rebecca is one of our trainers.

– Rebecca is fantastic, by the way.

– She is. So I went in. And again, her training is amazing, but we still want to just make sure is there anything else? So she’s asked me to go in any chance you can come in, just observe my training, give me some feedback. She’s always getting five-star feedback, but still wants to see, you know, how do we get a five star to a 5.5? You know, that’s her mentality.

And so, so I’m in there on this training one. And so I’m there. New guy come on board. And I was trying to say the key to all of this is it’s how it connects. So it’s not just the everything in one place, which it is, but how it all connects.

I think it was on the contracts tab. That’s right. He’s saying, so do we need to put in the number of fit days? And we’ll see. No, you don’t have to. But when you understand how it all connects, then like with the schedule board, you will put them in. You know, it’s not that you have to, of course you don’t. You can use the system however you like. But, trust me, as soon as you see what we’re going to show you on the schedule board, you will put them in, you know, and it’s so connected.

That’s the bit that I like, you know, the schedule board, the little update, which we did some time back now where you actually get to see the amount, essentially your WIP, your work in progress, you see as you move the jobs around, everything’s connected. You know, that’s what I love about it. So go on, Kim.

– The first thing, right, if this is a weird, well, not weird, but the first thing I do is open BP up. I go to the diary into the schedule board. So I know exactly what’s going on that day and who’s where.

– Yeah.

– And I use that all day long, really. Also, obviously, documents. But I think that’s been the biggest change for me is the schedule board and the diary.

– Yeah

– Because as I said, I never felt integrated enough before. But now I know exactly what’s going on. Yeah. And that’s what I like.

-Yeah, no-one’s got anywhere to hide!

– No, not anymore.

– But it is. But you know what, I mean, some people might not like that. But actually, I think most people appreciate what it’s doing for them. And actually, if it is people that, you know, wanted somewhere to hide, they’re probably best off not in our businesses.

– And also, they’ve got they’ve got to, I think, when you say new people, they’ve got to come in to you with open arms and they’ve got to want to learn it. If they don’t want to learn it, then they never will. They’ll just they’ll just go, Oh, I don’t need that. I know that. What do we need that for? And that’s got to have the right learning attitude. And I’ve got to want to move on within their business.

– Yes, because what let it down for us was our salesman would not keep it updated. It was a real bug bear for me. And, you know, and we was always saying, please do this, please do that. Then we know exactly what you said to the customer.

And I think he felt he was being checked up on rather than it being an aid to the company. So we all know what was going on. Anyway, he’s left now. So our new salesman, we’re training him on BP to exactly how we want the information, and it is made in the short time he’s been with us, which is about six weeks. The difference it’s made. So now we know exactly what he’s saying to customers, new leads, conversions, etc. And that’s made a difference to the business.

– I don’t know why. But sales guys are one of the, if you like, the groups of users that do seem to almost have a bit more resistance to it. And yet once they start using it, they’re the ones that normally actually the most sort of like the biggest ambassadors for it.

Yeah, it’s weird, really. But you know, I mean, it is why we do this whole thing where you don’t have to go paperless, but we’ve provided you all the tools that you can do, you know, it’s that balance, because if you’ve got a sales guy who is absolutely phenomenal, you know, he’s got a couple of years left before he retires, you don’t want him out the business just because he won’t get on BP.

So you need both sides of it. You know, so, but it, the small little things that make massive differences when the customer calls in, and because the sales guy has left the correct notes on the system, we can all help him. So he actually gets better results, you know.

Ongoing Support

– But okay, we’ve, we’ve praised Rebecca, and she is just a star. What about like, do you guys, ever, I’m guessing so, get in touch with support, how have you found that or in any other area of BP?

– Yeah, when I’ve contacted support, they’ve been very quick coming back. So yeah, they’ve been great. To be honest, I used to use it quite a lot at the beginning, but not so much now. But when I do, I’m very happy with how quick they are to come back. I do try now just to go into the knowledge base or the question bit and sort it out myself. But if I can’t, then I have no hesitation of asking.

– It’s really interesting when we put in the, like the live chat inside the system, you know, so obviously, if you’re in the system, you can do live chat. Yeah, there was a whole conversation internally about okay, so does this now mean, are people going to come through live chat instead of the phone or whatever?

No, they’re going to come through the route that they want to. That’s what we want, you know, so that’s why you go on there. And you can either call the support number, or you can do the online chat or, you know, plenty of people are still sending an email, you know, it’s basically whatever method suits.

And interestingly, we have our monthly meeting. And I was looking at the stats yesterday. Yeah, Sunday, Tuesday, isn’t it? So it was yesterday. So I was looking at the stats. And the number now that are dealt with on the call is huge. It’s something like 90% are all dealt with on the call, because we measure it in terms of whether it was dealt with on the call, nought to three hours, you know, and so on, because, obviously, I want to push them all, so they’re dealt with on the call, because that’s the better response, obviously, for you guys.

And it’s phenomenal to see what’s happening there, you know, it’s part of that. And I suppose this is the ethos of Business Pilot, what gets measured gets done. You know, and that’s what we’re doing internally. And that I suppose is what the system’s doing for you guys.

Open Training Days

– So obviously, you’re big, a big part of like our open training days. Yeah, so I wonder if you can just sort of share the you know, the value you get from them, because you know, you keep coming. So you get a lot of value from them?

– Yeah, we get a lot of value from them. We always learn something each time. And even when we’ve come to the fit stand, we’ve normally got questions for Rebecca, and she answers them straight away or shows us because Eric has his iPad.

Yeah, but we’ve found the training days great, because you just bring back so much information. But also what we like about it is you see other companies there. And you chat to them and see how they use the system as well, to get ideas.

– Yeah, that that’s what I was hoping. We’re all we’re all treading the same path, aren’t we? We’re all we’re all on this learning curve. And it’s refreshing to understand that you’re not alone. And other people are feeling the learning pain, as it were, if you can call it a pain.

And, you know, we you can chat to them if there’s none of you guys available. We have a chat with them and go, this is what we do. And then we go, Oh, yeah, that’s, yeah, we do it that way around.

– And here’s the thing, you know, if you go, if you look within BP, obviously, we’ve got Thames Valley and Cherwell Windows for two Ryans. So that gives us you know, I don’t know what it is off the top of my head, but X amount of users. If you look at the whole BP community, you know, we’ve gone past like 2000 users or whatever now.

So you’re tapping into a hell of a lot of people who are using the system. And, and for me, it’s, we always do the thing that we think is best because of what we already know to date. Yeah. But tomorrow, somebody might show us something and we think, why have I been doing it that way all this time?

– Exactly.

– You know, and it’s not that what you were doing was necessarily wrong, it just might not have been the best way. And, and again, the more we can, which is why I get really sort of excited. There’s a couple of things that do it for me. One is definitely the new stuff. I love that element. Yeah. Also the Business Pilot community.

You know, I’ve always said I want to be more than just software, you know, I want, I want Business Pilot to be a real community of installers who all help each other. You know, it doesn’t matter that we’re doing the same thing. There’s enough work for all of us.

-Yeah.

– And if we can all help each other,

– Yeah, you know, there’s a lot, there is a lot of companies out there, but there’s only probably a handful in each county that will actually take this up because they will be believers that they don’t need it.

– That’s right.

– Because their way is the best way. So it’s not a problem for me to talk to anybody within the industry. I’ll find it healthy.

– Yeah. And like you said, if you can learn another little snippet from somebody then happy days. Yeah. And you know, you were saying earlier, can we mention the other name? I always say there’s people who will really buy into what we’re doing as a system and there’s people who won’t.

You know, so it doesn’t matter the fact that there’s other ways to do it. We can all just find our best way. It’s why we’ve really pushed on like the API stuff. We want to connect with as many systems as we can. You know.

FENSA & Business Pilot API

– I know you guys obviously use the FENSA API, don’t you? So yeah. Well, rather me saying it, what in your words, how have you found that in terms of what you used to do and what you now do?

– It’s just so, you know, while you’re there marking the project office completed, you just have to press another tab, register it with FENSA.

You don’t have to come out, log on to FENSA and then register the installation. I mean, it’s all auto-filled forms. Everything’s there. You literally just put how many windows you’ve fitted or how many doors. And click is done. Without even leaving the BP. It’s fantastic.

– Yeah. It’s made, I think, the more systems we can connect in that same way that the challenge we’ve got is a lot of systems within the industry were built so long ago that they’re just not geared up for it. So we’ve just, we’re just going to have this period of time where, and we want to help at the end of the day, where we need to get all of these systems all talking on that way.

What Would You Say To Other Installers?

So, okay, guys, this, you know, for me, unless you’ve got other things, well, no, I suppose one, one final thing, if there’s somebody looking around, let’s summarize it. If there’s somebody now looking at Business Pilot and, and they’re obviously watching this, what, what would you say to them? That’s probably the…

– Do it!

– Yeah, I was about to say do it.

-Yeah. Why?

– Jump in jump in, jump in and embrace it. And it will return you the investment back with save time and efficiency. 100%.

– I just love the way it’s so integrated with everyone as well. You’ve got the app for the installers. The salesman can get on, you know, admin, finance, just everyone, you know, and you know, that they have access to their own levels and it just makes sense.

– Absolutely. And then jump, jump in, come on the training and we’ll have a gin and tonic or something together.

– That’s it. That’s exactly it. You might, you might end up at the next, uh, FIT Show cocktail party. Yeah.

– Absolutely. Yeah. It isn’t a bad thing.

– It’s never a bad thing. So, um,

– I did like the photos you were putting up.

– Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that, that’s part of it. You know, it’s, it’s a big part to me anyway, that whole community thing. And I’m going to hope it’s a big part to even, um,

– Michael Bennett text me in because I didn’t see it first of all. And he sent me a screenshot and he said, I think we should both get onto Elton for some royalties.

– I think so. We’ll work it out. So, uh, I might have to pay those at the next training day. Thanks a lot. You know, I know you guys are a massive sort of advocates for us and I appreciate it.

You know, so, um, yeah, thanks a lot for this.

– It’s exactly what I told the guy at stand at the FIT Show…And I think Matthew is actually, he’s actually gone ahead with you guys, but his, his first reaction was ‘how much?’. And I just like, I took him kind of under my wing and I said, look, don’t worry about it.

Just watch what Matthew’s going to do with you. And then, and then I heard from Matthew, like he, he attacked me and said, thanks very much. He’s gone ahead. And that’s what it’s all about. You know, I mean, I’m not, none of us are here to make people bend their arms. Are we?

– No no, that’s not our approach…

– You know, if they don’t want to do it, or if they think the money is an objection, then that’s, it’s the wrong thing for them.

– 100 percent. Yeah. So brilliant.

– So yeah, I’m looking forward to the next training session.

– Yeah. Well, we’re planning it now. So, um, all the details will be coming out. I want it bigger and better this time. You know what we’re like every time I want to make things bigger and better. I’m never satisfied. I must go find that shrink now!

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