Goss Environmental Coatings

A Fascination For Technology Guides Goss Coatings To Simpro

Swapping manual operations for a digital alternative is a modern challenge that most, if not all, trade businesses must overcome. However, there are many reasons why trade business owners and operators cling to outdated methods of doing business when the power of software is on display for everyone to see. Sometimes, it’s a lack of free time to adopt something entirely new; sometimes, it is an overwhelming fear of change or resistance to technology taking over traditionally human-led tasks and roles within a trade business.

But those who cling to the old ways are just one side of the coin. On the other side are operators like Victoria Skeat from Goss Coatings. As Projects Director for the hygienic coatings, hygienic cladding, fast-track painting and decorating business based in St Albans, Hertfordshire, Victoria oversees a diverse array of internal initiatives across the business. It gives her a unique perspective on trade operations, with her time spent on both field service and other facets of the company, such as IT, finance, HR and Marketing.

Having such a wide range of experience means Victoria is no stranger to software tools and their potential to revolutionize modern business operations. She explains her passion lies in “an admiration for the way technology can provide new solutions to problems & foster efficiency”. A mindset like this is a great fit for Goss Coatings, a company looking to maintain traditional family values whilst ensuring it is operating efficiently and delivering a first-rate customer experience.

This future-minded approach has seen the business grow 66% in the last five years. However, rapid growth inevitably increases the burden of admin, which is why it was eventually decided amongst Victoria and the business’s owners that it was time to bring their operations onto a SaaS platform. To achieve their aim of further increasing scalability while decreasing admin, the team chose Simpro. Now, Goss Coatings enjoys 100% digitized infrastructure and a headcount of eight office staff and 12 field technicians. But to understand the full impact of where they are now, it’s important to look back on what life was like before Simpro’s software.

Before Simpro: Disparate systems and manual duplication

Goss Coatings’ operations before Simpro were conducted as expected from a successful yet undigitised trade business. The business was managed via spreadsheets, Word docs and hand-typed emails. The team often needed to copy and paste or retype the job details into multiple different forms and emails, and, according to Victoria, it made “dealing with the weird quirks that construction has” increasingly time-consuming. This was exacerbated by the business’s main customers being big building contractors, a section of the trades industry that demands strict document control and high-quality recordkeeping.

One of Goss’s specialties is fast-track commercial painting and decorating services for both hygienic and standard coatings to complement specialist installations. Their customers expect fast response times, and Goss operatives may be working at night or on weekends, for example, during large shut-down projects. With this in mind, it’s easy to see why the need for a singular platform to regiment information and make it easy to work with and even easier to share made Simpro the perfect solution.

The Difference Simpro Makes To Everyday Operations

Victoria highlights that Simpro’s main draw for a business like Goss Coatings is its ability to act as a “single source of truth.” In other words, a place where every bit of data the business creates can find a home in one central location. To quantify this impact, Victoria shares that “Simpro requires three-quarters less duplication of information,” which immediately saves the office and field teams “around 25% of the time they spend on entering and compiling data”.

With Simpro, quotes are faster to produce, more accurate and more consistent than ever before. Employees even follow the exact same quoting process within the software, so debriefing on invoices later is straightforward. This flows on to facilitate superb customer service, with Victoria sharing that the business can even “provide customers with better margins and improved efficiencies, due to the increased granularity of quotes”. Plus, all vital information about a job or project can be sent to customers directly through Simpro, meaning no wasted time drafting emails or entering data into a spreadsheet by hand.

But that’s just the office. Simpro has also empowered the teams within Goss Coatings that are adjuncts to field and administrative work. Customer inquiries are answered swiftly, and potential clients love that the business provides such a “quick, seamless experience that accounts for multiple budgets,” says Victoria. Sales follow-ups are now sent to the sales team internally, which means faster lead acquisition and the ability to track the business’s entire customer base in one system.

All these added efficiencies also mean that profitability can be championed across the entire business. All internal stakeholders now fully understand profit margins. Job costings now include granular ‘per job’ information, which has created a full feedback loop around cash flow for the first time ever.

Implementation Made Easy With Onsite Onboarding

The benefits of Simpro are clear at Goss Coatings, and Victoria couldn’t be happier with how the software was implemented into the business.

A standout point for her and the rest of the team is Simpro’s onsite implementation. Victoria points out how much of a difference it makes “having someone there to fully understand our business and tailor the training pace and detail to our teams needs” instead of learning the software through a remote trainer or on their own. During the process, Simpro’s Help Desk also proved invaluable, with Victoria sharing that “90% of our (support) calls had a first-call resolution.”

She and the team also made implementing Simpro a lot easier for themselves by opting for a staged rollout, making the adoption of each feature more manageable and its users more confident in the new system overall.

A More Confident Workforce Across Both Office And Field

Simpro’s visual reporting system further enhances usability. The team loves how Dashboards give a complete picture of certain aspects of the business at a glance, while Simpro’s Reports provide them with access to data they never had the means to capture before. It all serves to foster belief amongst the Goss Coatings crew that they can “stay on top of things as we continue to grow”, confirms Victoria.

Victoria’s Advice To New Simpro Users

Overall, the story of Goss Coatings and Simpro is built on success, transparency, and the complete reduction of manual processes and duplicate data.

Victoria couldn’t be happier with the transformation and recommends Simpro to any construction leader looking to leave spreadsheets and Word docs behind forever. Her advice to aspiring Simpro users is as follows: “Make sure you have enough resources to support your implementation, nominate some internal Simpro champions to carry the process forward, be very clear about what your goals are during implementation, and go for it as the rewards are excellent.”

Goss Coatings went for it, and now, no matter what the future holds, they’re supported by a comprehensive software system that supports the business moving into the digital world.