Thompson Tree Services

Cultivating Success for Over a Decade

Jack Thompson founded Thompson Tree Services, an arboricultural contracting company, as a sole trader over a decade ago. He used three guiding principles to cultivate trust and ensure success for the business: deliver exceptional service, attract and retain top talent and drive growth through innovation and strategic investment.

The company has now grown to a team of 30 and is known for providing high-quality tree care and vegetation management across multiple industry sectors—from highways and waterways to telecoms and construction.

“Over the years, we've grown organically. As we get our name and reputation out, we get a lot of repeat business,” said Commercial Director, Gary Moorhouse.

When Moorhouse joined Thompson Tree Services three years ago, the company had grown to the point that its operational systems couldn’t keep up, constraining its ability to further expand.

Confronting Growth-Stunting Systems

True to its principle of driving growth through innovation and investment, the company was taking steps to modernize its outdated processes.

“They had recognized they couldn't grow with the current system, which was literally Excel sheets and Word documents. That said, it was an improvement on years gone by of using the old fashioned T-Card systems,” said Moorehouse. “It is rumored that there was one day, some years before I joined, when the T-card system fell off the wall and all Hell broke loose,” he laughed. Nobody knew which jobs went where.

While the shift from physical T-Cards to digital tools like Word and Excel marked progress, it was still far from an ideal solution.

Moorhouse explained that quotes were typed into Word documents and sent via email. Jobs, invoices and payments were tracked in Excel sheets. This was used to track job progress from start to completion.

He also said that the managing director and the office manager had to sort through Excel sheets every Friday afternoon to figure out which jobs needed to be invoiced. That half-day didn’t include the time it took to produce the invoices and send them out. After job completion, it took a full week to issue invoices.

“That [system] is okay when you're a few people and everybody knows absolutely everything that's going on,” Moorhouse said. “But we had plans to grow and keep growing. So we were building our own piece of software.”

Midway through design, however, their software developer went out of business.

Navigating Challenges Leads to a Scalable Solution

Thompson Tree Services was now left with a piece of code that no one understood, and when they approached other developers to continue the project, none were willing to pick it up. At that point, Moorhouse advocated for an off-the-shelf solution.

“I said, ‘If we continue down that road, we're going to be over a barrel with one developer for the rest of time. We're much better getting something off the shelf,’” said Moorhouse. “‘It won't be 100% perfect, but there will be constant updates. There's support. You're not stuck.’”

So he and the technical director started to search for a best-fit software. They went to trade shows, met with software representatives and demoed several solutions. “We piled them onto a list with pros and cons,” said Moorhouse. “And Simpro came out as the best option.”

Discovering True Success Partners

When Moorhouse first reached out to Simpro, a representative personally demonstrated the software and answered all their questions in detail. A Simpro dedicated implementation specialist was also assigned to provide hands-on support during setup. As with any true success partner, support didn’t stop after implementation; it was ongoing.

“We had been on Simpro for about a year, and we had someone come out and spend a day with us to go through where we were, realign what we were trying to achieve from Simpro and give us that next step,” said Moorhouse.

At the time, Moorhouse was using Simpro’s built-in business intelligence (BI) tool to create customized reports, but was struggling to pull all the data he wanted into it.

“That was a game changer for us—having all that information in a system and being able to report on it,” said Moorhouse. “But I don't know how to use BI in detail.”

He asked the Simpro representative about it, and they introduced him to one of Simpro’s integration partners, Tugger.

Tugger pulls data into Simpro’s BI dashboard without requiring complicated code or API integrations. All Moorhouse had to do was sign up and, like Simpro, the Tugger team guided him step-by-step through the setup and beyond.

“From day one, [Tugger] provided us with support, setting up quick team calls to answer any questions and giving us an overview of how it worked,” said Moorhouse. “They don't just leave you to it. They're very hands-on and really helpful.”

Unlocking Hidden Insights with Simpro + Tugger

Moorhouse uses the Tugger integration with Simpro to measure key metrics around quoting workflows, including:

• The number of quotes assigned to each estimator.
• The time it takes to go from quote creation to conversion.
• The ratio of quotes that convert to sales.

“We have no idea what the quote conversion rate was before Simpro,” said Moorhouse. “It was impossible to know because everything was in a folder with a word document in it.”

With Simpro + Tugger, that isn’t a blind spot any longer.

“Because of the reports, I know we convert around 50-55% of what we do,” said Moorhouse. “That's hugely key for us because we want to make sure that the conversion rate stays at 50-55%.”

Simplifying Compliance, Boosting Efficiency and Driving Profits with Simpro

Thompson Tree Services has been running everything through Simpro for the past two years.

Here are just a few examples of how they’re using it to optimize their processes.

• Maintenance Planner is used to monitor all assets and track the service of equipment. “We treat ourselves as a customer and have all our assets set up using Maintenance Planner,” said Moorhouse. “We've got a full-time mechanic who services all our vehicles, all the small tools, everything on a service schedule—that's all recorded in Simpro [Maintenance Planner].”
• Simpro Digital Forms standardize and streamline many important processes for Thompson Tree Services. “We use [Digital Forms] for all sorts of different things,” said Moorhouse. “Estimators will scope the initial risk assessment of the job, what kits are needed, things we need to be aware of, things we need to be careful of. All that information goes in [Digital Forms]. We use it for administrative forms like holiday requests. We use it for compliance. Every operative will do their weekly chainsaw checks there. Their monthly PPE checks are there.”

The Simpro Mobile App controls what happens in the field.“Simpro’s mobile app is how everything’s controlled on site,” said Moorhouse. Team leaders are equipped with tablets, and Simpro Mobile gives them access to all the information they need to perform their jobs—from the time they come to the yard until the jobs are complete.

The Simpro Mobile app also bakes compliance-related tasks into workflows, so jobs can’t start until risk assessments and other compliance measures are complete. Technicians also use the app to ensure each piece of kit has been serviced according to compliance standards before using it, as well as to track tickets and other required job documentation.

Since incorporating Simpro, “There’s so much more information and a heck of a lot of time saved,” said Moorhouse.

Here are how the benefits of that extra time and information are adding up for Thompson Tree Services:

• 3X faster estimating, tripling the amount of quotes they can send per month.
• 10X faster invoicing.
• 25% more billable hours per technician.
• 2X more revenue, with only one additional admin hire.
• 5% increase in net profit margin.

Handling the volume of work they do now with their old systems would have been nearly impossible.

“We've done about 20-25% growth year-on-year. You can't do that on an Excel sheet. Or, you can, but it's a heck of a lot more stressful,” said Moorhouse. “Simpro makes life so much easier.”