Delivering exceptional service to clients whilstcontinuously improving safe working practices

Embracing technological change in order to scale

Today, the business has 18 workers completing roughly 350 jobs per month across the Auckland region, with the occasional project seeing them extend their services to different regions of New Zealand.

Despite having built a successful business over two decades, Sam Simons realised it was time to embrace technological changes and become more “digitized” if the business was going to grow even further over the coming years.

A1 Kiwi Cutters had a custom built Microsoft Access database to receive job requests from clients and assign them to an operator. But they were still dependent on employees to complete paper ‘dockets’ to be scanned through to the office which was labour intensive for our employees as well as the office staff. This was causing major delays to the invoicing processing which in turn was leading to delayed payments from clients.

Sam says, “By having the ability for our operators to complete an electronic docket on their phones immediately after a job has been completed, our invoicing process has become more streamlined, enabling us to receive payments from various projects in a timely manner.”

A seamless transition from paper to app

When joining vWork, Sam admits it was a step into the unknown for the A1 team who in her words were “creatures of habit”.  There were a number of established processes in place and many workers had been working the same way for well over a decade. 

“We were reluctant to step out of our comfort zone by changing our processes but at the same time, realising the system we had in place was not keeping up with our current demand or needs.” 

Sam also says management had concerns about how long it would take their field staff to adapt to the new processes and working from an app on their mobile phone. 

“Not all of our employees are technical wizards so for some of the mature employees the thought of completing a process that they have been doing for the past 8 or so years manually was quite daunting.  

However, vWork’s ease of use coupled with a thorough onboarding process ensured the team were able to hit the ground running with limited disruption to day to day operations. 

“Our management team got excellent support right from the start which made the transition to using vWork incredibly smooth. It also made it easy to troubleshoot when assisting our employees.”

“vWork has managed to be flexible with its digital design, enabling us to utilise a very similar way of working whilst keeping us up to date with technology.  This has allowed us to be more structured and systematic with the operations of the company.”

“Six months on from implementing vWork and the new way of working, I truly believe our guys wouldn’t have it any other way.” 

Minimising environmental impact

Sam was also drawn to vWork because it was another way for A1 Kiwi Cutters to limit their impact on the environment.

She says, “By having our employees fill out their paperwork this way, our paper waste has been reduced greatly. We are always
looking for ways to improve our environmental impact.”

Improvements to health and safety processes

Since joining vWork, the A1 Kiwi Cutters team can point to several noticeable improvements to their business. Aside from faster invoicing and improved cash flow, they point to the vast improvements in health and safety monitoring by using templates in vWork.

“The templates allow us to keep on top of any hazards or ill trends, as well as helping us to identify and minimise risks as well
as report on incidents should they occur. Communication has also been made easier with our staff filling out daily pre-start forms which are shared with all staff and the client before any work commences.“

“And best of all, job scheduling is no longer arduous! Less time going from screen to screen means the office can perform at an optimal level.”

“And best of all, job scheduling is no longer arduous! Less time going from screen to screen means the office can perform at an
optimal level.”