Moody Sewage Scheduling and Finance

Case Study - Updated 13th July 2011

In November 2010, Moody Sewage asked us to help them solve a problem with scheduling their workload, before moving on to improving their financial systems. So far, we've achieved the following impressive results.

• We've saved the managing director one day of his time every week.
• We've saved the admin team almost two days per person every week.

If you're a small business owner or entrepreneur, you'll know that time savings like these are the key to working on your business instead of just working in your business. Because of the work we have done, Moody now spend more time on their marketing and business strategy than ever before, and this is starting to translate into faster growth and increased profit.

On top of the time savings, we've helped them reduce their debtor book by three days, equivalent to 10% of their monthly revenue!

Joel, Michael, and Tom worked on this project. Joel and Tom took care of the planning and system architecture, and Michael assisted with the development.

The Project

The project has been split into several phases, starting with solving the scheduling problem before moving onto implementing new financial systems.

Splitting work in this way allows for incremental change, which has two key benefits:

1. It softens the impact of change on staff - we find that the typical employee struggles with change and so it is better to release new functionality one bit at a time.
2. Secondly, it allows the business to start benefiting as early as possible rather than having to wait for a big project to finish. This leads to a faster return on investment.

Better Scheduling

Moody Sewage install, service, and empty sewage tanks and treatment systems for customers across Sussex, Hampshire and Kent. To ensure the business is profitable, the engineers and tanker drivers need to work in a sensible order to minimise travel time and fuel cost. Unfortunately, working out the schedule by hand is difficult, time-consuming, and error prone.

Our challenge was to turn the scheduling process from a huge two week job into a simple five minute task. To do this, we built a bespoke web app, as follows:

1. We created a database to hold the details of Moody's customers and the sites that need visiting. The Moody team keep the database up-to-date via an administration panel in the web app.
2. This is where the magic happens! We created a link between the Moody web app and Google Maps. The link allows us to work out the most efficient order in which to do the work. It sends the site postcode to Google and retrieves the GPS co-ordinates. This allows us to use simple trigonometry to estimate the distance between each combination of sites.
   
   Although this is not 100% accurate in terms of driving distance (it works "as the crow flies"), it is exceptionally fast and achieves the same result. This is because drivers only need to know roughly which site is closest, not how long it will take to get there - we avoid over-engineering as it adds significant cost for no benefit.
3. The system allocates work to the tankers and engineers. To cope with emergencies, the system has to ensure that tankers and engineers are not all working in the same place at the same time.
4. Finally, we linked the system to Google Calendar. All the jobs are automatically sent to Google Calendar so that they can be viewed on a mobile device out in the field.

Doing the schedule by hand was a four day task for the MD. With all the usual interruptions to his time, it became stretched out over two weeks every month, causing a lot of stress! Now, the schedule is generated automatically every month, allowing the MD to focus on marketing and business development.

Better Invoicing

Moody's customers are mostly domestic and so they tend to raise a large number of small value invoices. They were finding that a member of the admin team was spending four hours per day preparing invoices, entering them into Quickbooks, and then putting them in the post. Addressing this problem was a logical next step since the web app already had all of the job information necessary to prepare an invoice.

Ideally, the administrator would be able to press a "complete job" button which would automatically take care of the invoicing. Here's how we did it:

1. We ported the client from Quickbooks to Kashflow. Kashflow allows third party applications to integrate with it, providing the framework for us to carry out the automatic importing of financial data.
   
   To transfer the financial records, we exported a trial balance, debtor summary, and a creditor summary from Quickbooks and used these to import opening balances in Kashflow. After the import we compared the equivalent reports on Kashflow to ensure that they matched exactly. We did this work outside of business hours so that Moody had no operational downtime.
2. We upgraded the job scheduling system to allow the administrator to click a "complete job" button.
   
   When this happens, the system does two things. Firstly, it uses the Kashflow link to create an invoice on the relevant customer's account. Secondly, it generates a PDF copy of the invoice and automatically sends it to ViaPost who then print the PDF, stuff it in an envelope, and post it.

Moody's admin team have four more hours each day to spend on other areas of the business. When the job is completed, the admin clicks a "complete job" button and the invoice is automatically put into Moody's financial system and automatically posted to the customer!

Better Cashflow

Credit control is a tricky problem for Moody Sewage as they have lots of low value invoices and deal mostly with domestic customers. They have been gradually implementing direct debit using Smart Debit.

To setup a new direct debit payment, Moody would login to the Smart Debit control panel and manually edit the payment instruction for the relevant customer, which is very time-consuming and error prone when you need to amend over a hundred records at a time.

Fortunately, Smart Debit allow third party applications to integrate with their systems, allowing us to build a link and eliminate the manual updates. Here's what we did:

1. We wrote some software which would allow us to connect with the Smart Debit system.
2. Every month, just before the cut-off point for submitting new instructions, the Moody web app builds a list of direct debit customers and the amounts due. It then automatically sends this list to Smart Debit.

We've been able to eliminate another day of work for the admin team, and it requires no replacement work from administrators whatsoever - it's simply a task which no longer has to be done!

We started off this problem looking at how to save the time, but it had an unexpected side effect. Moody would start the task a few days before the cut-off point so that they had time to get it done, but this would mean that any invoices raised between starting the task and the cut-off point would get ignored. By making it automatic, the task happens a few hours before cut-off and so these additional invoices are added to the direct debit run and payment is collected earlier than previously possible, improving cashflow.

End Result

We did this work over six months, releasing over 30 man hours per week in time savings:

• MD has 20% more time
• Admin staff have 35% more time
• Cashflow has improved by three debtor days

Like what you see?

As well as developing bespoke business web apps like this one, we can develop commercial apps for public use on both Android and iPhone platforms. We are based in Eastbourne and would love to help your business harness the power of technology and realise its potential. For more information, fill out our contact form or call us on 01323 760760.