JVA Electrical

Background

JVA is a commercial electrical and property services provider, specialising in high-volume contracts with Housing Associations, which have specific compliance requirements. To comply with these requirements, a precise procedure must be followed when on-site. White Cobalt was engaged by JVA with the specific objective to build a bespoke replacement for the off-the-shelf application.

The problem

JVA had been using an off-the-shelf application designed for general service-management companies. This application could not be tailored to the specifics of their contracts and therefore created a great deal of extra administration. It was at the limits of its operational capability and its architecture prevented extending this capacity. This severely limited JVA’s ability to grow. The inflexibility of the off-the-shelf application was also having an impact on wider business operations:

• A team of people had to open and read incoming job emails, then enter them into their existing application. This ‘double-keying’ represented a significant admin overhead and was prone to human error which caused wider issues further down the line. Appointment management was laborious and also prone to data input and update error.
• They also needed to comply with specific on-site compliance procedures and the inability to enforce these processes was causing JVA far reaching problems, both in terms of complying with their contractual obligations and the additional admin.
• There were no facilities to provide appropriate information to key personnel; it was difficult to see which Jobs were at each stage of the process; managers and directors had no concise overview on the performance of the business. Often information only became apparent once the management accounts had been produced – weeks after the event.
• There was no easy method for exporting reporting information to provide to their customers. A significant part of JVA’s administration overhead consisted of updating the Housing Associations with the status of a job.
• Tendering restrictions were caused by the inability to provide real-time or near-time updates to tenants or the Housing Association, which in turn prevented JVA from being competitive, or made them ineligible, when tendering for certain contracts.