The Home Shutter Company - "I couldn't have drawn a better solution if I tried"

The Home Shutter Company are a family-run, British business that specialise in the installation and supply of wooden window shutters.

They are a team of 10 people based in Kings Langley, Hertfordshire, and are led by their affable founder Jason.

As a company, Jason and the team have high ambitions and are growing the business with the goal of expanding the company across the UK and beyond.

However, to do this involves having efficient processes in place that allow the company to scale.

To address this need Jason has put particular emphasis on using the right software to manage the office admin and coordinate the different aspects of the business as it grows.

When searching for a solution Jason was looking for a software partner that could match the scale and ambition of his own business.

Any solution chosen required a powerful feature set that could handle the rapid growth the company was expected to go through (and is going through now).

Jason had previous experience using CRM software, having worked with a large cloud-based software company.

Unfortunately, this partnership did not work out.

Although large CRM platforms can work for very large companies, these solutions can also come with high implementation costs and onboarding that can take months or even years to complete.

For Jason, he was badly stung. After spending thousands of pounds for next to no training or testing support, and with costs spiralling out of budget, Jason found himself looking for a way out.

He reflects on how shocked he was by the lack of service - especially given how much he was paying.

“We were holding business-level conversations and spending thousands of pounds and yet they were building things we didn’t need”.

Worse still, Jason found himself locked into a long-term, multi-year contract, which makes getting out very hard. 

All of these issues combined to make Jason’s experience extremely poor and left him feeling pessimistic about finding a good solution. 

Jason still needed something that matched his ambitions and delivered to his high standards, within a reasonable timeframe.

It turns out, his brother-in-law was using a system called Payaca for his plumbing business.

Payaca is a British software company based in Bristol. Payaca is still small and prides itself on top-quality customer service delivered by a small team who are heavily invested in the success of the companies they take on.

Payaca offers market-leading CRM software with powerful features that allow businesses to grow sustainably.

Their system can be adapted to suit a specific business’s needs with customised workflows and automated steps that make managing business administration clear and straightforward.

After booking a call with a member of the Payaca team, Jason was introduced to what Payaca can do.

Straight from the get-go, Jason realised that this was the solution he was looking for.

Sitting down with CEO Matt and product specialist Tom, the pair were able to start mapping out Jason’s current business processes.

Reviewing and implementing Payaca

Jason was running his shutter company through a combination of different software tools and apps.

The process for quoting, ordering and delivering shutters to the customer involved a number of clear steps.

Using his current process, agents would visit the customer's property and make an initial assessment. Images were taken using WhatsApp and Mailchimp was used to send out emails and deliver the quotes.

For every new assessment, a new quote had to be built each time, a process that took time to complete.

As a project progressed the team at the Home Shutter Company used a combination of spreadsheets and basic invoicing tools to keep track of the work.

These tools were not joined up, requiring time and attention to use.

To deliver a new system that matched Jason’s current business flow Matt and Tom performed a full review of the Home Shutter Company’s processes.

Jason also provided a workflow diagram outlining how his business operates. This was incredibly helpful for Matt and Tom who were able to use this to design the different stages of the Payaca system.

To begin with, the different steps that take place in a shutter fit were matched to pipeline stages within Payaca.

Matt and Tom created stages for the initial assessment, sending the quote, taking the deposit, ordering the parts, and sending out reminders, all the way through to the final installation and payment.

These stages were set up with automations that were able to replace a number of manual steps for Jason and the team.

When a new project comes in now, it moves straight into the Payaca pipeline.

Once an event is booked to perform the necessary measurements at the customer's property, the project automatically moves into the next stage of the pipeline, allowing Jason and his team to easily see what steps need to be performed next.

Once the quote is sent and feedback is received, another set of automations kicks in. Either the project can be manually moved to the proposal accepted stage or automated reminders will be sent out after 4, 10 and 15 days.

These reminders are predesigned emails and texts that are sent to the customer. The messages in these communications are customisable and have been written according to Jason’s brief.

As the project progresses Jason and the team can track how far along the project is and what still needs to be done.

Rather than having to manually send out messages and update a project’s status, this is automatically taken care of. This saves Jason and the team hours of time and creates a quicker more secure way for customers to pay.

In fact, in less than 3 weeks, Payaca has saved the Home Shutter Company over 19 hours of time from automations alone. That doesn’t even include organisational time savings and quote building which will account for even more time reclaimed.

Quoting has also been revolutionised.

Jason's team can build a quote in Payaca rapidly by using pre-saved parts (called items). Rather than having to start from scratch each time, a quote can be built very quickly with the option to add product images, branding and credentials.

They can also add multiple-choice or optional extras to the quote, allowing the team to offer an alternative option.

This allows the Home Shutter Company to make more from every quote while providing a document that looks impressive.

Jason was blown away by the quality and speed of the Payaca team,

“That’s an end-to-end solution in two weeks. I am shocked at the audacity of some of the bigger providers out there! They're taking 15 weeks to get nowhere near that. I couldn't have drawn a better solution if I tried”.

Jason and the team at The Home Shutter Company are now feeling optimistic about the future with the right software that delivers on its promises and allows for sustainable growth.

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