Running a pilot

1. Pick your crew

One or two engineers and the person in the office who books them. Choose the people who feel the friction most: the engineer who finishes the paperwork at the kitchen table at 9pm, the coordinator who keeps the whiteboard. They will be the most motivated to try it, and the most credible when it is time to present the results.

With your first 2 field users free and office users free, a pilot at this size has no seat fees.

2. Write down where you are

Before anyone touches Onroute, note the things you will compare at the end. Keep it to what you can count on a Friday:

• How long from the van leaving site to the certificate being issued
• How many DNO or building-control notifications went out late this month, and why
• How many jobs were booked twice, or moved because the day did not work
• How long the quote takes to become the invoice
• How many calls the office took from engineers asking where a job is

Then ask the pilot crew three questions and keep the answers:

• Office: how do you know where every job is today?
• Engineers: how much of the paperwork do you finish on site?
• Both: what do you do when there is no signal?

3. Set up Onroute

Name your job types and statuses the way the office already says them. Put the price list in. Give each job type its certificates and forms. Put the app on the pilot engineers’ phones and connect Xero, so the invoices land where they do now.

Bring the pilot crew’s open jobs across from a spreadsheet, or start them fresh from the next enquiry. Both work. Whatever you set up for the pilot carries straight into the full move, so nothing here is wasted.

If you would rather we did it with you, book a demo and bring a real job.

4. Run it

A few weeks, long enough for at least one job to go all the way from enquiry to paid. Ask the pilot crew to run their jobs in Onroute only, not in both systems, or the comparison means nothing.

5. Compare

Count the same things again, and ask the same three questions. Ask for the answers by a set date, a week before you plan to present, so there is time to put them side by side.

6. Present it

Whoever signs it off will not read anecdotes. Pick four or five of the comparisons that tell the story and set the before against the after. Pair each one with something a pilot engineer said.