Steve Rolt Home Improvements ready to scale up project management with support from Fonn

As a company that works mainly in residential construction work, Steve Rolt Home Improvements understands the importance of quality in their work, delivering projects on time, and keeping to budget. The company is still growing, taking on more projects of larger size, so scalability of any solution they look at is important to the team.

Challenge

Company owner and Director Steve Rolt is growing his experience in the construction industry, already taking on a range of projects from refurbishments and internal works to landscaping and groundworks. Working with investors while scaling up, Steve recognises the need to have workflows in place that ensure projects are managed and completed on time; this can be a challenge when working with a lot of subcontractors. Keeping to timescales on residential projects is important to maintain a good reputation.

Steve acknowledges that the older ways of working weren’t delivering. “Things need to be simple – give people loads and loads of paperwork and they just won’t do it. They like to see and visualise things.” Paperwork also comes with an inevitable side effect – mistakes. “Not having the best communication means mistakes, which then means lost time, lost money, when everyone should be knowing what’s going on with a project.”

Solution

Using Fonn has enabled Steve to get his teams on the same digital page. Everything is in one place, and it’s a more agile way of working: “I’ve always wanted to get away from the paperwork, and now I don’t need to always be in the office. I can do things on the move,” he said.

The simplicity of Fonn is something else that Steve underlined as key, noting that older generations find it more difficult to adopt new technology. “Everything’s got to be simple and easy,” he said. He has found that keeping consistent with at least one process has helped to encourage adoption across his team, using the checking in system to ensure people are on-site when they say they are – if they aren’t checking in, they aren’t getting paid.

Steve has found that having one person in charge of the app on-site has been great to ensure the right information is being added. “You’re always going to struggle with some people that don’t understand technology, but as long as there’s someone who understands even a little bit, they can use it.”

Better communication

Steve usually has a manager on-site for each project and has taken the time to build up a subcontractor base. “It can be difficult to find new subcontractors, and it’s taken a long time to trust and get the right people.” The power of communication is what brought Steve to Fonn – it was working with another local company that led him to reach out. “It was the simplicity for me,” he said. “I thought ‘wow, that’s simple!’ It’s so user-friendly, and that’s important for something people will use across the board.”

The ease of use has been important for Steve, and he’s pleased that everyone has been using it. “They clock in and out, they open files up. They got what they want from it and that’s that!”

Productivity and growth

Working with residential clients means Steve is always aware of the need for accuracy and needing to be on top of things. As well as improving communication, there has been a distinct impact on time scales. “Projects that would take up to six weeks are now being wrapped up in four weeks – less mistakes means more speed. It improves our margins and means we can take on extra projects and our output is better.”

Projects that would take up to six weeks are now being wrapped
up in four weeks - Steve Rolt

As well as output, there is scalability of Fonn that appeals to Steve, and it gives his investors simplicity and transparency. “Even working on bigger projects, everything needs to be straightforward; but it’s all still there with Fonn.”

And the process doesn’t end with getting on-board either. On his experience of working with Fonn’s customer service team, Steve has been delighted with the ongoing care. “I’ve been contacted throughout, it’s a really personal touch. You don’t normally get that; you can tell is means a lot to the team.”

When you onboard and work with Fonn, you will always be working people, not automated systems. “Working with humans makes a difference, and you can’t get that with automated AI,” Steve said.

Ready to see how Fonn can transform your productivity?