Booyco HVAC Services , a company that specialises in installing, servicing and maintaining mobile air conditioning systems, has implemented the Sage Evolution Service Manager Module to automate and manage service requests and service tasks. This, in turn, enables the company to deliver higher service levels to its blue-chip client base as well as to streamline what was once a paper-intensive process.

Booyco Services mobile air conditioning equipment from big brands such as Barloworld, Babcock Equipment, and Bell Equipment. In this environment, it is critical to reduce downtime by proactively servicing equipment and to respond quickly when a unit needs repairs.

With customers operating fleets of up to 500 mobile air conditioning units, keeping ahead of their repair, service and installation needs by means of manual processes is time-consuming and prone to errors, says Kobus van der Merwe, Managing Director at Booyco HVAC Services. “We were keeping track of our customers, their equipment and their service needs on spreadsheets,” says Van Der Merwe. “But with the complexity associated with our customer’s large fleets and the national nature of our business, it became increasingly difficult to manage the process in this manual manner.”

Booyco HVAC Services uses the Sage Evolution solution as the ERP backbone for its business. After it learnt about the Sage Evolution Service Manager Module, it decided to adopt this solution to streamline the process of scheduling customer’s service requests, administering service level agreements and billing for work.

Sage Evolution Service Manager is a fully integrated service management solution for Sage Evolution Accounting and ERP. The solution makes it easy for the company to track customers’ assets service requests and history; simplifies scheduling of technicians’ time; and gives it insight into availability of spares. Without the solution, Booyco HVAC Services would need several administration support staff dedicated to just managing service requests, says Van der Merwe.

“We no longer need to move pieces of paper around between branches and manually scan work requests,” he adds. “This has helped us shorten our sales cycle and be more responsive to clients’ needs. There are no unnecessary delays in attending to clients’ requests because no incident gets lost or forgotten.”

The software also supports Booyco HVAC Services’ drive to become a customer-centric business by helping it deliver a value-add that enhances customer relationships. By offering clients customised reports generated in Service Manager, Booyco HVAC Services helps them better understand and control their assets. This is a valuable offering its rivals do not yet provide to their customers.

Says Daryl Blundell, general manager of Sage Pastel Accounting: “Sage Evolution as a core product is feature-rich, but add-on modules such as Sage Evolution Service Manager are where we can really make a huge difference to small and medium-sized companies. These modules automate many processes smaller businesses did manually in the past, allowing them to reduce costs and become more agile.”