Tony Isgrove started his painting business in the early eighties and after years of dedication and hard work, it’s now an award-winning company with a team of nearly 50 staff. With a keen eye for detail and drive to deliver exceptional customer service, Tony knew his growing business would benefit from the addition of cloud software.
We sat down with Tony to find out how he embraced technology and which apps he uses to run his painting business today.
Following in his father’s footsteps, Tony learnt all the tricks of the trade before heading out on his own to create Tony Isgrove’s Paint and Decorate. Tony and his dedicated team now provide residential, commercial and strata painting services across Sydney – particularly the North Shore, Northern Beaches, Eastern Suburbs, Inner West and North West suburbs.
As the company grew so did their service offering which now includes colour consulting and digital colour overlays, wallpaper installation, softwash services and an in-house carpenter to do repairs prior to painting to ensure an immaculate finish. This attention to detail and service has won them numerous awards and the respect of their clients, but it was also creating the need for a better way to manage each aspect of the business and all the information that comes with it.
“Before TradiePad came along, we were using a clunky old CRM software to keep track of our clients. Now, we manage our time sheets, SWMS, Toolbox Talks, and many other parts of our company online, enabling us to go paper-free and work from anywhere.”
Tony contacted TradiePad in 2014 to seek advice on different apps and which would be best suited to their unique needs. They were keen to swap the manual paper processes (and the good old whiteboard!) for a more modern approach to business using cloud software.
A particular pain point for the business was the flow of communication between site and office. We implemented WorkflowMAX which allowed Tony and his team of painters the ability to access project and customer details onsite, create quotes and send invoices. It dramatically improved the sharing of information within the business.
At the same time, they made the move across to Xero Accounting software which being cloud-based, allowed real-time visibility of the company financials, from what needed to be invoiced to how much was outstanding. Suddenly they had a great overview of where the company was at and could start planning for future growth.
The final step was to implement Deputy, an impressive rostering and timesheet app which would make managing the huge team of 50 staff easy! Tony Isgrove’s Paint and Decorate were well and truly on their way to becoming a paperless business. All the new processes he was putting in place would not only make his life easier but improve how the company ran and ensure that they were providing outstanding customer experience on every job.
“TradiePad provided us with fantastic insight in to the apps and services designed for tradies and helped us create a paperless system that works for us.”
Tony and the team are loving Deputy, they say it is unbelievably easy to use and rostering the whole team is now a breeze. Which is exactly what you are after when you are running a team of 50 painters, spread across multiple suburbs in Sydney!
“We are loving the ability to copy and paste a weeks worth of shifts for the guys and to click and drag shifts when things change. It makes scheduling larger jobs incredibly easy and we can move the smaller jobs around when the weather changes.”
With paperwork now gone all the data they need is entered directly into Deputy, WorkflowMAX and Xero. This is now a combined effort between the office staff and the team in the field. Detailed information is captured at each job including all billable hours and jobs are invoiced on completion.
With the three software programs integrated together, data captured can flow beautifully between the apps making access to any job details super easy. No double handling of information and no forgotten steps in the process.
“The difference now is that we get a lot more out of the time spent entering data as we have access to a plethora of reports and finding client and job information is a snap.”
What impressed us most about Tony is his willingness to learn, constantly striving to improve because he understands that investing time into his company and team will allow his business to grow and enjoy future success. His ability to adapt to new ways of working has allowed Tony to embrace technology and mobile devices as their new tools of the trade.
They have a strong culture of education, committed to training their staff in the latest innovative ways of working and providing their clients with an elite level of service. We look forward to following their story as they continue to set the standards high for the painting industry.
“It has been a pleasure working with TradiePad. The transition from paper to digital was not always smooth and we appreciate how helpful TradiePad have been through the whole process. We would not have been able to make the transition so quickly and easily without their help.”
With their processes streamlined, Tony Isgorve’s Paint and Decorate can now concentrate on their main objectives, doing an amazing job and keeping their customers happy. The results speak for themselves with the company winning multiple awards each year for their painting expertise.
“If you can make the transition to go digital, we highly recommend it. It will enable you to offer your staff more flexible working arrangements, you will be able to get a more accurate understanding of exactly how your business is performing to help you stay on top of everything and you will be looking after the environment at the same time.”
If you are interested to find out more about Tony’s success and what his company is up to now, you can follow Tony Isgrove’s Paint and Decorate on Facebook or Instagram.
Love the sound of Deputy or WorkflowMAX and wondering if it would suit your business too? Contact TradiePad and book a call to learn more about this software and how it could benefit your business.
