Terry Skeggs

In business since 1969, Argos Fire Protection operate from their head office in Exeter, with a network of engineers covering the whole of the South West of England. They provide all aspects of Fire Protection, including Fire Alarms, Emergency Lighting, Fire Extinguishers, Domestic Sprinkler Systems, Kitchen Suppression Systems, Fire Suppression Systems, Dry and Wet Risers, Safety Signage (& bespoke signage), Passive Fire Protection, Fire Doors & Intumescent Products, Basic Fire Training & Fire Warden Training.

Like every other fire protection business, Argos Fire was initially wary of the effort it would take to implement new software to be the backbone of its business.

Between the Argos team and the Uptick onboarding team putting in the necessary time and effort, the data migration and system configuration went by without a hitch. This lack of friction during implementation is made possible by Uptick's onboarding program, which is broken up into phases to allow Argos Fire to reach adoption success.

"It just seems to be a lot smoother than I was expecting." Terry Skeggs, Managing Director

Since implementing the system, the increase in efficiency in Argos Fire is evident, with the software impacting their work in the office, in the warehouse, and in the field.

In the office, Argos Fire has been taking advantage of Uptick's integration with Xero, which lets them access client billing information and issue invoices with a click of a button from within Uptick - thereby saving them time and stopping duplicate data entry.

The speed at which things are being done and reaching their clients since moving to Uptick also means that invoices are getting paid faster.

The Xero integration even allows invoices and purchase orders to flow into Xero automatically and for payment information to flow back into Uptick, which enables Argos Fire to have a flow of financial information from these two platforms.

"[The biggest impact is] the autonomous link between Uptick and Xero is seamless." Terry Skeggs, Managing Director

Uptick has also helped the Engineering department at Argos Fire in eliminating paper from their tasks - from scheduling fieldwork and tracking engineers' work as soon as they're done to remedial works quotation - allowing all of them to be done online, with the necessary audit trails that come along with digitisation.

In the warehouse, Uptick has allowed Argos to control their inventory through the system directly - this ranges from managing their product catalogue and coordinating which products should be taken by which engineers throughout the week, all the way to issuing purchase orders to procure new supply which also takes advantage of the integration with Xero to ensure a seamless flow of financial information.

"All our engineers' stock is controlled through the system as well, which makes our life a lot easier because sometimes we don't see the engineers for a couple of weeks, so we know what they've got in their vans in real-time." Terry Skeggs, Managing Director

In the field, the impact may be greater than anywhere else as engineers don't have to deal with admin and can go about their days more efficiently. The Argos engineers have had complaints about other systems they've used where it lags, or it's complicated to use, whereas the team feel that the Uptick mobile app has been made to make their lives easier.

This has meant that Argos Fire Protection's field team can get one or two more jobs done daily - which will inevitably impact the organisation's bottom line.

"What we like about the system is that it's there to make your life easier. Everything is real-time, and they can see the improvement regarding how quick it is for them." Terry Skeggs, Managing Director

The entire team at Uptick are thrilled to see the improvements within Argos Fire in such a short time frame - it's only been less than a year! - and we can't wait to see how far ahead they will be when we next catch up with them.

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