Stephen Ward

Roi & JZ continues the Uptick Tour [of the UK] and catches up with the team at Firemark

Based in Bridgwater and serving businesses and public sector organisations all over the UK, Firemark is a provider of fire safety solutions with over 50 years in the design, development, manufacture, and maintenance of fire extinguishers. Firemark has a national network of service technicians who have full third-party accreditation and are trained in the latest standards, legislation and industry changes to ensure they provide the very best service they can.

This service-first approach adopted by Firemark was a primary reason that they made the switch to Uptick - they needed a software that was purpose-built to support fire asset maintenance that could support the maintenance side of their business.

"We wanted something that gave us all the flexibility." Stephen Ward, Managing Director

Firemark is no stranger to using a fire routine maintenance software, however, they had persistent issues with their previous one and wanted a more flexible solution that could adapt to their specific situation.

Moving to a new business-critical software is never easy, but the team at Firemark did not dawdle and saw it as an opportunity to start reaping the benefits of Uptick sooner rather than later

"We can constantly resist change or we can take the leap. And the quicker we can do it, the quicker we can start using the system to get the results that we want for the business." Michelle Tuxford, Operations Director

They're also aware that any change would be accompanied with some change management as they look to get their entire team into the new platform, which can be challenging for teams on the field who are used to a specific way of working.

Uptick was able to help Firemark with the change to the new system as Uptick's onboarding program helped them migrate their data, train their team, and configure their system the way they wanted it.

"The transition from where we were to Uptick has been fantastic." Stephen Ward, Managing Director

Since implementing the system, the impact on Firemark is evident to see with the software responsible for their scheduling, assigning their tasks to engineers, and quoting.

The impact of having a single system handling all these activities has been huge as the engineers no longer have to deal with Excel sheets and do manual work to match up what they've done on-site to what's in the system. Their process is now seamless as it's now all part of their workflow in the field.

Firemark used to have a lengthy process for defect quoting, to the extent that it may take 3 to 4 weeks to get a quote. Since switching to Uptick, Firemark's customers have been receiving an improved level of service as this entire quoting process has been minimised to just 24 hours

"The admin time that we're going to save, we can then convert it to the other end of chasing the quotes, forward planning, and making the decisions that we need to do." Michelle Tuxford, Operations Director

In the field, Firemark's technicians are reaping the benefits of the Uptick mobile app where they're able to scan barcodes on site, locate assets on properties faster, pass or fail an asset, and attach photos and remarks to an asset - allowing them to provide more transparency to their customers.

"The service report is ready to go and it's in [the client's] hands that day or the next day." Lee Stewart, Lead Engineer

The entire team at Uptick are absolutely thrilled to see the improvements with Firemark, and we're even more excited to see how much more they'll progress in Year 2 once more data has been loaded in and the entire team has had time to get used to the ins & outs of the software.