In a competitive world like the Construction space, it’s beneficial to determine ways to cut business costs. It’s been reported that automating data collection efforts can reduce man hours by as much as 98 percent and cut costs by a significant amount. With automation, data is available and can be accessed from anywhere, simplifying operations and removing the friction that arises with manual data entry. Our partners at Right Mix UK have experienced the conundrum that ensues with paper-based processes. With Command Alkon, they were able to remove these bottlenecks and deliver superior service and quality to their customers.
Right Mix UK
Right Mix Concrete is a family-run business dedicated to providing a high standard of product to their clients. With a comprehensive, modern fleet and years of experience in the industry, they combine modern advancements with knowledge and skill to deliver cost effective and reliable service with quality assured. They opened their doors back in 2007, and over the years, their services have only become increasingly more efficient as they’ve grown.
Problem
Matt Latter, Director at Right Mix UK, was tired of paper-based, manual processes. He set out on a journey to discover how he could automate his processes and eliminate the huge number of man-hours that were being spent just on data importing. With the volume of work the plant was having on a daily basis, quoting, scheduling, and invoicing was becoming very difficult. He attended the UK Concrete Show in 2016 to see if he could find a solution that would simplify the back-office operations at his busy concrete plant.
Solution
Matt knew he had to find a software solution that would provide growth opportunities for his plant, but he wasn’t sure what he needed. Luckily, he met David Taylor, Area Sales Manager at Command Alkon. David introduced Matt to COMMANDseries, highlighting the modules that would make his business operation much more efficient. COMMANDseries had all of the capabilities that Matt was looking for to eliminate non-productive man-hours that occur when manually entering information on paper.
Following the show, David Taylor and Andy James, Operations Director - UK, India, Malaysia at Command Alkon, visited Right Mix to conduct a working demonstration of COMMANDseries, highlighting how one point of data input could be turned into a quotation. From there, the information would travel to their dispatching scheduling screen and send over to their batching plants. From this point, the system would return weight information and send those results to the invoicing to be distributed to their customers.
The system was exactly what Matt was looking for. He agreed to move forward and become a Command Alkon customer.
Fast-forward 2 months. Matt was running a 3rd party competitor’s batching system at his concrete plants. At this point, the company had gone into administration, and Matt was concerned he had no support available for the batching solution. Dave Taylor introduced Matt to COMMANDbatch, Command Alkon’s automated batching system. The system integrates with COMMANDseries, making the entire production, dispatching and back-office processes paperless. Matt signed on to implement COMMANDbatch in conjunction with their COMMANDseries system.
Continued Growth
About 2 years later, Matt purchased his second concrete plant. Because he already realized the benefits of COMMANDbatch at his first plant, he worked with Command Alkon to install the system at his second concrete plant. And he now has 2 concrete plants integrated back into COMMANDseries for his business. Over the last 3 years, Command Alkon has gradually enhanced the modules in Right Mix’s software.
Results
At first, Right Mix was just using projects because they didn’t realize that they needed the quotation module. As Matt’s business has continued to grow, he’s added more and more modules to achieve maximum efficiencies of his systems.
They also find great value from the executive reports. The reports allow them to look at their full cost analysis of pricing, delivery, and freight; allowing them to understand the end value of those proposals. As the business matures, Matt will be looking into adding different modules for continued growth.
Manager Benefits:
The Dynamic Scheduling screen has proved valuable to Matt and Right Mix’s dispatching operations. Due to the amount of orders they have, they would really struggle if they didn’t have this tool in place. For every call, they are able to go into the mapping software to the dispatching scheduling screen and see what orders they got in that day.
“If we’re taking a particular job on for 2 o’clock in the afternoon, we can instantly check to see what orders are already scheduled at that time. The module helps us determine whether we are overcommitted, and if we are able to push that job out to a later time.”
- Matt Latter, Director at Right Mix UK
The Dynamic Scheduling screen gives Matt business decision tools at his fingertips to make an educated decision. This helps his business supply the correct concrete at the right time for his customers.
Operator Benefits:
“The Quotation System allows us to provide the correct concrete every time to our end user.”
- Nick Roy, Operations Manager at Right Mix UK
Before COMMANDseries was implemented, Right Mix would have many projects where the site foreman would call in a request for a certain grade of concrete, and the order would be taken based on that Mix Design. When the materials made it to the field, the site foreman or engineer would request a different type of concrete. There wasn’t any sort of proof to fall back on, because the order was documented on pieces of paper rather than in the software; and oftentimes what was quoted to the customer was not delivered. This resulted in quite a few debates between Right Mix and its customers, trying to find a resolution to then build the correct mix design for that job.
With COMMANDseries, as soon as a quote is made for a particular mix design and it’s accepted, it’s locked into the system. This has saved Right Mix a huge amount of man-hours on questioning and following up on wrong concrete.
Nick touts the amount of work he’s eliminated with the system. “With COMMANDseries, we have the ability to print out our mix designs on a mix design template sheet and send this directly to their customers. In the past, this took many hours because it was all done on a Word template.” For every new quotation they had to type up the mix design, all the characteristics in content, and email that out to a customer before it was accepted. Not any longer. “Now with COMMANDseries, this is all generated at point of quotation.”
With the system, Right Mix can send out a mix design template, and once the customer agrees on it, it’s locked in the system. As this information descends down the COMMANDseries system, everybody is informed of this mix design.
