Quotes out the same day, down from three to five.

Where the time was going

TRE Energy delivers commercial renewable energy across Northern Ireland, covering solar, wind and hydro. The reputation was strong. The back office was not.

Enquiries came in and got lost. There was no single place holding them, no structured follow up, so whether a lead got chased came down to whoever remembered it.

A quote took three to five days. Not because the pricing was hard, but because getting the information together was. The surveyor went out, and what came back was not always everything the quote needed, so somebody was ringing the customer again or going back out. Then the quote itself was built by hand, with the same details typed into a second system because the CRM and the quoting tool did not talk to each other.

The bigger problem was on the compliance side. RAMS were paper. A paper form can be skipped, and it was. Sign-offs, post-installation checks and contractor confirmations were tracked by whoever remembered them, and most of the time there was no way to enforce any of it. Installers were getting job details before the paperwork was finished and jobs were being marked complete without anyone verifying the sign-offs were in.

What we built

We built TRE a custom operating system for the whole business, from the first enquiry through to a completed job. Six months, start to finish.

Every enquiry lands in one place with a stage and an owner, and the follow up is structured rather than remembered.

The survey was rebuilt so nothing gets missed on site. Everything needed for an accurate quote is captured the first time, so the surveyor is not going back to the customer for something that was forgotten. It is captured once, it is right and it carries through every stage after the survey. The quote generates from what the surveyor captured rather than being rebuilt by hand.

RAMS are signed electronically in the system. The install and completion process runs on gated workflows, so compliance steps have to be finished before the next stage opens and a job cannot be marked complete until the sign-offs are in. What used to be a paper form somebody could skip is now a step the system will not let past.

Alongside that it holds the CRM, quoting and invoicing, customer communications, safety document management, vehicle management, customer timesheets, holiday tracking, handover pack generation and post-installation checks. One place, one record, no re-keying between systems.

What changed

A customer who asks TRE for a quote gets it the same day. It used to take three to five days and most of that was chasing information rather than pricing the job.

No enquiry goes cold because somebody forgot to ring back. Every one has a stage and an owner and the follow up runs whether anyone remembers or not.

RAMS get signed. Not filed, not chased, not skipped. A job will not close without them, so the paperwork is right before the installer is on site rather than after.

Forty installs a month run through one system across 17 staff. The double entry is gone and anyone can see where a deal stands without asking around.

• Every enquiry has a stage and an owner, so the follow up happens whether anyone remembers or not.
• RAMS are signed in the system before work starts, instead of being a paper form that could be skipped.
• The survey captures everything needed for an accurate quote the first time, so nobody goes back to the customer for a forgotten detail.
• Handover packs and post-installation checks are generated against the same record as the job.