Contego: What BigChange means to me

Michael Taylor – CEO – Contego Environmental Services: What BigChange Means to me

Firstly, I’d like to congratulate BigChange for receiving its Queens Award for Enterprise. It’s a phenomenal achievement and well deserved. BigChange makes a massive contribution to our business.

Contego started life in 2004 as a one-man-band specialising in bird control and has grown to become one of the largest national pest control businesses in the UK. BigChange has ensured our operations could keep up with that level of growth.

We’ve used BigChange for several years now, and it has transformed our business. It gives us complete visibility of our operations and allows us to manage our national workforce centrally from our base in County Durham.

I’ve always been an early adopter of digital technology and explored three or four other options before settling on BigChange. JobWatch pulls everything together. It allows us to run our business processes on a single piece of software.

The beauty of Jobwatch is that it’s customizable. We’ve created a series of dynamic processes to cover every stage of the employee journey, from induction to job worksheets and inspection documents. BigChange provides lots of support when we need it, and ensures the software does what we need it to.

BigChange has also enabled us to offer greater visibility to our customers. Using data from our worksheets, we can automatically make our customers aware of the threats and risks at their different sites.

BigChange is also central to our safety and compliance activities. Each of our people uses BigChange to complete their daily vehicle checks, which alerts our fleet manager to any problems and allows remedial work to be booked immediately.

Our risk assessments and workflows are also available on BigChange, guiding our technicians in the field and helping them complete work safely. We can see when things are done, and we’ve got access to a full audit trail.

I couldn’t recommend BigChange more highly. The technology is excellent and easy-to-use, and it has ensured that we’ve remained in control as our business has grown. It would have been much more challenging to grow at the speed we have been without BigChange.

Contego, the nationwide pest control company, has turned to the latest smart mobile technology to underpin ambitious business expansion within the UK.

The 5 in 1 system from BigChange has transformed Contego’s business, replacing existing systems and eliminating paperwork. Called JobWatch, the mobile workforce management solution has replaced over 100 paper forms with a series of simple apps running on mobile devices used by the company’s field technicians.

Contego is one of the UK’s largest independent pest control companies and a respected leader within the industry; recently shortlisted for British Pest Management Awards Company of the Year. The Durham-headquartered firm operates a four hour fast-response service 365 days a year and the BigChange system is seen as an essential element to support planned expansion in 2019 and beyond.

Michael Taylor, CEO of Contego says:

“Our aim is to become the biggest independent pest control operator in the UK and to do that we knew we needed to invest in the very latest and best technology available,”

“Since making the move to BigChange we’ve already increased the business by over £1million as we scale up within new regions, next year we have ambitious plans for a 50 per cent expansion in the business and we aim to become the largest independent pest control operator in the UK.”

Established in 2004, Contego has always been an industry innovator and had implemented earlier generation mobile systems and vehicle tracking. The company’s specialist Falconry Response services utilises specially trained falcons and hawks deployed to control bird pests.

Taylor adds:

“A rogue pigeon loose in a food factory or warehouse can mean the entire operation shuts down. Dealing with the problem quickly and effectively is pretty vital.”

Taylor comments:

“We are always looking for new ways to challenge traditional methods of pest control and we see new technology as fundamental to changing the industry; I like to think we are regarded as the industry innovators. As an independent operator we can adapt quicker than big corporates, deploying new technology and techniques to react to changes in the market.”

Taylor continues:

“BigChange is all about having real-time and visible information and it has certainly given us a competitive edge,”

“The visibility extends to our customers and it has allowed us to boost our service levels with real time data including photographs for treatment recommendations and proof of job done, backed by geo-referenced signatures. It has also virtually eliminated invoicing queries; one of those management benefits that has made my job a lot easier.”

The system handles everything from the initial service request through to completion. This includes job scheduling, live tracking, completion of risk assessment and other compliance related forms including vehicle safety checks, treatment forms, signature capture, invoicing and full management reports.

Taylor adds:

“The key is better visibility – for us and the customer. We can better assess service delivery and advise our customers of the best treatments and ensure money is not wasted doing unnecessary work. The system can generate very useful management reports; something clients love. The system also allows us to keep ahead of compliance which is very important in our business.”

Category: Contego Environmental Services