Quayclean gets crystal clear on business performance

“We provide quality, not quantity. It’s why we have long-standing contracts, and why we often get approached to tender on work,” said Tira Jones, Quayclean’s CFO.

Since 2002, Quayclean has grown rapidly and now employs over 2000 staff nationwide to service some of Australia’s largest public sporting venues, entertainment precincts, and retail facilities. However, when Tira joined the company in 2016, it was apparent that gaining visibility into financials was a significant challenge.

“There was no commonality across the business. Everyone had their own way of doing things, they created their own spreadsheets, or just wrote things on paper. With a business that was growing at 15 to 20% a year, we knew we had to start building some common systems and processes,” admitted Tira.

Without a solid system to gain a consolidated view of their financials, Tira and her team knew it was time to dispose of the old ways of working and embrace modern technology. While they weren’t sure how they were going to move forward, they were certain of one thing: they couldn’t do it alone.

“We’re a very spread out, very fast growing business so it’s crucial to have an interface that everyone can access when they need to.”

“We’re a very spread out, mobile business,” explained Tira, “so it’s really important to have an interface that everyone can access when they need to. It’s crucial in a business that’s growing as fast as we are.”

Tira and her team, after many years of navigating cumbersome workarounds, finally had full visibility over financial reporting and team activity, and this changed things immediately.

“We could see the benefits straight away,” said Tira. “We’ve got over 300 sites to manage and only six people in our head office, so just by having that extra level of visibility around what has and hasn’t been billed yet was awesome.”

“The biggest difference for me is month-end. I was previously making a lot of assumptions while I was waiting for information from the operations team. Now they’re putting information in at the front end, I can answer most of it for myself.”

Real-time access to deep business insights
As the project progressed, the benefits of having instant access to trustworthy data became more apparent – and more valuable – for Tira and her team.

“The biggest difference for me is month-end. I was previously making a lot of assumptions while I was waiting for information from the operations team. Now they’re putting information in at the front end, I can answer most of it for myself,” she said.

The Quayclean team were also able to use these new insights to improve operations and change the way they do business.

Iterative improvements lead to greater insights
Over the last three years, the Quayclean team have trusted FiveP with making further improvements to the platform, and the two teams have worked closely to iteratively build in additional functionality, customise workflows, and improve processes.

One key example has been customising the site manager interface to ensure it’s user-friendly and has minimal impact on Quayclean’s frontline workers.

“It’s great to be able to use the app on the phone, but we know if it’s too difficult, our frontline staff are not going to use it. We’ve pared it back to the bare minimum so they can see everything they need, and nothing more, and that’s really helped.”

The Quayclean team opted for FiveP’s Shepherd Managed Service, which gave them the benefit of unlimited support and access to a team of experts led by a dedicated service delivery manager to coordinate the project and align the appropriate internal resources.

For Tira and her team, this unlimited support meant less admin and greater capacity to move the project forward faster.

“It’s just easier. I felt like I was topping up and buying support hour blocks far too often in the early days. Now it’s on me to make them earn that monthly support fee. We just keep them busy instead of having to worry about how many hours we may need for one issue.”

During their three year project, the FiveP team were committed to innovating and iterating upon the platform to make it a solution that not only solves an immediate problem, but also improves core business operations. And this was something Tira was constantly impressed by.

“With FiveP, nothing is ‘no’ until they really look into it. Even to the point where they’ll go back to Microsoft and check things that they can’t quite work out. They’re always open to trying new things and we’ve certainly tested them over the last three years with some things that they’ve never done before.”

“When I think about where we were three years ago compared to where we are now, the extra level of visibility we have into our business is incredibly valuable.”

Unprecedented reporting capabilities provide consolidated view for management

The team have recently come to realise just how instrumental Microsoft Dynamics 365 has been to Quayclean’s business.

“In our last management meeting, something clicked,” Tira explained. “Mark, our CEO, said he’s never seen a system like this – in fact, he doesn’t think he’s seen this level of reporting in any other company he’s worked in.”

Tira said this came down to persistence from her team, combined with outstanding work and consistent guidance from the FiveP team. And it’s this winning combination that has meant they’ll be sticking with FiveP for the long term.

“The work that FiveP have done for us has been instrumental to the growth of our business. When I think about where we were three years ago compared to where we are now, the extra level of visibility we have into our business is incredibly valuable,” Tira concluded.

To learn more about how FiveP can help you build the technology capability to power your business using their unlimited support service Shepherd, get in touch.