Based in the UK, Utility Results is a specialist consultancy that helps partners in the construction sector plan, connect, and manage utilities.
Depending on the client, this could mean anything from carrying out surveys to running on-site project management, with the scale of projects ranging from residential buildings to commercial power plants.
As they work on these complex projects, Utility Results’ experts have to share and receive a large number of incredibly detailed documents over email. These documents, which range from survey results to site reports, were consuming a large amount of storage space on the company’s systems – especially when multiple team members were working on the same project and receiving their own copies of each file.
“Our email storage capacity was constantly going into negative numbers,” explained Amy Cunningham, Utility Results’ Office Manager. “We had to look for a system that could sort that out.”
Where many of the other companies saw Utility Results’ challenges as an opportunity for a quick software sale and nothing else, the Crown team offered a more detail-oriented service. Rather than a sales pitch, we offered our expert services to ensure that Utility Results were completely certain of what they needed from a solution – and, just as importantly, what they didn’t.
We dispatched an expert to the Utility Results offices, where they spent several days shadowing the team. They sat in on meetings, watched individual team members work with the email data, and learned as much as they could about the organisation’s processes and workflow.
“They got into the nitty-gritty of how we operate and then used that to put together a whole series of options for us,” said Amy.
These options ranged from a relatively minor change to how the team operated, to a full email management solution from Crown. The solution wouldn’t just tackle the question of endless storage woes and duplicated documents but would also help to streamline the team’s workflow.
“It gives a great overview of workflow that ensures that nothing gets missed if someone is on holiday or otherwise out of the office,” explained Amy. “We already tried to handle that through internal policies, but this would manage things automatically.”
The Utility Results team was highly pleased with the results of the project, which helped to pinpoint exactly what the organization needed from an email management solution.
They were also glad to work with an expert who learned so much about how they worked without causing a major disruption to the busy office.
“When you’re a small business, it can be hard to ignore someone being there – watching you work and wanting to find out how you work,” said Amy. “However, the Crown expert was completely seamless; we didn’t even know she was there half the time.
“It was the dream, really.”
Once the shadowing period was complete, our expert guided Utility Results’ staff through a workshop that explained not only how the solution worked but answered their questions about improving and managing their workflow. The entire process was as transparent as possible, with minimal focus on trying to sell a product.
“I would definitely work with Crown again,” said Amy. “They were helpful and incredibly easy to work with. Importantly, they were never overbearing or overly in-your-face about selling the product, it was more about exploring the challenge and presenting us with options.”
