Gerrard Murphy taps into business opportunities

The 80/20 rule: redefined

As a general rule, many businesses generate about 80% of revenues from 20% of their customer base, but family-owned and operated business Murphy Plumbing has come up with a new spin on the old adage - the 40/80/60 rule. Maintenance contributes 40% of sales whilst construction contributes 60%; however maintenance, produces a whopping 80% of the paperwork and administration. Under the old system, it was taking two weeks to get 300-400 invoices out each month, which Murphy Plumbing Finance Director, Mark Murphy explains “was clogging up the Accounts Receivable process, not to mention the implications for cash flow”.

With many manual processes and a disconnected maintenance scheduling and financial process, Mark says what he envisaged was a central focus around CRM to enable service requests to be automatically generated and populated with customer information so data wasn’t re-keyed. Basically, he wanted to improve workflows across the business, starting with maintenance. This was the key driver for migrating to Greentree.

Automation reduces admin time and improves workflows

Previously, all data was manually coded to a maintenance or service request and the accounts staff needed to be “manually aware of multiple pricing for multiple customers,” says Mark. If a customer accepted a quote it needed to be manually converted into a job, then an invoice which was the main cause of the invoicing bottleneck at month-end.

Nowadays, maintenance and service jobs are an integrated part of CRM, which provides a single data entry point from where information flows through the relevant Greentree modules – no need to re-key data, and Greentree’s Price Book automatically pulls in pricing. Maintenance is now an entirely proactive process where plumbers can enter all the information about a customer along with Scheduled Asset Maintenance, special requirements using Alert text, dates and times, and basically, forget about it. A quote can be automatically converted into a job, then an invoice. Mark explains how Greentree’s ability to provide a link to productivity tools such as MS Word enables additional notes to accompany a customised Service Request and Risk Assessment sheet. With full, editable and accurate information automatically populating relevant forms, quality & control are inherent parts of the maintenance process. Four manual tasks for each job have now been automated.

Smarter internal communications

CRM has further enhanced customer communications by enabling Murphy Plumbing to add notes to customer records which can be emailed via MS Outlook and shared across both the Residential and Commercial areas of the business. This means that everyone has access to the same information, which reduces errors, saves time and eliminates duplication of effort.

Cash-flow improvements

Faster turnaround of invoicing has positive direct impact on cash flow, and this has been further enhanced by a Debt Collection module which helps the company monitor outstanding debtors and keep much tighter control of the credit process. Management states that this has dropped a week off cash flows and cleared the invoice logjam. Invoices are now turned out in three days instead of two weeks.

Tenacious Greentree partner

Mark speaks highly of the tenacious commitment of the local Greentree partner, who has worked as an integral part of the Murphy Plumbing team from the beginning. Since implementing Greentree, a number of key business processes have been “tidied and tightened” and the partner was the key driver of those improvements. Mark concedes that he wasn’t so inclined in the old system since there didn’t seem to be any real benefits, but “the Greentree partner came up with some useful customisations which have made progressive, overdue improvements”.

Manage multiple external business interests within Greentree

Mark explains that although the core business is plumbing, part of the growth strategy is diversification and Greentree provides the flexibility to manage business interests outside of Murphy Plumbing. Currently, he manages 16 commercial tenancies, two self-managed super funds and two Subway franchisees within Greentree. This effectively circumvents the need to purchase dedicated third-party systems and demonstrates Greentree’s value as a strategic Business Management tool, as opposed to an accounting system.

From a reactive to proactive business management model

With CRM as the central hub for information flows, integrated financial reporting within Excel and the automation of manual processes, Murphy Plumbing now has something unfamiliar to monitor – idle time. Mark admits they had no idea what this was in the old system, but Greentree enables them to allocate resource and capacity, which has resulted in more efficient utilisation of resources.

With the budgeting available in Greentree Financials, management now knows how the business performed in the past, but most importantly, Mark says “we can now rely on our forecasting”. Management has the information to help guide strategic planning and decision-making.

High visibility of business data enabled him to undertake another task he had little time for previously: managing the possibilities. As far as Mark is concerned, Greentree will provide a sound and scalable platform for growth well into the future.