B&K Environmental Services Ltd
Project for B&K
For whom: B&K Environmental Services Ltd
Service: Creation of a platform for the website and mobile application to manage new and pending orders, with the function of tracking planned services live at any time of the day.
Customer's problem: B&K Environmental Services Ltd from the UK is a container rental and waste management company. Since its inception in 2004, the company has grown steadily. Originally just a waste haulage and recycling company, hard work has allowed B&K to develop its North London market presence to include container hire and refuse collection from construction/refurbishment/clean-up areas. As an industry specialist, in addition to its expertise in waste sorting and disposal, efficient fleet management, container fleet and optimised access routes, B&K has to be well aware of local rules and regulations, which impose charges for driving a lorry into the centre or leaving a container on the pavement.
The increasing scale of orders made it difficult for the current team to master all these aspects, and every absence of a team member immediately resulted in a state of alert in the office. The task was not made easier by the mentality of the people working on the construction sites, who in a moment of pause were more than happy to exchange a few sentences with a nice person from the customer service centre. The high quality of service did not allow the company to quickly win over customers, so conversations were often prolonged, more customers waited on the other line to be served, and thus the pressure of the customer service centre employee was sometimes unbearable. This resulted in frequent errors in addresses, container sizes and other information provided over the phone.
Solution: While looking for a solution to this problem, destiny brought B&K to our company. While talking with the customer we came up with an idea: let's create an application for smartphones that would allow to indicate on a map (or it would indicate by itself with the help of GPS) the location of the order, give the price of the service and administration fees for this location, show available dates when the service could be provided and accept payment by credit card or on-line payment system.
During the implementation of the service, further ideas were born in our minds to develop the application. As a result, we ensured that the customer had the possibility to:
- order the pick-up or exchange of a container,
- choose group payments, e.g. at the end of the month,
- be alerted that their right to occupy the pavement will end any day now and have the option to extend this period,
- be informed that a vehicle with their order is on its way and how long it will take to reach its destination.
Of course, this is not the end of the story, as the mobile application must show other orders (e.g. those made by phone), history of all orders, invoices and payments. In turn, for large contractors, the function of a foreman should be introduced, who can order a service, but does not have to pay for it (this will be done by an employee of the company's office).
From the outside it is just an application for a smartphone or a browser (the same functionality is available on-line from a computer/tablet), but in practice it is a whole information system:
- application for smartphones,
- website integrated with Facebook and Instagram,
- website application (Customer Profile, access management),
- administrative panel, where you can define the range and prices of services,
- integration with an administrative fee collection system,
- integration with a postal address information system,
- software for data exchange between web-based systems (hosted off-site) and ERP and financial-accounting systems on-site,
- integration with devices in trucks (tablets, GPS transmitters).
The application is available to Google Play and App Store users.
The project was a success, and the company B&K Environmental Services Ltd can continue its development thanks to this solution. We invite you to visit our customer website.
Are you facing a similar problem? Perhaps you are asking yourself: do you have such a solution for me?
Here’s the answer! Not now, but we can develop it in 6 months :)