Residential roofing is a big and increasingly complex industry in Aotearoa New Zealand, and one that plays a vital role in protecting Kiwis and their infrastructure from the elements. And it’s not just the wild weather that’s testing the industry, either. Strict and changing regulations, skills shortages and strong competition all put roofing companies under pressure.

Roof Improvements, an Auckland-based residential roofing company that specialises in long-run iron, has seen it all in its three decades of operation. Over many years Roof Improvements has grown from a small operation to a multi-million-dollar business servicing private and state-funded homes.

Naturally, as the company has grown over the years, they’ve found the manual processes, handwritten documents and reams of paper invoices just don’t cut it when it comes to efficiency, data clarity, or scalability. So they reached out to Glennis Stuckey at Katalyst Cloud and Business Services to see how WorkflowMax could streamline the company’s operations and offer better insights into its financial performance.

A foundation of manual processes

Like so many businesses, Roof Improvements started out small. Co-founder Dean Foster was on the tools, Dawson Chung managed quantity surveying and Clare Barrett took care of the administration.

“We had a couple of contractors that worked with us, but we were very small scale. My husband’s a roofer, and has been since about 16,” explains Clare.

The opportunity for the business to expand came along when Dawson, who came from a quantity surveyor background, agreed to join as their business partner, and bring on the skillsets they lacked. That was 25 years ago, and Roof Improvements has evolved significantly since then.

For one, Dean is now off the tools, and the team has grown to around 30 including directors, shareholders, roofers and contractors. As Roof Improvements expanded its operations, it became increasingly evident that its manual processes were hindering the business’ growth and profitability.

“In the early days, you had to be an idiot to not make money in the building industry – not to sound like a prat. But we knew we had to get better than just writing out an invoice in Microsoft Word, dictated from some handwritten notes. We saw a lot of time being wasted on not being able to get your hands on information when you needed it.”

“The way we were doing things meant that we needed something more powerful. I couldn’t drill down to where we made and lost money,” says Clare.

“Sometimes your perception of where you’re making money isn’t accurate. You might have a great relationship with a business or person, but you need to know what it’s taking to make a deal, and where in your workflow it’s actually costing you.”

Manual processes were time-consuming and prone to errors and delays. “We’d spend half a day looking through a stack of paper for a purchase order. That just wouldn’t do.”

The Katalyst for change

By 2016, the challenges had become overwhelming. Clare began exploring accounting software solutions. While their accountant had set them up with Xero, the team quickly realised they needed more than just an accounting tool—they needed a comprehensive job management solution.

“We had all parts of the business on different platforms. And if there were issues down the road, finding an email or an invoice was hard. Everything was scattered. It worked to a point, but if there was an issue, it was mind-blowing how hard it was to find the exact information quickly to solve the problem,” Clare says.

After investigating a few options, they reached out to Glennis Stuckey at Katalyst, to see what tools would be right for them – and Glennis immediately recognised the challenges Clare and the team were facing.

“There was a lot of custom data they were trying to track,” explains Glennis. “Roof colour, gauge, and profile, all needed to be taken into account – not just for quoting, but for accessing that information down the track for additions or issues.”

Glennis and Clare discussed at length the other features Roof Improvements wanted or were already using, like GPS tracking and time tracking for the installation teams.

“When you’re pulling the timesheets together to make sure you’re billing correctly, it was super time consuming, the information was coming from three different places,” she adds. “This was a highly complex business with custom needs.”

For Glennis, the solution was clear: WorkflowMax – a comprehensive job management software designed to help businesses streamline their operations and improve efficiency. It offers a wide range of features for contractors like Roof Improvements, and at the time WorkflowMax was a Xero offering, so the fit was natural.

After completing a thorough assessment of Roof Improvements’ existing processes and requirements, Glennis started configuring WorkflowMax for them.

“When implementing WorkflowMax, Clare and I ended up creating an impressive 130+ custom fields and templates to account for all the variations and features they wanted to track,” Glennis says.

“The Roof Improvements team are heavy users of the system. Clare knew that there was a need for general process improvements to their systems, in particular accessing historical information quickly. Now they could easily go back to 2016 and review their jobs to find all the information they need.”

“As a bookkeeping company, we tend to look at things from the bottom up – efficiency, ease of use, and best reporting possible. We like to make it easy; we can always complicate it later! It’s often best to start with implementing basic features, to get it to stick. If we go in too hard and fast, people get overwhelmed. Start with a job, record time and costs and invoice it. Then roll on extra features.”

Clare adds that “implementing the original WorkflowMax came with some challenges. It’s a beast to feed, because of the level of stuff that I want out of it. But that’s what’s made it such a successful solution for us.”

“There’s a bit of pain at the start, because you’ve got to train people, you’ve got to investigate what the business is capable of. But Glennis was integral to taking us through those steps. Every now and then she’d point out new things that WorkflowMax was capable of, and we’d get excited again!”

How Katalyst kept WorkflowMax close at hand

A few years after implementation, a fresh challenge arose. Xero was retiring WorkflowMax from their suite of offerings, and BlueRock was to take over the brand and build a new version called WorkflowMax by BlueRock.

“We had this beautiful system that worked really well,” says Clare. “And then we were told that we’d have the pain of having to learn a new but similar system.”

Glennis and Clare saw the challenge. Clare describes herself as a visual person, so needed a solution that would have an effective user interface that would continue to make sense. And Glennis knew that whatever solution they chose for Roof Improvements, it would have to deliver similar or better results.

Glennis notes: “We did investigate a few options that were similar to WorkflowMax, but these all cost two or three times more. In the end, we knew that sticking with WorkflowMax was the right move – but that it would come with some more changes to keep it moving.”

“We completed 133 migrations for clients transitioning from Xero's WorkflowMax to the new WorkflowMax by BlueRock. For Roof Improvements, the extensive data in their system required multiple passes to ensure a thorough migration. I maintained close communication with the WorkflowMax by BlueRock team to guarantee everything ran smoothly, while also keeping in touch with one of Clare’s team members to ensure the final migration was completed on schedule. It’s been very much a process of testing, reviewing, and refining along the way!”

For Clare, it was hands-off. So much so that she could continue with her planned three-month European holiday.

As Clare says, “The timing couldn’t have been worse! But I had confidence that our in-house team along with Glennis as an implementation partner were all over it. Any time you’re integrating a new piece of software, there are going to be issues. But you stick with it. And Glennis has been integral to that.”

Inspiring an award-winning business

The partnership between Roof Improvements and Katalyst, coupled with the implementation of WorkflowMax by BlueRock, has been transformative for the company. They can see the revenue and costs for individual teams and contractors, manage their data, and deliver better outcomes for their own clients too.

Clare now raves about the ability to determine which teams are profitable – something that would have been impossible with paper records. “I prepare all the KPIs for our business, and that level of drilling down I found really exciting. We’ve already gained so much new stuff, like making sure that some options are checked before a quote is approved (which makes it clearer for billing and install).”

The level of data has also helped protect their reputation by showing entire timelines of conversations, emails and engagements to prove accurate information has been shared. In fact, information is so accurate that they’ve been able to free up their clients from the difficulties of bureaucracy.

“Our industry has become quite bogged down with the detail we have to provide – and there was no way we could do it manually. When the licence for building practitioners came in for roofers, WorkflowMax made it quite easy. And it meant it could be easy for our customers. We could prepare the record of work, notify council on their behalf, upload documents to council on their behalf. And I got really good feedback for that – they’d say how amazing our admin was. WorkflowMax and Katalyst have enabled us to take that pain away.”

“We sent in an application to the Roofing Association of NZ, and won Roofing Training Company of the Year because I could easily get references from our clients to say how amazing our admin is.”

“I can do stuff quickly now, identify issues with people or jobs, and stay on top of it. Your ability to be successful in business comes down to your ability to identify issues quite quickly, and make changes. And if you don’t have a mechanism in place to ID stuff that goes wrong, then you’re in for a nightmare.”

The partnership between Roof Improvements and Katalyst, coupled with the implementation of WorkflowMax, has been a resounding success. “I had an issue only a few days ago, and could have got one of my team members to look at it,” says Clare. “But the relationship with Glennis and Katalyst is really good, so it was nothing to pick up the phone. Glennis can deal with my quirks! Nothing fazes her,” she laughs.

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