In any small business it is all about time and scale. In Australia it is expensive to do business, whether it’s rent, freight, or employee costs. “The biggest single cost is employment”, states Recover Plus National Business Development Manager, Phil Riddington, “and there’s only really one of me and I drive the business”.
Striking a balance between answering the phone, taking private and financial details, speaking to customers, and many other time heavy processes was becoming difficult as the business grew quickly. “I knew there were solutions but when you’re first starting, you’re paddling to quickly keep things working, and then we got hit with a worldwide pandemic”, Phil explains, “so we were getting large amounts of traffic through from some of these big groups, and then things changed in a good way and in a bad way”.
The business became so busy that it was a nightmare for Phil. The tipping point was late one night as he tried to catch up on 4,000 emails, invoicing, inventory stocktake, and some overseas issues, all while his phone was ringing and young child was screaming in the background. “I thought there has got to be a better way”, says Phil.
“I try and work with smaller, more nimble, innovative companies that are more like us”, explains Phil, “they are more about service”. This approach to business made Cypher IQ Digital a perfect fit when Phil was looking for a business to help Recover Plus improve its processes and systems.
Appreciating that it is not one size fits all when it comes to business was a mindset that was appreciated by Phil when the Cypher IQ Digital team were discussing potential solutions; “I think Cameron has the right sort of approach. He is like, let me come in an understand your business”.
Cypher IQ Digital provided a unique solution that streamlined sales and provided a secure payment platform, centralised communications with clients, improved stock management, and created reporting efficiencies.
With exceptional customer service provided by Cypher IQ Digital throughout the journey, described by Phil as “huge” and “hard to put a dollar value on”, support from his business partners and adoption internally was simple for Phil to achieve.”
“It has enabled me to spend more time doing more productive things like growing the business, talking to clients and talking to my agents who are looking at new opportunities”, Phil says about the solutions Cypher IQ Digital has provided for Recover Plus.
Digitising the sales side of the private rental system has provided clients with a secure place to make payments. Online payment is now how 95% of sales are processed by Recover Plus; “it is fantastic for me because instead of having my headphones in all day I can actually work on growing the business” expresses Phil, “and I want people to feel like it’s not a person that could potentially take advantage of them, I wanted them to feel secure”. It also links directly to the business’s accounting software providing Phil with greater cash flow control.
Building continuity in communication was another huge benefit for Recover Plus. The new system sends automated messages to both private and insurance clients when an order is placed and when an order is nearly with a client providing timely information for the clients at that stage in the process. This automation has allowed Phil to allocate more time to speaking personally to clients who may have a problem, “I think of my mum or my dad, if something happens, they want to able to pick the phone up and ring and speak to Phil from Recover Plus, they don’t want to speak to a messaging machine or third party” says Phil.
Stock management, in particular retrieval, was an area of the business that was facing some issues prior to the implementation of Cypher IQ Digital’s solution. Now, Recover Plus has no problems locating and retrieving stock, Phil explains “in terms of everyone knowing where to look first it is fantastic and I think just in the background having the knowledge that although it may fall off the screen there is always a digital record”. The system has also improved efficiencies around timing and knowing specifically when a device is due back, something that was difficult to track in the old system.
“It used to take three to four hours whereas with Cypher I can do it in 10 minutes” explains Phil referring to the business’s reporting system. Phil can now identify where traffic is coming from and run reports on referrers with ease allowing timely changes to be made to stock orders and allocations. The reporting is also essential for Recover Plus working in the medical industry and means that during auditing procedures Phil can easily provide records on the sales funnel and costings.
“Once we started the conversation it became a journey and Cameron understands his business and how to get a solution for everyone’s business,” says Phil “and the key for us was getting the right solution and evolving the process”.
Throughout the journey Phil has been able to employ the flexibility of Cypher IQ’s solution to best suit the business and the ‘can-do’ responses from Cameron and the team has been a huge positive. Next on the agenda is the business’s freight system and investigating how a fully integrated system could be used to remove another manual data entry task. “There is always something burning in the background” smiles Phil, “we are going to continue the journey and just add in more as we go”.
