In the press

Accelerator - October 2007

Kerrie Keeling - How software helps to keep clients happy for A Woman's Touch

Kerrie Keeling quit her job in investment banking in 2003 to set up a home maintenance company with a difference - all the tradespeople would be women. ' I realised there was a gap in the market for female tradespeople as , often, women can feel uncomfortable and intimidated at having a strange man in their house', she says. She put herself through short courses in decorating, plumbing, tiling, electrics and carpentry and then launched A Woman's Touch, specialising in interior and exterior decorating. She started off working from a bedroom with her PC, a landline and a mobile phone, but as the company grew, this set up got pretty unstable. In 2005, she experienced 'an enormous crash' of her PC system. 'The computer died and I lost absolutely everything. I had no back-ups'. She pulled in an IT services company called Solutios, which retrieved some data. Keeling was impressed by the way Solutios worked, using SPV smartphones from Orange - similar to the Blackberry - which enabled staff to send and receive emails. It's system is hosted remotely and everything is backed up daily.

She followed suit, ' I invested heavily in giving my team SPVs aswell. They were working in different locations, but this allowed them to dial in to the central network and share files', she says. 'We can email team members during the day while they are out on jobs. They can also take photos of what they need and email them to us or to the client to show them what needs doing.' Clients like it, because they are usually working and don't want to sit on the phone discussing plumbing problems. 'They much prefer email contact', she says. But the cumbersome spreadsheets through which she managed the projects and finances started to creak. 'Turnover had got to about £250,000 and it was getting ridiculous trying to combine everything on the spreadsheets'. She invested in software from Sage, which specialises in financial software for smaller companies. 'I started off with it's Startup package as a trial run. I thought it was fantastic, and really easy to use. I went for SageLine 50. This is a bit advance for my needs now, but it has the project facility, which is invaluable, because I can see how profitable individual projects are. It helps me from a strategic view, to work out where I want to take the business, what works and what doesn't.'

She runs the software on her own server. Solutios handles all her back ups and provides her with on-site support for all systems. 'I always thought I was computer literate and would be alright. But things go wrong all the time - a screen freezes or something needs doing. So I pick up the phone , and they either come in or dial in remotely to see what's happening,' says Keeling. 'It's the best money I spend.'

Everyone in the company uses SPVs to share contacts and calendar information. 'For instance, we can book appointments in our estimator's calendar and put the details in her contacts list. While she is walking around the site with the client, she types all the details into the SPV; that synchronises with what we see in the office, and we can write out the quote. It means we can give our clients really good service aswell.'

The Wimbledon-based company now employs 32 people and covers an area from Cambridge to Brighton, with a new offshoot servicing British expats in Spain. Buoyed by the success, Keeling has just launched a new company to do bigger jobs, such as lofts and basements, but this time the spreadsheets are absent. 'Having learned by lesson on the technology front, I bought my Sage package before I started the company. So this time I'm doing it right and, I can tell you, it makes a world of difference.'