Joss Group
Background
With over 45 years’ experience, Joss Group is considered as both one of regional Australia’s premier building contractors, with an extensive history of successfully delivering complex commercial and industrial projects, and a leading provider of maintenance, asset management, cleaning and project management services throughout ACT, regional NSW and Victoria.
Prior to the implementation of their MRI Evolution platform, Joss Group tendered for three contracts for the same client which required full real-time integration with two of their software systems – Ariba and SAP. These contracts carried strict KPIs that needed to be met.
Due to the stringent nature of these KPIs and the detailed needs of these contracts, Joss Group performed detailed comparisons of five software vendors to determine which would be capable of meeting these specific requirements.
MRI Evolution was ultimately selected due to Joss Group’s need for a mobile application to fulfil the needs of these contracts. None of the four competing vendors could offer an application that matched MRI Evolution Go in this department.
The Challenge
Joss Group required a solution that fulfilled the following criteria:
- The provision of a reliable platform to support Contact Centre operations 24/7/365 for the purposes of managing inbound maintenance requests and enquiries from multiple channels, be that via phone, email or web portals
- A scalable solution that could seamlessly accommodate expected increases in the volume of inbound maintenance requests and enquiries
- Integration with the Principal’s system through published web services, APIs, flat files and, in some instances, real-time data transfers
- An extendable solution that would accommodate future information requirements of the contract
- Ability to collect and present metadata
In order to fulfil these and additional objectives, it was determined that their MRI Evolution system would comprise of the following functionality:
Asset Manager – the systems needed to store 20,000+ assets
PPM Task Management – the automated raising of maintenance tasks was an essential timesaver for their project
Helpdesk Administration – as the client would receive 1,200 calls per week on average, a system had to be introduced to quickly raise tasks for subcontractors and advise the client of works being undertaken
MRI Evolution Go – covering task distribution, tracking times work was accepted/commenced, photo uploads, note tracking and more in real-time. In addition, due to the risk of technicians’ losing connectivity during their work, the ability to capture work offline and upload it once connectivity was restored was a huge benefit
Digital Dashboard – providing a visual representation of all KPIs
Sales Invoicing – issuing invoices to clients for work completed
Audit Now – conducting site audits were part of Joss Group’s specific KPIs
Crystal Reports – enabling the creation of tailored reports matching the client’s requirements
The project commenced on 19th December 2014, and scoping with our team at MRI began in January. The biggest challenge was the need to turn around the project in just 4 months, while at the same time ensuring that the solution integrated with their client’s existing systems.
Both the teams at Joss Group and MRI worked tirelessly to ensure their platform went live for their clients on 1st April 2015, following exhaustive testing with their client’s systems. Over the following 18 months, Joss Group continued to work closely with MRI to refine the system further in accordance with their client’s needs.
In the 5 years since the project went live, Joss Group has been refining the MRI Evolution process to meet the added requirements our client has requested, as well as automated processes like automatic claiming. They also developed a log for recording issues and new items for development.
Our consultants from MRI have readily offered our insight and expertise to support the continued development of their system, allowing them to transform the standard MRI Evolution package into their own developed, bespoke version.
In addition, due to initial challenges in the adoption of MRI Evolution across Joss Group’s workforce, we conducted dedicated training sessions to get their users up to speed. Their team is now familiar with using the platform day-to-day, and the subcontractors and supervisors who utilise MRI Evolution Go find it performs well for the work they conduct.
The Outcome
As of 2018, Joss Group adopted MRI Evolution for all maintenance contracts, and the system is now present in over 12,000 of their properties, with nearly 600 MRI mobile devices out in the field.
Access to MRI Evolution has allowed Joss Group to consistently meet contractual requirements and assisted in making their systems more reliable, enhancing their reputation as one of the top contractors in the field for this type of work. Furthermore, they can now communicate task details in real-time to their client’s systems.
The specific and onerous demands of the initial client MRI Evolution was acquired for meant that Joss Group required a highly configured version of the standard product. In particular, they have benefitted from several key integrations:
- A “New Task” screen for their Land and Housing Corporation (LAHC) properties for calls from PureCloud, their dedicated contact centre platform
- Integration with Laserfiche, their Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solution, allowing them to store invoices for reports and support file processing for integrated client systems
- A two-way pass communication with client systems to track status updates, which also allows them to raise purchase orders for upcoming works
- Integration with their subcontractor database to find those with the right insurance, licences and qualifications to work on particular projects
- Integration with client systems, enabling them to import assets, tenants, new properties and work programs for newly created tasks
Our continued commitment to enabling refinements both to their MRI Evolution and mobile platforms ensure that Joss Group can continually adapt processes as required by this demanding contract. This agile ability to facilitate change despite the complexity of the systems presented has been pivotal in Joss Group’s relationship with its client.
To manage the scale of the properties other than that of the initial client, Joss Group implemented a second MRI Evolution system to act as an environment for them. This system is significantly less configured than their original system, and this has allowed them to move more work programs out of other locations and into this system, providing a streamlined, integrated framework for running maintenance and reporting on data.
The ability to capture, disseminate and provide in-depth information for complex contracts has enabled Joss Group to not only easily identify the height the bar has been set for future contracts, but laid the groundwork for their team to take challenges in stride when executing similar contracts in this highly competitive environment.
