Marquee Tech

Tim from Marquee Tech:

Cool. Right, so let's jump into it. Thanks again, Joe, for jumping on the demo. We'll just do a really quick intro about you. T&L is a family business, but now I would say quite a leading supplier in the Midlands in England. Specialize in clearspan marquees, and I think, have you been on the system for about two years now? Was it a bit longer, or probably about two years, right?

Joe:

Yeah. I think it's just over two years. Yeah.

Tim from Marquee Tech:

Yeah, and you come from another software, that I think you'd been on for quite a while, and I think looking back, it was mainly stock control and being cloud-based that you were after when you looked into Marquee Tech first, right?

Joe:

Correct, yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Tim from Marquee Tech:

So if you can take us back a little bit and just sort of briefly explain how you were doing things before Marquee Tech, and then just maybe some of the issues that you found without being on Marquee Tech from your old system, and what made you want to look into a newer cloud-based tool like Marquee Tech.

Joe:

Yeah, okay. Well, I suppose the system we were on before wasn't cloud-based, which has its obvious limitations. It meant that if we were working on the system, we had to be in the office, and COVID has changed that a lot, but that's not really the driving factor behind it. It's more now people will sit on their phones and make an inquiry and expect a response pretty much immediately. Gone are the days of us sort of giving it five to 10 working days when we get back to people. It's now five to 10 working minutes and you've got to get back to people. Marquee Tech has kind of allowed us to do that, in that we can receive an inquiry any time and anywhere and get back to them with, first and foremost, if we can't do them a quote, we can check availability and get back to them quite quickly.

Joe:

So if it's a regular customer, for example, that they'll often say, "Have you got X amount of nine meter bays available for this weekend?" If I can check that, or a colleague of mine can check that when out on the road and get back to them straight away, we can secure that job before they go off and seek alternatives. That's really helped. It's also, Marquee Tech is much sleeker than the previous software we were using. So again, and that helps with responding to customers quickly in a really professional way. Before, we were generating a quote on a system, saving that into Dropbox or wherever and sending a PDF over to the customer. Which worked, but Marquee Tech, like I say, it's a bit sleeker.

Joe:

We can give them access to their dashboard, where see what's going on when. Everything is kind of live, and not only is that beneficial to the customer and makes us look better to the customer, we also, as soon as a job becomes liable, becomes a booking, we generate a load list and a job sheet, and those links are available to all of our crew. Every single member of staff has that link. So everything is live permanently, which it's not just the fact that it's cloud-based, it's the fact that it's continuously live. The old system worked really well for a time, especially, I think we were on it for about 15 years.

Tim from Marquee Tech:

Okay. Wow, yeah. A long time.

Joe:

Yeah, it was a long time. So back in the day, you'd be on it and we'd get a wedding inquiry or a festival or what have you, and people used to inquire. It was lovely, they'd inquire, they'd book, and they may change the number of tables and chairs towards the end of it, but that was it. You'd go off and you'd do the job. Job done. And now, it's not unheard of to change the quote a dozen before the event, or people see something on Instagram, Pinterest or wherever and go, "Oh, can we have that? Can we have that?" Things tend to evolve much more now. People's budgets tend to change as the event gets nearer the time, and they might, I don't know, take out another credit card or they might .

Joe:

There's loads of reasons why things will continuously change, and Marquee Tech just helps us manage that, where the previous software and other softwares out there, rental softwares, haven't really been able to help with that as such, because for example, from an operational point of view, we would historically print all of our load lists two weeks prior to an event and pin them up on the wall in the building, and the guys would go and grab the load list and start prepping that load up to two weeks prior to the event. Again, people can't confirm things for some reason these days until sort of two days prior to the event. That means that the team in the office can make the changes to the quote with the knowledge that that live link to the load list and the job sheet, or delivery note, is going to the guys and it's continuously updated.

Joe:

That really helps us. In the past, where we may have just missed a revision on a load list, on a quote or something like that, we may have missed that revision and you go off and you bill the job and the customer goes, "Oh, well, I ordered another table and 10 chairs," and you're 50 miles away, and there's obviously a cost to that.

Tim from Marquee Tech:

Yeah, quickly into your profit, right, when something's forgotten?

Joe:

Absolutely right.

Tim from Marquee Tech:

Yeah.

Joe:

Yeah.

Tim from Marquee Tech:

So would you say that's the biggest, the value you've seen the most from the system, is streamlining all the processes from not just logistically in stock management, but also how now you're sending quotes, what the customer is seeing, so it's kind of bringing the entire business and all the processes together under one streamlined tool?

Joe:

Absolutely. Absolutely, and I think it's a really key part and it's kind of what I've been looking for for years really. I think for any business, hire business like ours to grow and work efficiently, is every member of your team, every member, from the young lads coming in working for us on the site, every member of our team, the more knowledge they have of what's going on, the more power they have to make sure the right things are happening at the right time. That's what Marquee Tech allows us to do, is share information, and live information.

Tim from Marquee Tech:

Mistakes in this industry are expensive, aren't they?

And if you've got a hiring summer seasonally, you need to be able to be sure that your temporary staff that do come in summer, or your wedding season, are going to be able to perform how you need them to, because like I said, mistakes can be expensive.

Joe:

Yeah. I mean, absolutely. I'd say our two biggest costs, apart from buying the equipment, are staff and fuel. If we can minimize and use both of those more efficiently, we can save tens of thousands of pounds across the year.

Tim from Marquee Tech:

Yeah. A bit of a tricky question, but is there like a tangible result that you can see directly from using Marquee Tech?

Joe:

I would say, tangible? I'd say the biggest benefit that Marquee Tech has had for me has almost been a personal one as the business owner, in that because now that it's all set up so that everyone has full access to everything at all times, it's made me redundant and allowed me to focus on other parts of the business, which is really important. I can kind of sleep easy in the knowledge that going back, if I rewind the clock five years and look at jobs, and I would have a sleepless night the night before going, "Oh, is this loaded? Is that loaded? Is that right? Has that been quoted? Has that person paid?" The sort of general stresses that you have running a hire company are all there.

Joe:

A lot of them are taken away now, because I just know that what the customer is seeing on their dashboard is what the guys are seeing when they're loading the equipment, it's what the team are seeing in the office when they're sending the invoices. Everything is all together, and like I keep saying, it's all live. So, tangible? I suppose it's my ability now to focus on the business and what really matters in the business, as opposed to-

Tim from Marquee Tech:

Freeing up your time to work on it, rather than in the business, which obviously allows you to grow the business, be less stressed, and have more free time as well I can imagine.

Joe:

That's it, yeah.

Tim from Marquee Tech:

Yeah, awesome.

Joe:

Which is all important, and run it more efficiently. Run the business more efficiently, the way it should be. Like I've just said, staff and fuel are such a huge cost to the business, and just silly mistakes cost a lot of money, and a lot of them are alleviated with Marquee Tech.

Tim from Marquee Tech:

How do you see the business going in the next five to 10 years, and how do you think that's going to be helped along the way with Marquee Tech? In the next five to 10 years, let's say, how do you think it will help?

Joe:

Again, that takes two forms really. I've got a few members in my team that are very ambitious. I'm really lucky that they're kind of ambitious to take on more responsibility. So I think it will help me to give them a continuously better understanding of how the whole system works. Whereas before, that understanding wasn't really there, and short of getting my team leaders into the office and sitting down and going through the quoting process with them, and the invoicing process and so on and so forth for every job, it wasn't really that feasible. But now with Marquee Tech, it kind of integrates everyone. So I'd hope over the next five to 10 years, we can grow the business and the individuals in the business can grow, because they'll have more of an understanding of what's going on all the time.

Joe:

I'd say it's two-sided. So as individuals, they will grow, which will help the business grow and become more profitable, and for me, like I say, it will free up my time more to focus on the things that I enjoy doing more. Obviously, I don't enjoy anything more than Marquee Tech, but...

Tim from Marquee Tech:

Yeah.

Joe:

I love the business, but hire businesses are very seasonal and they're very time consuming, and they take a lot of effort, and they can take a lot of-

Tim from Marquee Tech:

And they're high pressure.

Joe:

Yeah, a lot of pressure. They can take a lot away from you in the summer months. So if we can gain a bit of that back, personally, as the business owner, it's really important.

Tim from Marquee Tech:

Yeah. Amazing, mate. Well, that's all the questions I have. I appreciate your time. Thanks so much. Thanks for the feedback, it's great.

Joe:

Yeah, no problem.

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