BLM booste la productivité grâce à l’IA

Tell us a few words about your company BLM and its activities…

Historically, BLM has been operating since 1986. It has changed its corporate form several times. I took over the company three years ago.

Our core business is the sweeping of oil, gas and biomass boilers, exclusively for professional clients.

We have also expanded into the CMV sector, where we carry out activities such as creating duct networks, maintaining the network, and cleaning extraction vents. Most of the time, we work as a subcontractor for heating operating companies.

Today, BLM has a  team of six technicians  who carry out their work using the Praxedo mobile application.

We perform approximately 1,700 repairs per year. However, our business is seasonal. For example, for boiler sweeping, we work from April to October. For mechanical ventilation, on the other hand, we have year-round service.

The company is booming. To give you an idea, over the past three years, we have experienced  very strong growth in our turnover . Business is going well.

Why did you choose the Praxedo solution? What were your needs?

Previously, we had a fairly traditional way of working in our sector, with a  predominance of paper . Our technicians were equipped with stub books, with paper intervention vouchers that they had to fill out by hand. The problem with paper is that intervention reports can get lost or damaged. They are often illegible or incomplete because they are written quickly by the technicians.

Paper management has become an obstacle to development

In addition, paper locks you into a  heavy administrative process , where, in the end, everyone wastes time, whether it’s activity management or technicians in the field.
To explain, before Praxedo, every Friday, all the technicians returned to BLM headquarters to submit the work orders for the missions carried out during the past week. Each time, there were dozens of intervention reports to process, scan, reread, and rename for the customers.  They spent their Friday afternoon at the office instead of being at the customers’ premises.  Why? Because we needed them to check that all the orders were submitted, that they were complete, legible, ask them questions if necessary, etc.

Too heavy an administrative burden

The administrative burden was very restrictive.  On the business side, it was complicated.  Archiving paper work orders was very complex, with cabinets filled with large binders. Finding a job was a real challenge. We wasted a lot of time, and it was very difficult to track our customer service visits.

A lack of traceability

Archiving and traceability are essential in our profession. Because, for many interventions, if we don’t have the correct completed form on hand, we can’t bill the client for the work. Furthermore,  our technicians sometimes performed additional interventions that weren’t billed.  In short, we were losing money simply because we didn’t have the right tools.

Inadequate management of urgent interventions

Furthermore, in terms of scheduling interventions, for boiler sweeping, we had roughly the same customers from one year to the next, so we knew roughly who needed to be swept. The problem was that we didn’t have the right tools to organize ourselves properly, and as a result,  we managed everything in a rush.  The technicians’ scheduling could turn into a nightmare during tight schedules. And the customers weren’t happy, because we regularly had to remove a technician from one customer’s office to send them to deal with a more urgent emergency at another customer’s.

Need to stand out from the competition

Ultimately, in a competitive environment like ours,  we had to take the digital turn  to, on the one hand, stand out from the competition, and on the other hand, be able  to free up time to develop new customers . Having a good IT tool was really a necessary step to retain our existing customers and enable us to effectively manage the growth of our activities with new customers.

Who uses the Praxedo solution in your company and for what purposes?

At BLM headquarters, there are two of us using the Praxedo web interface to ensure the planning of interventions in advance and to validate the reports that are automatically sent back after the interventions by the technicians in the field.

The entire customer base in the intervention management software

We integrate our entire customer base into Praxedo, including names, locations, access codes, equipment locations, and more.  All operational data is contained within the platform.  We push the required interventions and all necessary information to technicians directly through their application.

We’ve even given some of them the  ability to self-schedule interventions  directly on their Praxedo mobile app. We inject the interventions into the app, and they retrieve them themselves by choosing by customer name, intervention type, etc. It’s a sort of intervention exchange, if you will. It’s very practical for experienced technicians capable of acting independently.

A very intuitive mobile application for our technicians

Moreover, the Praxedo application has the advantage of being  intuitive  enough for technicians to easily use. Even our senior staff can use it very well, even though they aren’t particularly computer-savvy.

For my part, I have access to the intervention history for each client. This gives me a detailed view of what’s happening with each client.

Praxedo, security for our customers

Having intervention logs in Praxedo is truly essential for a company like ours.  Boiler maintenance is an activity that involves real responsibility towards the customer. For example, when an incident occurs, the first person to be blamed is the chimney sweep. The customer legally turns to them. Thanks to Praxedo, I have access to all the logs of the interventions carried out by my technicians. I have the before/after photos, geocoded. I also have all the reports with the observations that my technicians may have reported on this or that problem observed at the time of the intervention. And since everything is in the cloud,  in two clicks I can provide all the evidence to the customer.

In fact, it’s so practical that we initially planned Praxedo only for our boiler sweeping business, but we extended it to our VMC and kitchen hood activities. There is  such flexibility in the configuration  of the forms that we can easily adapt them to each of our activities.

What are the main benefits of the Praxedo solution?

Initially, we gave ourselves a year to see if Praxedo worked well. As I said, we had reserved the service management software for our boiler sweeping activities. Firstly, because it was our main activity and secondly, because we had to resolve the very sensitive issue of service traceability for the reasons I explained to you.

An essential tool for our business

To be honest, we’ve been using it for two years, and it’s become essential to the company’s operations.  Praxedo has taken us through a new era,  both internally and with our clients and customers.

We have gained in precision in our organization, in responsiveness to customers, in fluidity in the management of our technicians’ interventions.

Unprecedented efficiency and a modernized image

In terms of efficiency, it’s unstoppable. We send service certificates to clients almost immediately, along with before/after photos. There’s no longer any possibility of disputes. Praxedo significantly enhances our business in the eyes of our clients and clients.  In terms of image, we were already recognized for our reliability, but now we also appear to be a modern company with innovative operations.  Clients love it, and so do we. We’ve put an end to our administrative hassle. Now it’s smooth, fast, secure, and stress-free.

1 additional boiler intervention per technician per day

Another important benefit: technician productivity. Since we equipped them, I ask my technicians to perform more interventions.  And it’s possible without extending their hours.  Praxedo allows us to geolocate interventions and optimize technicians’ routes. For emergencies, it’s very practical. On average, with the Praxedo tool, each technician performs an additional boiler intervention per day.

1 half-day of work saved per week per technician

Plus, as I said, they no longer have to come into the office on Friday afternoons.  Instead, they’re working at customer sites.  Just like that, Praxedo has saved us half a day of work per technician every week!

On the administrative side, it’s the same. We save a lot of time on low-value-added tasks like archiving, filing, re-entering information, etc.  This has allowed us to reallocate this saved time to do sales work in the field, and therefore develop new clients.  This is how we were able to increase our turnover. For a small company like ours, this is encouraging.

More accurate billing of interventions carried out

Our revenue growth is also due to the fact that Praxedo has helped us be much more precise in what we bill the customer. Before, if my technician went to a customer’s boiler repair, scheduled to last 1 hour and actually spent 3 hours there, I had no way of knowing without feedback from my technician. Now with the Praxedo app, the technician sends me notifications about these activity times. I know when he starts a repair and when he finishes it.  So, if it’s 3 hours, I bill for 3 hours and not just 1 hour.  At the end of the year, that makes a real difference. With Praxedo, we’re making money that was previously eluding us.

So, it goes without saying that the field service management software  paid for itself very quickly . Simply put, Praxedo has been a game changer for us. For us and our clients, going back to our old way of working would be out of the question.

How do you see the future of your collaboration with Praxedo?

Praxedo has the advantage of being a  very flexible solution.  It can be adapted to all our related activities. We’re therefore going to create new form categories to enrich our application.

I am thinking in particular of an activity that we are currently developing on the control of disconnectors on boilers.

Automatically generate CERFA boiler forms in the application

These are systems that protect against backflow into a network that needs to be protected. Working on these disconnectors requires special authorization. There are specific CERFA (certificate of authorization) forms to fill out for interventions, etc.

For this new disconnector activity, we’ve reverted to the paper solution for the time being. But frankly, once you’ve experienced the convenience of Praxedo, you can’t do without it. So,  we’re going to integrate the CERFA forms into our Praxedo application  to automatically generate the generic fields to be completed. Exactly as we do for chimney sweep certificates. Our project manager at Praxedo told us it’s feasible. So, we’re going to do it.

If you had to summarize the Praxedo solution in 2 keywords, what would they be?

Responsiveness . Praxedo has allowed us to be even more responsive to customers. The solution has taken us to a new level. If a customer asks me for it, I can instantly send them a certificate via my phone in two seconds. Before, it took me much longer.

Modernity . We have clients today who are pushing digital as a benchmark for their service providers. At BLM, we’ve taken the lead on this front, allowing us to meet clients’ requirements with complete peace of mind. Praxedo consistently delivers results for our clients’ purchasing managers.

So we’re not about to leave Praxedo!