A welding company based in West Pennard near Glastonbury is pioneering an advanced new mobile system, supported by a grant from Connecting Somerset, to help keep its billing up-to-date. And according to Angela Wittleton, who runs Castle Welding with husband Julian, it’s bringing them some very real business benefits.

The company’s craftsmen used to keep track of the time they spent working for customers – ranging from private individuals to major building companies – by filling in time sheets and job sheets for Angela to process. But, as she says, there were problems with the old manual system.

“Our staff are brilliant at what they do, but show them a pen and a piece of paper and you can see their eyes glaze with boredom,” she says. “This meant that forms were often very late getting to me, slowing down our billing and disrupting our cashflow.”

The answer came from an unexpected source. “We saw a web designer, Nick Roper of Wells-based Logical Elements, give a presentation on a new technological solution he’d come across. It enables you to send information via text to a remote computer, which can then be accessed through the web. He asked people to think about what it could be used for – and in a couple of days, I’d thought up the solution we’re using now.”

Quite simply, the company’s staff text a six-digit job number when they start a job, and again when they’ve finished it. The system automatically allocates the time spent to each client account, making life far simpler for Angela. “It’s brilliant – our guys all carry phones and are highly text literate, so they’re finding it far easier to give me the information I need,” she says.

“I can now get bills out in a couple of days, when it sometimes used to take weeks. This meant we’d often miss a cheque run and have to wait even longer for payment. Now we bill on time and get paid on time.”

According to Kevin Redpath of Connecting Somerset, whose grant-funding and support enabled the project to go ahead, “This is a wonderfully simple solution to a very real business challenge – and it’s particularly delightful to see it coming from the heart of rural Somerset! I fully expect to see many businesses adopt something similar in the very near future. After all, everyone benefits from a better cashflow.”

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Note to Editor
Connecting Somerset is funded by Somerset County Council, the South West of England Regional Development Agency (SWRDA), Mendip, Sedgemoor, Taunton Deane and West Somerset Councils, South Somerset Together, the European Social Fund and Business Link Somerset.

For further information, please contact :
David Wilford tel 01373 303004 mob 07790 774284
or Ron Dyson tel 01308 485707