“It’s a very, very exciting position to be in” says BigChange Chairman
Author: Martin Port
BigChange appoints US technology leader to board
Mike Profit, a technology leader with extensive field service management experience, joins BigChange as a non-executive director to help guide its product and expansion strategies. BigChange, the revolutionary mobile workforce management platform, today announced the appointment of Mike Profit as a non-executive director. Mike will provide strategic guidance to BigChange’s product and operational activities, and advise the company as it expands into new markets.
Based in Princeton, New Jersey, Mike brings more than 25 years of product and technology leadership experience gained at US-headquartered startups and blue-chip companies to BigChange’s board. He was part of the leadership team that built WorkWave, a market-leading field service management software provider, prior to its acquisition by IFS in 2017.
Mike’s appointment follows those of Richard Warley as Chairman and Nick Gregory as Chief Marketing Officer at BigChange, and a £100 million investment in the company by Great Hill Partners to drive innovation and expansion into new sectors and territories.
“BigChange has established itself as a market leader for SME customers in several key sectors and is perfectly poised to expand in the UK and internationally. I am honoured to join BigChange’s board and be part of its innovation and growth strategies.”
Mike Profit, Non-Executive Director, BigChange
“It’s fantastic to appoint someone of Mike’s stature to BigChange’s management team. His experience building field service management and Software-as-a-Service businesses is hugely valuable for informing our technology strategy and achieving our global ambitions.”
Martin Port, BigChange Founder & CEO
1,500 organisations across a wide range of sectors use BigChange’s field service management platform for job scheduling, customer invoicing and payments automation, mobile workforce management and customer engagement. Customers include Sunbelt Rentals, Silentnight, Recycling Lives, HSS and EDF.
BigChange partners with Transaid to support road safety training initiative in Zambia
BigChange, the revolutionary mobile workforce management platform, is celebrating the delivery of an HGV driver training simulator at the Industrial Training Centre (ITC) in Lusaka that will help meet growing demand for professional driver training in Zambia.
BigChange is one of four organisations from the transport and logistics sector to have supported Transaid’s efforts to provide a professional simulator in Zambia, enabling new HGV drivers to spend additional hours behind the wheel in the safety of the classroom. It has worked alongside Clipper Logistics, Malcolm Group and XPO to help supply the simulator, supporting the initiative with donations of cash and expertise.
“BigChange is passionate about safety and sustainability. We are delighted to support Transaid and partners from across the transport and logistics sector in this incredibly worthwhile and potentially life saving endeavour. ”
Martin Port, BigChange Founder & CEO
“We are hugely grateful to BigChange, Clipper Logistics, Malcolm Group and XPO for securing the simulator and working with the talented team at ITC to ensure it was installed in Lusaka. It’s an amazing resource; and we’re confident it will help drive standards of training at ITC even higher, alongside the existing classroom, workshop and practical on-road teaching.”
Caroline Barber, CEO, Transaid
Don’t fall into this customer service trap
Whenever I see a company offering different levels of customer service based on the size of spend, I feel incredibly frustrated.
How are businesses getting away with it? If you are a customer, you are a customer, end of. You have paid your money and the service should come wrapped around that purchase, regardless how much you spend each year or how many licences you hold. Platinum, silver or straw packages? No thank you.
At BigChange – and in all of my previous companies – I have always treated every single one of my customers with the same attention and devotion. Here’s why:
Small becomes big
If there’s one thing I’ve learned over half a century in business, it’s that if you support companies while they are small, they will remember you when they get big. If you treat a customer with 10 employees as though they don’t matter, as soon as they can take their business elsewhere, they will. Instead, we have seen many smaller companies – some micro businesses – flourish in partnership with BigChange, doubling or even tripling in size. Their success is our success and we can’t do enough to help them.
It makes you smarter
Yes, you may have to invest more time and money into your customer service function but you will also be more innovative and effective. At BigChange, we have created a whole online knowledge bank full of useful guides and videos for our customers of all sizes, so that they know just where they can get an easy solution. We also realised that many of our customers often don’t have time to play with our technology and really experience the full functionality. So, we created the BigChange University, where we take them through a different feature each session. Customers don’t have to try and figure anything out in the evenings or weekends. Instead, they have a whole hour blocked out in their diary dedicated to getting to grips with the platform. It’s been incredibly successful, with thousands of attendees. And while it took forethought and planning to get the university up and running, it’s also an invaluable way to get insight from our customers and inform future product development.
Innovation in all its forms
And on that point about innovation, smaller companies often really push boundaries when it comes to finding new and better ways of working. Keeping our ties with the ‘S’ end of SME means we are constantly seeing new trends, new industry needs, and new solutions. Working in partnership with smaller companies means we can get in at the ground floor, creating the features and products they need to tackle these challenges as they grow. We also learn so much from our enterprise clients, especially how to roll out efficiencies at scale. Working with businesses at both ends of the spectrum means that we can cherrypick best-practice across the whole ecosystem and apply it to our technology.
It’s the right thing to do
We live in an age where it is no longer acceptable to behave unethically in business. It has been huge gratifying to see this shift, and to know that our values and commitment to customer service make us one of the good guys. Over the course of my career, I have kept in touch with many happy customers from both big companies and small – only to have them join my businesses or become customers again in new roles or ventures. In business, as in life, you get out what you put in. By treating people fairly, with respect, and always giving your all to help them when they need you, you create a social currency that is absolutely priceless.
BigChange Mobile Workforce Technology Helps Veriflo Plan Business Expansion
Veriflo, a clean water and leakage management business, has experienced significant business expansion underpinned by mobile workforce management technology from BigChange. Operating across London and the South-East and West, Veriflo provides planned works, emergency response and risk management services for organisations such as Thames Water and Morrison Utility Services. As the business has expanded so has its use of the 5-in-1 cloud-based BigChange solution, with reactive planning and scheduling tools, real-time vehicle tracking and alerts for routine jobs and health and safety checks.
“We used to manage and communicate with our workforce using emails, messages and telephone calls. However, as our operation has expanded so have our requirements and BigChange has been a vital part of our business growth.”
Kirsty Scott, Director of Kent-based Veriflo
Operating a team of project and admin support, together with planned and emergency response field teams and project managers, Veriflo operates a 24-hour operation providing specialist clean water asset services including mains isolations, reservoir outages and asset investigations. Veriflo also supports civil engineering and water companies with disinfection services, hydraulic reports, and network risk assessments.
Veriflo uses BigChange across its mobile operation. An end-to-end, cloud-based solution, BigChange replaces paperwork and synchronises in real-time with centralised management software. Providing a single platform CRM, Job Scheduling, Mobile App, Tracking and Customer Portal, the BigChange solution is helping Veriflo plan routine jobs and emergency call outs, in real-time, and with complete visibility for both office and field-based staff.
“The role of BigChange within our business has been vital, without it we would not be able to plan as effectively, and the ongoing expansion of the business would have been a logistical nightmare. BigChange just fits with our people and the way we work, and it continues to adapt to our growing and changing requirements.”
BigChange also supports other aspects of Veriflo’s mobile operation with real-time GPS tracking for monitoring engineer’s driving hours and current locations, alerts for routine equipment testing and calibration and reminders for weekly vehicle checks. Veriflo has even used the BigChange mobile app to create a Health Check-in for all staff to ensure they are fit to work, complete with a checklist to make sure they have all the tools and equipment they need. This functionality has proved especially useful during the Coronavirus pandemic with technicians able to report symptoms and request additional safety equipment as needed.
Scott concluded:
“BigChange support is first-class. The RoadCrew team are quick to respond and there is always the sense that nothing is too much trouble.”
Kevin Keegan on Covid, diversity and managing uncertainty
BigChange ambassador Kevin Keegan OBE returned to Elland Road, home of Leeds United FC, to share tales from his time playing top flight football and the leadership lessons he learnt playing and managing the beautiful game.
He joined BigChange founder and CEO Martin Port, and Leeds United’s Head of Commercial Stuart Dodsley to discuss how his experience could help business leaders to build back stronger post-Covid.
Together, they talked through their experiences of motivating people when times were tough, embracing diversity to build stronger teams and how they stayed agile to grow during uncertainty.
Read the Video Transcript
Kevin Keegan OBE (KK): If there’s one thing that’s come out of it for me, it’s that if you ever think that football can manage without supporters, just look at what we’ve seen over the last year, where we’ve had stadiums empty and the football isn’t as good. The demand on the players is normally from the crowd. But you’ve got to build from within and that’s what I did at Newcastle. I started to look at everybody, demand more from them, because everyone’s got a little bit more in them than they believe. I honestly think that.
Stuart Dodsley (SD): It’s all about the manager and how he brings them together and generating that culture of success.
KK: Sometimes it needs people to just drag it out of them and give them the confidence.
Don Revie was my manager with England, he was the biggest enemy in the world when played Leeds. But when I got to know him, one of the really great people I met in my life.
Martin Port (MP): Obviously you need a vision, and then bringing together a great group of people.
KK: Sometimes if it’s coming from a voice that’s been there and done it, they take a bit more notice. We often played with a team of 11 players, every one of them from either France, Ghana, it could be Romania, I never had a problem between two players because of where they were from, or what their beliefs were. That guy next to you, you need him.
When you looked at the Leeds side, I always used to think ‘this is going to be the toughest game of the season’, whether with Reaney, Cooper, Yorath, they were all just such good players.
SD: Thankfully, now we’ve got stable, fantastic ownership that develops an ethos and a culture of success. And then when you bring in new people into your culture, they can adapt into that culture, and bring their values and cultures in. But then you keep your business ethos, at the core of it.
MP:
We want people to have that hunger, our sole mission is customer success. We’re absolutely passionate to make sure our customers get the best out of what we’re providing them. And you know, they rely on us.
KK:
Don Revie was here, wasn’t it, when I mean, they were just a fantastic side and that’s the sort of standards they’re trying to live up to now, isn’t it?
KK: You’re looking for leaders, that’s the key in football and that’s the key in any business. And they say “look, this is the way it is at this club” and when new guys come in then to a club that’s run properly, they straight away, from day one, know what the rules are.
They don’t need a piece of paper saying what they are, they’re told by the senior players “we don’t do that here.” You get your players to run it for you, if they’re running it for you, and they care that much about it, then you can trust them to do all the other things on a football field.
KK: It’s this year, it’s a bit like business, you know, it’s not good saying “in five years time, we’ll turn a profit,” you know, you need to find out how you can turn that profit as quickly as possible. Because, you know, you might not get the five years.
MP: When things aren’t going well, and business is a roller coaster, it can be really difficult. You have to be prepared to take those risks, because that’s what an entrepreneur does. What an entrepreneur is, is a risk taker.
KK: You’ve got to go in and say “right how do I sort this out,” you know, “how can I get the best out of this group of players? And what do we need to make us better?” And that’s what businesses do. You’re taking on guys who can do that job and take this company to another level, because they’ve got the expertise that you don’t have.
MP: If somebody says “it can’t be done”, I’m going to smash that wall down. KK: Well, that’s what’s fantastic about the guys we’ve got on Zoom here from the different companies. Basically, it’s the same as football, they’ve been confronted with this massive problem and instead of saying “wow, you know, what do we do now?” [its] “what can we do and where can we gain from that?” And I think that is what makes us as a nation, not just talking about football here, but as a nation we’ve, yes, we can take the blows but we bounce back from them.
Kevin Keegan OBE relives Leeds United memories
BigChange ambassador Kevin Keegan OBE has many great memories of Elland Road from his career playing for and managing top-flight football teams.
In May 2021, he returned to the home of Leeds United FC for an online event sharing the leadership lessons he learnt from the beautiful game with BigChange customers.
Stuart Dodsley, Head of Commercial at Leeds United, gave Kevin and BigChange CEO Martin Port a tour of the iconic stadium. (During the tour) Kevin told tales from the tunnel, reflected on stand-out games and discussed his time playing for, and against, the formidable Don Revie.
Read the video transcript below
Kevin Keegan OBE (KK): When I come here it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up because of so many great memories.
When you looked at the Leeds side, it was just full of international class players. I always used to think, you know, this is going to be the toughest game of the season. Whether it was Reaney, Cooper, Yorath, they were all such good players.
[In the tunnel] I was always looking to see where Norman was, and whether he’d got big studs on, ready to sort me out.
Stuart Dodsley (SD): Did you come out together or separately?
KK: We came out separately in those days, so we didn’t have that confrontation luckily.
Martin Port (MP): [Pointing to pitch-side advertising boards] Our advert appears, I think at three minutes thirty. Does it put the players off you think?
KK: I don’t think that one does, but there is one where the dog runs around – you think ‘there’s a dog run on the pitch’.
SD: So you’ve got your Leeds United Roll of Honour here. Perhaps the disappointing thing is it’s down to you some of this!
KK: This was my first year, 70-71, and this is when I got sent off with Billy Bremner. So just take that out of there [pointing to ‘1974 FA Charity Shield’], we’ll just cover that up.
[Pitch-side] That’s the biggest difference. We’d never play on a pitch like this even at the start of the season.
SD: Elland Road here, fans are close to the pitch, they create their own unique atmosphere. There’s a reason England chose here to come, to play before the last World Cup.
KK: Most grounds you come out the middle, there’s a couple you come out the corners, but Leeds is off-centre isn’t it.
[In the dressing room] The whole squad would’ve fitted in here. The whole training squad when Don Revie was manager. [To Stuart] Is this the home one then? I bet the away one isn’t as good?
SD: No it’s a bit tighter (Both laugh).
KK: My dad used to come and watch me when I played at Leeds because he only lived up the road at Doncaster.
The thing that really gets me is if I start to look at the names on the stands. Don Revie, who was my manager with England, he was the biggest enemy in the world when we played Leeds. But when I got to know him, one of the really great people I met in my life.
You know, the scouts from Leeds came to watch me play and I thought ‘Wow, that would be some move for me, because obviously I’m from Doncaster, I’m a yorkshireman, but it never happened. So I had to play against them, which was fantastic.
[Pointing to the 60s period on the Honour Roll] Don Revie was here wasn’t he when they were just a fantastic side. That’s the sort of standard they’re trying to live up to now right.
In the next 10 years it could be Leeds, Liverpool, you know, as dominant forces in the country.
MP: You made our youth enjoyable.
KK: What even scoring the goals against Leeds? You seen how many goals I scored against Leeds? (laughs)
MP: No, Bremmner and Keegan in our garden, it was the best.
KK: Who was Bremmner? MP: Not me. (Both laugh).
What is a business without vision?
Without a visionary at the helm, a business cannot succeed. It may have the best product in the world and the best team in place but without somebody in the hot seat driving the strategy and setting goals, it will stagnate and ultimately fail.
You’ve probably heard it said 100 times but it bears repeating: if a business isn’t growing, it’s going backwards.
I was reminded of this yesterday when I watched a video with Simon Sinek, the leadership expert and author https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN9hIg-_Mhw. He said, “I don’t like the term CEO. Everyone else in the C-suite has their job in their title. CFO. CMO. COO. CTO. We know exactly what you do. It’s in the title. What’s the CEO? What does an Executive Officer do? It’s not a well-defined title. We need to change the title to Chief Vision Officer. Someone who owns the vision.”
I have always found that describing myself as “Founder and CEO of BigChange” never truly explained my role here. Yes, I started the business but anyone can start a business. You just fill out a form in Companies House and – hey presto! – you have a company. Yes, I’m the CEO – but, as Simon so deftly put it, what does a Chief Executive actually do?
The thing that sets me apart is that when I launched the business eight years ago, I had a vision for where this business could go. Crucially, I understand our customer: what they want, what they need, and what they expect from a technology partner. When I’m talking to a customer, sometimes I even know what they are going to say before they open their mouth. That’s how embedded in this industry I am. I have total empathy with the people in the market we are trying to serve.
This customer intimacy helps me to create goals for the business that are ambitious yet actionable. I know that my customers aren’t asking for anything complicated. They just want reliable technology that makes their business more efficient and lets them grow sustainably, year after year. They don’t mind paying for the product, as long as it does what they need it to. That is my great strength.
I am the visionary driving BigChange forward to meet each new milestone. Yes, I have a brilliant team that comes to work and executes every single day. They do their jobs far better than I ever could – I am humbled by the talent we have in this company. But no one else can do exactly what I do. When I say that I want to make BigChange the market leader in every territory that we operate in, I say it knowing exactly how we’ll get there. I don’t have my head down, trying to get to next month’s target or hit next year’s numbers. I’m thinking five years – even 10 years – into the future. That’s my job and the role of the visionary.
My relentless focus on the customer means that when I say I want to be the market leader, I don’t just mean the de facto leader because of the number of users and businesses on our books, I mean the leader in terms of the positive impact we make on our customers’ success. Growth for growth’s sake is not the goal. It’s about the transformative effect BigChange can have on the whole ecosystem – the companies run by people who are not so different from me. They want to grow, they want to provide stable livelihoods for their employees, they want to solve a problem well and do it better than anyone else in their industry. I am my own target customer. I know how to humanise our technology so it’s not baffling or overwhelming.
I know that I am doing my job well because of the customer testimonials that come in each and every day. “Our business wouldn’t survive without BigChange.” “We couldn’t grow without BigChange.” Without my vision for this business, and the values I have put in place to underpin that vision, there’s no way we could be creating this kind of impact.
I’m not saying all this to blow my own trumpet. I’m saying this because there is a big difference between a visionary and an operative. As Simon says in his video, the two mindsets complement each other. They cannot succeed without each other. What is a visionary leader without a great Chief Financial Officer or a skilled Chief Technology Officer? They would have vision and nothing else. But the operative simply cannot do the job of the visionary. They have their heads down while we leaders have our heads up, and our gaze focused at a point on the far distant horizon.
So this is why I am changing my job title. From today onwards, I’m no longer Founder and CEO. I’m the Founder, CEO and Chief Vision Officer.
Jardak Uses BigChange to Speed Contaminated Cargo Clean-ups
Jardak Services is using the latest mobile workforce management technology to improve visibility and reporting for its property support services team working with organisations such as Savills, Wickes and Tarmac.
Continue reading “Jardak Uses BigChange to Speed Contaminated Cargo Clean-ups”I guess the party’s cancelled
