We talk to Alan Hampton, MD of Forfar Roof Truss about how Dedicated Services has helped his business.
When Alan Hampton, MD of Forfar Rooftruss in the UK, heard about the Dedicated Services offering from MiTek at a customer services conference, he was keen to find out more. In this article Alan tells us about the impact Dedicated Services has had on his roof truss manufacturing business…
The conference speaker referred to the challenges facing the industry when it came to securing the services of in-house designers, who are currently in very short supply.
This was something I’d experienced first-hand – we’d been trying to secure the services of an additional designer for around two years but struggled to find anyone with right mix of experience, salary expectation and location requirements.
I was already familiar with and using MiTek products in my roof-truss business, and enjoyed a good relationship with their team, so when they set out the capabilities of MiTek’s Dedicated Services, I decided it was worth finding out more.
After being offered a trial of the design services available, although we felt our in-house designers had a unique approach and style of working, and weren’t sure that the Vietnam-based MiTek team would fit in, we decided it was worth giving it a go.
We soon discovered that the MiTek team were actually a perfect fit, understanding our needs and delivering what was wanted, in the right way, with great turn-around times.
Tackling complex designs
Most of the time, our clients are looking for straightforward roof-truss designs which we can process quickly. However, we do get asked for more complex designs which can take a lot longer to turn around, tying up our in-house people for several days at a time. We quickly realised we could pass these more complex requests to the MiTek Dedicated Services team to handle.
The Dedicated Services dashboard management approach means we can see at the start how long the team will need to get the designs back to us, which in turn enables us to manage customer expectations when it comes to delivery timescales.
At the same time, it took the pressure off us. We could concentrate on the other meat-and-drink design work and keep our factory production and delivery flow going – keeping all our customers happy.
Scaling our business
We soon moved from the trial to full-on work with Dedicated Services in earnest. We know the team is fast and accurate, using great software to put together just what our customers are looking for. We can now channel all the work from some customers to the Vietnam team, with a service that’s seamless. Clients don’t need to know where we are sourcing the design expertise from – they just want quality designs and realistic quotes delivered on time.
It’s given us great confidence in the capabilities available to us, and we’ve been able to expand our business base to cover new clients, markets and design requests as a result. The market in Scotland for more complex, private, high-value single-build projects is growing and being able to call on the Dedicated Services expertise has meant we’re able to tap into this.
There’s no issue with them being based in another time zone and we regard the team as simply an extension of our own. We call upon them as and when we need them, and they never disappoint.
There’s the extra benefit that the 3D design services that are also available mean we are always able to provide clients with great visuals that bring their designs to life on screen, providing context and depth to their projects.
I’d say that Dedicated Services is a fabulous asset, and I’d encourage anyone who is in need to excellent design-related support to give the service a try.
