Digital Transformation: Client Q&A with Stewart Shaw Ltd
Author
Bad Dinosaur TeamContinuing our blog series, Digital Transformation: Client Q&A, we’re delighted to introduce Steven Shaw, Managing Director of Stewart Shaw Ltd - a general building contracting business based in Dunoon. We have been working with Steven and his team for over a year, helping them to develop a digital platform that replaces paper-based job sheets with an Android app for field engineers and a companion web app for admin staff, enabling efficient job management, time tracking, and material logging. It improves communication between site and office, reduces manual errors, and enhances day-to-day operational efficiency across the business. This conversation will focus on the journey of digital transformation from a business owner’s perspective
BD: Let's start with a bit of background about your company. Can you tell us about your business and your role in it?
SS: Stewart Shaw Ltd is a family owned & run small general building contractors, it was set up in 1980 by Stewart Shaw Snr & Mrs Heather Shaw, we have approximately 20 tradespersons on our payroll along with 2 in admin. We pride ourselves in good quality workmanship and customer service, which has held us in good stead over the past 40+ years. My position in the company is Managing Director.
BD: What motivated you to start the digital transformation journey?
SS: It was the requirement to get better information back to the admin team from the outfield engineers - in real-time, this allows the admin team to be able to give our customers updates on their job when requested - without having to call the engineers or without having to wait until they come back into the office to ask the status of the job in question.
BD: What were the initial steps you took to begin this journey, and sourcing the right development partner?
SS: We started looking at various app development companies in and around the UK, we contacted various companies that we knew were already using apps for their IT and Software systems, once we had held our introductory meetings, we committed to signing up with one of the companies at the end of 2023, we worked along with their team to try and get the system up and running - but decided after 9 months that things weren't going the way we wanted them to or had planned and therefore terminated our agreement. We learned quite a lot about our requirements in that 9 months which allowed us to then take our ideas to Bad Dino - following our 1st meeting with Ian and Rosie we felt as though they looked to have a more personal touch and understood our requirements, also being based in Edinburgh was attractive to us - it felt more local and the flexible approach to our ideas were just what we were looking for - developing things as they progressed / as required.
BD: Can you summarise the key technologies or digital solutions you implemented?
SS: Real-time live data, capturing pictures, reporting on jobs, keeping history of the jobs & works, timesheets for operatives - importing & exporting data back to our main software system in our offices.
BD: How did your employees react to these changes? Were there any challenges in terms of adoption?
SS: Our employees embraced the change, we tried to build the engineer side of the app to suit their needs (only) - whilst building the admin side of the app to suit the office needs, so both slightly different, whist overlapping some of the ideas - so tried to keep it reasonably simple to allow easy operation - which definitely helped a lot. We have found that our team has come to us with additional ideas and functions that they would see as a benefit to them and the company for using - which has been great, they are really thinking about it as part of their job / processes.
BD: What impact has digital transformation had on your business operations and performance?
SS: Better all round customer service.
BD: What advice would you give to other business owners considering digital transformation?
SS: I would definitely recommend doing it. We have found that our staff much prefer using digital applications rather than pen & paper, therefore the information we are getting back is far better. It also has started to build a history of our works. I wouldn't necessarily say it has saved anytime on the admin side of the system, but it certainly has allowed a far better customer feedback / experience. It has also allowed me to look at jobs in greater depth without having to continually visit physical sites.
BD: Finally, what are your future plans for continuing the digital evolution of your business?
SS: I think our next step for the app would be for us to be able to produce an Invoice on-site, send an email from the app and then to take payments. We have a builders merchants company as part of our group, so we will possibly look at using a similar app for our deliveries.
Thank you for reading - we hope this has been insightful! If you’re looking to start the conversation about your own custom software or app build, we’d love to hear from you.