Half year results: beating the odds with 10pc growth

BigChange half year results cartoon

When I was creating the business plan for 2020, I had no idea that this would end up being one of the most challenging, worrying, strange and illuminating years of my entire career.

Here are the half-year results for BigChange. I know we’ve weathered the storm better than many, and for that I’m hugely grateful to my incredible team and our loyal, fantastic customer base.

Going for growth

The last few months have been tough but BigChange adjusted quickly to the new trading conditions. The business generated revenues of £8.2m in the first half of 2020, up from £7.6m during the first half of last year.

This is an incredible achievement and is down, in part, to the 166 new customers we brought onto the platform. I’d like to give a special mention to Sunbelt Rentals Inc (formerly A-Plant), part of Ashtead Group Plc, the largest equipment rental company in the UK, which came on board at the start of 2020.

We have secured a record £13m-worth of new contracts during the last six months, and order values are up 25% on last year. I’m proud to say that the majority of new business now comes in through customer referrals. The business has grown well across all our target markets, including France and Cyprus.

Investing in innovation

We have continued to invest in new products and features. We have spent £500,000 on a new business analytics and artificial intelligence solution, which will be launched later this year.

During lockdown, we released a number of features to help mitigate the impact of COVID-19. These include: a new ‘no touch’ signature feature for mobile workers, and integration with some of the world’s most commonly used tools, such as Outlook and Word.

Our commitment to innovation was recognised during the first quarter of this year, when BigChange received the highest honours that can be given to a British company. We won a Queen’s Award for Enterprise, in the Innovation category.

Proving our worth

Our customers have been our number one priority throughout this crisis, and I’m extremely proud that we have managed to help so many of them to trade on successfully using our platform.

Drainage company Eurotech has experienced a £1m boost to the business since going live with BigChange last summer. Moorhouse Heating Limited has doubled its turnover and tripled its field service engineering team without needing additional staff in the office. Europump has used BigChange to increase its first-time fix record tenfold, boosting the business by £100,000 a year.

Here are just a few of the customer testimonials we’ve received over the last few months:

“Being fully digital, cloud-based and completely free of paperwork proved critical during the COVID-19 lockdown. We literally flicked a switch and were all instantly up and running from home. We just carried on working as normal.”

Jack Aplin, Director, Europump

“During the Coronavirus lockdown we’d have been completely floored without BigChange. If we’d still been paper-based we simply couldn’t have done our job – as things were customers did not see any change at all.”

Mick Brindle, Director, H2O FlowTech

“We were able to shut down the office and be up and running at home within one hour. The BigChange No Touch Signature Capture App has been especially useful, allowing us to gain job sign-off without directly interacting with the customer; with many premises closed our usual contacts are simply not onsite anyway.”

Paul Roberts, Director Metroline Fire & Security

World-class customer service

We are so thankful to our customers for giving us a Net Promoter Score that rivals the likes of Samsung and Starbucks. We are now at 70 plus, up from 68 in the final quarter of 2019. A Net Promoter Score reflects a customer’s willingness to recommend you and anything above 70 is categorised as ‘world-class’.

The BigChange Network

At the start of the year we held Network conferences in Newcastle and Manchester, bringing together customers and partners to share insights and address business challenges. These events were supported by BigChange ambassadors Kevin Keegan and Michelle Dewberry. After lockdown, we held an online roundtable on supporting mental health and wellbeing during the pandemic. More than 200 partners and customers attended the virtual event.

Tough decisions

Before lockdown was announced, we soon realised that we would need to cut costs if we were going to keep growing in a sustainable way. We have managed to do that, reducing the outgoings of the business enough to allow BigChange to break even.

Some of these efficiencies were achieved through salary cuts across the business. I opted to take a 30pc pay cut while junior members of the team have seen wages fall by just 5pc. We put less than 30 people on the Government’s furlough scheme and most have already returned to the business. This has helped to safeguard all our jobs and ensure that BigChange is in a much stronger financial position going into the second half. I’d like to thank my colleagues for their understanding and flexibility.

Virtual working

BigChange managed to move all 170 staff to remote working with zero downtime for our customers. We have made significant savings on travel during the last six months – and have reduced our carbon footprint, which is great for the planet as well as the bottom line.

As we have pivoted our business towards virtual working, we have also changed our offering. Many customers were forced to furlough workers, so we launched a series of online tutorials to help their staff learn how to use our core system. These training sessions covered everything from CRM to scheduling, and we welcomed hundreds of users to these sessions. We completed four tutorials a week over a 12-week period.

To help our customers to win new business despite lockdown, we launched our flagship Stronger Together campaign, advertising their services across our social media channels and on a dedicated webpage.

Our Motivational Mondays series has also gone online, and we have offered access to our incredible line-up of speakers to customers, prospects and partners. We are also supporting several charities through the initiative.

None of this could have been achieved without outstanding effort from the whole team, and the enduring trust and support of our customers and partners.

Thank you all.

Mastering BigChange

Mastering BigChange webinar cartoon

If you were unable to join the live event, you can now catch-up with Martin’s webinar on the 25th of June.

Hear how Martin has used his experiences in business across the years to develop and build the BigChange business system, focus on customer service, drive efficiency and improve culture. All through his tried and tested strategies, which he shares with you as a recipe for success for any business.

Featuring Rebecca Burn-Callander, former editor of The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph as the webinar facilitator.

Pandemic won’t shake my commitment to 4-day week

BigChange 4 day week commitment

Over the past week, there has been a lot of buzz around the benefits of the 4-day working week. Various politicians have called on the Chancellor to explore the option for the UK, as a way to generate more jobs.

At BigChange, we are way ahead of the curve. We are on course to move to a 4-day week in 2021. Right now, we’re on a 4.5-day week through our Flexi Friday initiative, which allows my colleagues to take a half-day every Friday – or when it’s convenient for them and their team. It’s been hugely popular and we have seen no dip in productivity – if anything, quite the reverse. The happier your people are, the more productive they tend to be.

When Microsoft in Japan introduced a 4-day week last year, while still paying employees the same salary as for five days, it found that labour productivity rose by nearly 40 per cent.

This is a difficult time for Britain’s workers. We know that the government’s furlough scheme is coming to an end in a few months. The forecast is for mass redundancies, especially in the hardest-hit sectors such as aviation and hospitality. This cloud hangs over everyone, and could mean that people are desperate to hang on to a job – any job.

This is why it’s so important for business leaders like me to stay committed to all the initiatives aimed at supporting and caring for our people, like the 4-day week. It would be easy to demand that employees work longer hours, citing the failing economy or industry pressures but that is just bad business.

I am still absolutely committed to introducing the 4-day week to BigChange. It’s important to note that this extra day off each week will be discretional, to be decided by the team member and their manager. We aren’t closing the office for a day a week, and if people feel that they need to work virtual on the fifth day to finish something urgent, then so be it. The aim is to encourage everyone at BigChange to work efficiently, and manage their time well, so that they can have a 4-day week without feeling overloaded or stressed, or like they don’t have time to finish projects.

I believe that our approach to the 4-day week will not only help my team to find a great work/life balance, it will also allow us to employ new people, creating more jobs for the British economy. Giving people an extra day off, while paying a competitive salary, not only allows them to spend more time with family, it also gives them the chance to learn new skills.

This is also a time of increased stress and anxiety. We all need the time and space to take extra care of our mental health and wellbeing, and look out for friends, family, and our communities.

The current pandemic has shown many leaders – including me – that we don’t need to be in an office to succeed, and that people perform really well when they are allowed to work flexibly. This will allow us to grow faster than ever. BigChange is an international player, working across multiple time zones. By allowing flexible working, we can start introducing night shifts, whereby UK colleagues can pick up calls from the US or further afield, all from home, knowing they have three days off ahead. We can also begin hiring people from deprived areas, instead of focusing on those within an easy commute to Leeds.

Where you live should not be a determinant of what kind of job you can secure.

It’s great that some politicians are waking up to the opportunities that a four-day week could bring but I would also like to see some tangible support for those of us leading the way. If the Chancellor wants to help, he could support the training and up-skilling of new employees, for example, or offer tax breaks to the forward-thinking organisations that are investing in a 4-day week.

I really hope that calling for the short week is more than a political move to try and win over voters. We need to work together to make the 4-day working week a reality. I know that it is what the economy, business, and workers need. The time is now.

CEO’s Blog – Strong growth for BigChange in the first quarter 2020

BigChange growth 2020 cartoon

Strong growth for BigChange in the first quarter 2020

Earlier this week, the Chancellor announced that the UK economy shrank by 5.8pc in March, the fastest contraction since the peak of the 2008 financial crisis. I doubt anyone will be surprised by this development, given the significant impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on British industry. This is why I am delighted to have some good news to share. Despite the economic gloom, BigChange has posted strong Q1 results for this year.

Between January and March, the company generated sales of £5.5m, up 50% on the same quarter in 2019. During the period, BigChange won 80 new customers, adding a total of £8.3m in new contact wins. The first quarter of 2020 was also a profitable one for BigChange, with an EBITDA of £720,000.

As you all know, the COVID-19 pandemic caused the UK Prime Minister to impose a full lockdown at the end of March, and BigChange – like many businesses – was forced to change working practices for two weeks as we adjusted to the new measures and trading conditions. I’m so proud that the company has managed to deliver impressive growth in the face of many challenges.

BigChange is an international company, which now trades in multiple territories across the globe, including France, Ireland, Norway, Australia and the US. During the first three months of this year, the French arm of the business grew significantly, expanding its base to reach 20 customers.

Last year, I predicted that BigChange would hit £23m in turnover by the end of 2020. We are still on track to hit revenues of more than £20m at the end of this financial year, which is a huge achievement. Credit to all my BigChange colleagues for their hard work and resilience.

I would also like to thank all our loyal customers, who have helped us to grow at a time when many businesses are struggling. There are now over 45,000 people around the globe using our system, from a customer base of 1,300 companies.

At the start of 2020, BigChange made a number of high profile contract wins. Special mention here goes to our new partnership with Sunbelt Rentals, Inc.(formerly A-Plant), part of Ashtead Group Plc, the largest equipment rental company in the UK.

It is a testament to our innovative and brilliant JobWatch system that so many companies are using the platform to enhance customer service, drive efficiency and generate growth – against all odds – during this time.

During the first quarter of this year, BigChange received the highest honours that can be given to a British company. We won a Queen’s Award for Enterprise, in the much-lauded Innovation category. We have also been selected as one of the best companies to work for in the UK, securing a place on the Best Companies’ 2-Star list. BigChange was also ranked 12th out of 50 companies as part of the MegaByte 2020 Top 50 in UK Technology.

These are difficult times for everyone – and BigChange will doubtless experience a slowdown in the second quarter of the year. However, I’m delighted to report that since April 1, the company has secured £300,000-worth of new business in France, and won £1m in new contracts across the business as a whole.

I founded this business seven years ago to help business of all sizes harness the benefits of a powerful, feature-rich mobile workforce management platform. Today, we offer combined back office CRM, job planning and scheduling, a rich mobile app, customer portal and vehicle tracking to help organisations go paperless, drive efficiency and protect the safety of lone workers. In response to COVID-19, BigChange launched a hands-free signature feature, allowing engineers on the road to minimise contact with others. I hope that our performance this year proves that we are not going to let this virus dent our progress, or hurt our customers.

CEO’s Blog – Careful who you trust, Chancellor. There are wolves out there

BigChange careful Chancellor cartoon

Difficult times can bring out the best in people.

During this pandemic, we have seen kind people helping their neighbours, brave workers risking their lives to serve the nation, selflessness, and discipline. But trouble can bring out the worst in people too.

During World War Two, there were many examples of resilience, fortitude and the famed “Blitz spirit”. However, crime also surged. Looting and racketeering were rife. Between 1939 and 1945, crime rose from 303,771 offences to 478,000, according to official figures. Where some see an opportunity to give, others see the chance to take.

It saddens me that many individuals and businesses are going to abuse the COVID-19 financial support during this pandemic. The government is making billions of pounds available to help the people and companies who are truly in need but some may see this as a free-for-all.

It was reported that Victoria Beckham, who has an estimated fortune of £335m, has decided to furlough 25 of her staff and take advantage of the government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme. You have to wonder whether she really needs to use government money to pay those wages?

Other so-called “British” companies that off-shored years ago – and pay no tax here in the UK – are asking for government bailouts. It beggars belief.

The emergency funding has been set aside to safeguard the future of this economy. It’s not lottery money. We, the taxpayer, will ultimately foot the bill.

BigChange is a young, growing company yet we have decided to shoulder the majority of the financial burden of coronavirus. We are using our own cash – carefully saved in the business – to survive, rather than accessing emergency loans from the bank. Many businesses are choosing to take out loans, even if they do not need to, or have no plans to pay the money back.

This is why I am calling on the Chancellor to think carefully about his next steps. Right now, it seems that Rishi Sunak is pressurising the banks to approve every single loan application that comes in.

There needs to be accountability. Business owners should only take money if they need it to keep paying suppliers and staff through the next few months – and only if they truly believe they stand a chance of surviving and paying it back.

The government has also turned into a venture capitalist, pledging £500m in a co-investment fund to support start-ups. A further £750m pot has been created to aid research and development activities. We should absolutely help our start-up community but is this the right way to do it?

Why not bring back the Small Firms Loan Guarantee scheme (SFLG)? This was a hugely successful initiative that allowed small businesses to access bank debt without having to provide security because the loan was backed by government. The scheme both supported entrepreneurial businesses and still made companies accountable; the government only provided 75% of the security on the loan. The government also didn’t have to become some kind of quasi-VC.

There are other straightforward ways to support businesses through this crisis. There has already been a duty and VAT deferment, subject to a financial hardship test, which is helpful. Why hasn’t the government considered a PAYE holiday? This would help many employers get through the short-term crisis, without having to apply for loans.

The scheme could be totally transparent: a three-month holiday and then the shortfall tagged on to subsequent payments. It’s madness that business owners must saddle themselves with five-year loans when the support could be easily delivered through PAYE. A scheme like this would serve everyone, while creating minimum fuss for HMRC. As it stands, everyone will be doing their own deal with the Revenue, causing huge amounts of complexity.

It is great that the government is willing to support businesses. I applaud the Chancellor’s response to this crisis. But I think there are better ways of offering support. There are wolves out there, and we need to stop them from savaging our economic future.

CEO’s Blog – Is your workforce going ‘contactless’? BigChange is here to help

BigChange workforce going contactless

Businesses across the globe are battling against the uncertainty created by COVID-19.

Whether your sales have slowed, supply chains disrupted, or you are overloaded with orders, we are all in uncharted territory.

The reality for most of us is that we have to find ways to keep trading while minimising contact with other people. We also have to monitor the health – both physical and mental – of our employees, customers and partners at this difficult time.

The good news is that BigChange’s platform can help your business to get through this outbreak – and even thrive. Our software was built to offer true resilience and future-proofing to businesses of all sizes.

How BigChange can help you today

BigChange’s software allows all your team members to work remotely, meeting the new self-isolation guidelines, and ensuring that tasks are easily and clearly allocated.

When work is completed, jobs are updated with all the required paperwork, images, and sign off from senior personnel. Our remote activity audits also offer peace of mind.

BigChange allows its customers to ensure employees are working safely through home office risk assessments, which determine whether desk setups are likely to cause RSI or back problems. It can even ensure that WiFi is securely set up to minimise the threat of cyber crime.

It will also communicate up-to-date official COVID-19 guidance as the situation evolves.

For some companies, face-to-face interaction is still vital. BigChange offers a triage risk assessment facility to determine which tasks must still be carried out in-person, and how to allocate resources safely.

Each job that is loaded onto the BigChange platform will have a dedicated risk assessment, ensuring the welfare of your teams and customers is paramount.

These assessments will:

  • Determine the health status of employees
  • Check that people that your staff are meeting have no COVID-19 symptoms and have not been exposed to the virus
  • Ensure a safe working environment
  • Remind employees of safe travel guidance during this time
  • Remind employees of the need to maintain a distance of at least two metres from others
  • Ensure that employees take hand-washing breaks and have access to those facilities without putting themselves at additional risk

I founded BigChange so that I could help business owners like you become more efficient and competitive, while empowering remote working and paperless processes. This is exactly what all companies need right now.

Get in touch if you have any questions about how BigChange can help your business. Stay safe out there.

CEO’s Blog – As entrepreneurs, we must endure, and help our communities

BigChange entrepreneurs must endure

One of the benefits of being 57 is that I have lived through many crises.

I remember the Black Monday crash of ’87, which wiped trillions off the share prices of some of the world’s biggest companies. Back then, I was working in a bakery business in New York. We received a check from Bloomingdale’s – the iconic department store – and it bounced. It was for about $300. We framed it to remind ourselves that no one is too big to fail.

I remember the horrific outbreak of mad cow disease in the late eighties, when more than 4m cows were culled to try and contain the infection. Britain’s roads ground to a halt as they tried to stop it spreading from county to county. There have been other health scares since then, from swine flu to bird flu.

Then there was the dotcom crash of 2000. I was in a telematics business that was part owned by GE. The value of the company nosedived almost overnight. In 2008, the financial crisis sent many businesses to the wall. I was running Masternaut, my last venture, which I later sold to French airport group Airport De Paris. I owed the bank £6m at the time, and it called in part of the debt. I managed to reduce headcount and keep the business afloat, driving the business forward against the odds. It was a terrible time. People were losing their livelihoods, their homes, and their self-belief. There were many suicides.

Today, we are faced with another challenge: the outbreak of coronavirus. The spread of the disease is worrying, as is its impact on the elderly and those with respiratory problems. Like all the challenges that have come before, we must work together to get through this.

As business people, we must be in charge of our own destiny. We need to make contingency plans. We need to motivate our teams through this crisis. We need to sell remotely, work from home, and virtualise our operations.

At BigChange, we are fortunate to be in a strong position. We have no borrowings, and have a good cash reserves that can see us through the coming months, whatever happens to the economy. Even if the government closes schools and shops, there will still be a need for basic services, from plumbing to the maintenance of our roads. We will continue to be the platform of choice for these businesses. Engineers can avoid the office and deliver these crucial services through BigChange.

For those businesses in hard-hit sectors such as travel, entertainment and retail, the time has come to dig deep, innovate, and figure out a survival strategy. Some may introduce employee ownership if they cannot pay wages, others may trade shares for valuable supplies, or agree more flexible terms with customers that will now struggle to pay.

This is the time to work together, be kind, and give back to our partners, customers and colleagues. Coronavirus is likely to hit this country hard. We are getting involved in local initiatives to help the elderly and, through my work as a Northern board member of Business in the Community, I’m helping other companies to mobilise in partnership with welfare organisations. Instead of battening down the hatches, we need to open our hearts, and think of others.

CEO’s Blog – Don’t let coronavirus catch you out

BigChange don't let coronavirus catch you out cartoon

Bonjour, mes amies. I’m writing this blog from Paris. We now have 16 people based out here, and – despite Brexit – we are proving a hit with the French. Just this week BigChange won a six-figure contract – our largest deal in France so far.

However, this isn’t the best time to be travelling. When I was last in Paris, the general mood was positive. Now, nobody kisses on both cheeks any more. No one will even shake your hand. Everyone is wearing masks and the TV is full of news of coronavirus.

The climate of fear here is understandable. Neighbouring Italy has seen its death toll from the virus top 20 people. Schools in the north of the country are being closed as a precaution, and some towns are under full quarantine. Back in the UK, we’ve been insulated from the coronavirus fall-out – it doesn’t feel like an emergency. Our chief medical officers have only just raised the threat to the public from ‘low’ to ‘moderate’.

Being over here has given me a different perspective. It’s time for Britain’s employers to start planning for the impact of coronavirus, if you haven’t already. What will you do if people start falling ill? How will the business cope if goods from China are unavailable? Is your company policy fit to cope with this kind of emergency? What insurance do you have in place?

At BigChange, we are fortunate to be a software company. This means that everyone in the company can do their job from home if needs be. After my PA, Madeleine, returned from a trip to Cambodia and Australia, she worked remotely for two weeks, to make sure she hadn’t contracted the virus.

We may be a software company but we depend on hardware, which is made in – you guessed it – China. One of our suppliers has been badly hit by the coronavirus, and its factories have been closed and now reopened, luckily we have been stockpiling. We are also doing further contingency planning. After all, no matter where your supplier is based, the likelihood is that somewhere down the line, parts are being sourced from China.

We have also had to be careful about booking any international events. We were looking at taking a team out to Monaco with Nick Hamilton, the racing driver and BigChange ambassador, for the Grand Prix. That idea is on hold because we have no idea whether the event will go ahead, or if flights will be running at that time.

Perhaps the biggest risk we face is recession. We have already seen the coronavirus wipe millions off the share prices of some of the world’s biggest companies. It has hit global supply chains hard; China is the factory to the world. When it suffers, the profit warnings start rolling in. At BigChange, we are proceeding with caution. I am only making hires that are integral to the future of the business. I believe I can still execute on my growth plan for the year, but I’m looking to find efficiencies where I can through our technology using more automation.

We don’t know how badly coronavirus will hit the UK. Maybe we’ll be lucky, maybe not. But every employer needs to think how the business will cope if, like in Italy, schools are forced to close. How will that impact all the parents working at your company? Do you have any guidance for them? How many of your processes and tasks can you automate, in the event people fall ill?

Don’t let this virus catch your business unawares.

CEO’s Blog – A blog about the bog

BigChange blog about bog cartoon

As an entrepreneur, you work tirelessly to create a business that wows your customers, boosts your colleagues and supports your partners.

I’m a perfectionist, and I’m always dreaming up new ways to improve our offering, and make life even better for the team.

But sometimes, there are things outside your control that interfere with your ability to be at your best.

Here at BigChange, I’ve done all I can to create a wonderful place to work. We have state-of-the-art coffee machines, an illustrator has created the artwork for our walls, we sit on Herman Miller chairs, and we have a chill-out space that everyone loves. We have introduced a 4.5-day work week for the whole team. We run motivational Mondays every month, bringing in top inspirational speakers, and put on loads of events each year to keep morale high.

But there is one thing that undermines all my efforts to have the perfect workplace: the loos.

We rent our offices and, under the terms of our contract, the landlord is responsible for maintaining certain common areas used by multiple tenants. The toilets fall under the landlord’s jurisdiction.

They are a disgrace.

These toilets haven’t been updated in 20 years. The tiling is old and worn. The sink leaks all over the floor, creating a major hazard. The cubicles are flimsy. The toilets themselves are cheap and nasty. The loo seats are always breaking, leaving a loo out of order – not a good thing when there are only two, plus a disabled toilet, and hundreds of people need to share the facility.

We have been in our new premises for a year and a half. I’ve lost count of the complaints lodged and tickets raised. All our pleas have gone unheard. This is despite the fact we pay a hefty service charge, which is supposed to go towards maintenance.

I believe that your toilets are as important – if not more important – than your office. They contribute to the overall impression of your company. Do you have a bright clean office? Great. Do you have clean and inviting loos? Even better. There is nothing worse than being subjected to a miserable WC.

I feel ashamed when visitors come and ask to use the facilities. They leave our clean and inviting office and have to step into a wet, dank nightmare.

The irony is that our landlord is a company called The Canal & River Trust. You would think that water and sewage would be a priority. This is the same company that owns the Toddbrook Reservoir in Whaley Bridge, Derbyshire. The dam nearly collapsed last year and nearby residents were all evacuated. I guess we should count ourselves lucky we only have a leaky sink to contend with.

This week I was at a roundtable event where I met a man who is as passionate about toilets as I am. Chris Brown is the managing director of Aaztec Cubicles, which creates the most beautiful bathrooms on behalf of organisations across the UK – from swimming baths to government buildings. He kindly listened while I vented my frustrations about our toilet problem.

The worst thing about all this is: I shouldn’t be obsessing about the state of the office loos. I should be spending my time on more worthwhile issues. Fighting with my landlord is a waste of my time, and distracts me from my real job: growing and improving my business. So I’m going to try and put it out of my mind, for now. Or perhaps I’ll grab a sledgehammer and smash the toilette up.

Just kidding…

CEO’s Blog – The ‘workaround’ is dead. Long live the ‘small change’

bigChange workaround cartoon

I find it hard to hear customers talk about using workarounds on our platform. The definition of workaround is “a method for overcoming a problem or limitation in a program or system”.

It suggests there is some kind of flaw or glitch within JobWatch that needs managing, and there isn’t.

What people really mean when they talk about using workarounds is that they are used to doing something a certain way, and they don’t want to change. Even when the change is really small.

Or maybe they have been using a different system that takes care of a small part of a process, and they like using that system (even if JobWatch could do it better, faster, with 10 fewer steps).

I understand that – it’s hard to change a habit of a lifetime.

However, we have 40,000 users on our system right now and I would say that 99% of the people using JobWatch are doing so without any so-called workarounds. Businesses tell me that JobWatch is directly responsible for increasing efficiency and profitability. It has been designed to eliminate paperwork and bureaucracy from the life of a mobile worker, and streamline processes, while creating more opportunities for growth – and that’s exactly what it does.

JobWatch has glowing reviews from across the whole spectrum of industries. This is why I am banning the word ‘workaround’ from the BigChange lexicon. I don’t want to hear it any more. There are no limitations, no problems to overcome. The system has been honed and tweaked to be as close to perfection as possible. Instead, I want customers to talk about making a ‘small change’.

By making very minor changes to the way they operate, updating their approach or process very slightly, they can benefit from the wealth of efficiency that we have to offer. The small change doesn’t affect the business at all – the output and results are exactly the same. It’s the just the method – the path to getting to the goal – that alters a tiny bit.

It’s amazing the impact that words have. By moving away from the negative connotations behind ‘workaround’ towards the positive and progressive meaning behind ‘small change’, I feel that we can help customers to embrace the new, and encourage them to evolve with the technology.

All of us could benefit from making small changes. By trying to do things a little differently – or taking someone’s advice over a new approach – we can all evolve and become more successful.