Ever tighter schedules in electrical contracting
BL-Beleuchtungstechnik GmbH is an electrical contracting business based in Staatsforsten near Cloppenburg. With their focus on smart homes, they work with passion to install the technology of the future, in private homes and in commercial properties.
Christoph Lüken, the managing director of BL-Beleuchtungstechnik, explains why the subject is so relevant right now: “Energy management is becoming more and more important, energy costs are rising and it is very important to design a building with the future in mind. That is our view, it has always been our view, and it is what we are passionate about.”
But he also tells us that they have plenty of challenges to deal with. These days that is mainly project planning when it comes to sourcing materials: there are supply problems and entire structures are changing. Everything has to be planned more tightly.
It has to get simpler and clearer
Lüken used to have serious problems with his project planning. Paperwork chaos and project planning simply do not do each other any favours. He had to drive out to the job sites himself to gather important information, and every day he had several employees on the phone who did not know where things stood.
And then he came across clockin by chance. Rolling it out almost ran by itself: “Putting the whole thing in place was actually self-explanatory.” When he had questions, he picked up the phone and called customer service, who answered him straight away. “But to be honest, there were not many questions,” he adds. Starting out with two people, clockin has grown with the business. Today there are eight people at the site.
“Every tool should take work off your hands and not create even more of it,” Lüken explains. “This is a simple tool that is easy to roll out and easy for the employees as well.”
clockin automates work processes
Today Lüken starts every working day by skimming the upcoming projects in the clockin Office Center. His employees arrive, pick up their tablet and use it to document all the important data. That means project information, travel time and working hours are recorded. Everything that happens on the job site and needs to be put on record.
In the evening he sits down and looks over the hours again to see whether everyone has clocked in correctly, because “software needs looking after too.” In the end it takes him two minutes, every day. That way he keeps an overview of his projects and his employees’ hours, and every week he knows how many hours have been spent on a job site. That is fully transparent for his customers and for his employees.
“I cannot simply let the system run and look at it once a month. I do it continuously. Every day I take those two minutes in the evening, compare, have a look. Then the day is closed off and everything is properly recorded in the system.”
The business now runs digitally
The digital project file also saves him an enormous amount of time. All the important information for his people is stored in the app, right there on the job site. On site there are then no more questions. That saves him a good many hours of organisational effort.
The builds are planned digitally as well. “I find that people today still run around with a sheet of paper, a piece of chalk on the building site, marking things up, writing them down by hand.” He shakes his head. “Of course you still have a little notebook where you write plenty of things down. But 90% has to work digitally. That is really important today. Otherwise you will end up at the back of the queue at some point.” That is why all the important information is stored in the app. His employees have a tablet on the job site, open the project file and have everything in front of them digitally. There are no more questions, no more calls. That saves him a lot of working hours.
It saves him more than just his nerves
Without clockin, Lüken would have to work through slips of paper every day. He would have to record every hour tracked by hand in Excel or something similar. All of that falls away. The people out at work already take the job off his hands by clocking out for their break with a single tap.
At the end of the month he runs payroll and gets a finished timesheet from clockin for every employee. The DATEV integration passes the data on to the tax firm. “It is all completely transparent and simply designed. It is just fun now.”
“I would advise anyone going self-employed, even if they are starting on their own, to put this in place early,” Lüken tells us. clockin makes it very easy for him to set up new employees as the business grows. And many of the small mistakes he used to make, he can now stamp out.
“It is really important to start using something like this early, and it genuinely is not expensive. It is fun and brings nothing but benefits. I can only recommend it to you.”
Instead of ploughing through slips of paper after the end of shift, he spends two minutes in the Office Center and can close off his working day with a clear conscience.
Lüken says he wants to make everything more digital. It is not only buildings that should be digitalized through smart home technology. His business, too, works automatically and efficiently thanks to digital project files, digital time tracking and digital project planning.
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