Abby and Craig Ward are the husband-and-wife duo that run Kings Mechanical LTD, a Southland multi-site trucking workshop. Recently switching from SAM workshop to our more feature rich and customisable Orion software, we caught up with the warm and bubbly Abby, to see how the big move went.
We started the call chatting about how she found herself at the wheel of the complex trucking business. Abby laughed, explaining that she previously worked in banking and had no mechanical experience. Like a true Southlander, there’s no tall poppies here. She’s very humble about the massive challenge her and her husband took on, and the vital role she plays. It all started with her husband Craig – a heavy vehicle veteran.
Back in 2022, DT Kings gave its shareholders a chance to own their own shops, and Craig – who already had around 20 years with the business up his sleeve – was ready to grab the challenge by the horns. Needing someone to wrangle the admin side of the business, he brought in his wife, Abby – for better or for worse. Two years on they now have a good handle on the business and have started to make some changes to how things run – including a software switch, which is where we come in.
When Abby first started to dive into the facts and figures with their accounting team, they noticed everything was one cut – a whole company wide view. Which is great for some things, but not so great when you’re trying to track inventory or look at the how an individual site is going. On top of this, both Abby and Craig knew that if they were to eventually sell, buyers would likely want one site, rather than the whole shebang, and that’s difficult to value without more granular data.
After chatting with the team at Auxo, Abby knew that while the migrating and upskilling might be a bit painful at first, in the long run they’d have a much clearer picture of the ins-and-outs of their business.
“To be able to look at each different department and straight away see what’s doing well, or what we’re going to have to work on – to track and transfer stock with ease – it was really big for us. It had to happen,” Abby said. “I didn’t want to drop Xero, but I knew that this was the right choice. It was going to be better for the business and our accountants.”
There was some hesitation with making the final call. With decades worth of customer data, changing from SAM to Orion wasn’t going to be a simple flick of a button, as Abby quickly found out. There was a whole lot of customer data to move, as well as new training and upskilling for the office and workshop staff. Anyone who has some old boys on their workshop teams knows they can be pretty set in their ways. While it seemed to be a pretty daunting task at first, Abby’s stress was put at ease by Auxo’s support.
“The support team are amazing. If I had any questions, they were so quick to get back to me. We had several workshops to do, and lots of training before [Orion] kicked in. It was stressful, but we had daily phone calls and weekly zooms. By the time it rolled around we felt really prepared,” Abby said.
“And then there was Rufus, who had come down in person for a few days during the switch. He was able to go around and sort of set us up at each individual site, which was an absolute life saver.”
We asked Abby what advice she has for other businesses in similar shoes, she reckons: “You have to do what’s right for the whole business, and your future. There’s a lot to learn, so I would recommend you take up all the training that is offered and ask lots of questions. I know I must have asked the same question a thousand times and Rufus never minded me asking again. He was awesome!”
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