Tailor-made applications for Perfectkeur

Automation has given Perfectkeur a unique position in the market. “In the early days there were three major competitors, which together had a market share of 50%. These competitors are no longer there. That is a direct result of automation. And what about us? We grew from seven people to a team of eighty.” Gerrit is of the opinion that a quick follow-up is crucial. “If a customer agrees to an assignment today, an surveyor will come by within a week. In 85% of the cases a customer receives a report from us one day after the survey.”

20.000+ surveys per year

Perfectkeur works with various tailor-made systems. For example, a special planning system has been developed by GDK. “We now do more than 20,000 surveys per year. It’s no longer possible to do that with just one person planning the surveys. Thanks to our own planning software, we save approximately one employee. If a customer wants to make an appointment, various proposals for a date and time appear on the screen. The optimal time slot has a green colour. This is the case if an surveyor in the area is available for that slot. Less optimal times get an orange or red colour. This allows us to plan much more efficiently and reduces the workload of our surveyors.”

Creating smarter reports

Surveyors work with their own in-house software to collect as much data as possible in the home. In doing so, they answer predefined questions. “Our employees already had a tablet before the iPad came on the market,” continues Gerrit. “Those were still the industrial tablets from the United States at the time. We always say: try to record as much as possible in the home. This makes the ‘homework’ easier for most surveyors. Most of them have only ten to fifteen minutes to complete a report afterwards.”

Big Data

A fairly recent development is that more is being done with Big Data. “In the years that GDK and Perfectkeur have been working together, an incredible amount of data has been collected,” says Gerrit. “We put this data in a so-called data lake. With this, an intelligent dashboard has been developed. I can now see precisely in which areas we are growing. How many assignments are there around a surveyor? Are we working efficiently or are we running out of capacity? And also very important: what is the load on the team members? That depends on many factors, including travel time. We can now quantify the over- or under-load and adjust accordingly. For example, we see that Amsterdam continues to grow, while we are lagging behind in certain areas in the north and east. Is that because fewer houses are being bought or are we not strongly represented there? Interesting questions.”

Cooperation

Gerrit looks back with great satisfaction on the long-term cooperation with GDK. “In the early days I had most conversations with Marco,” says Gerrit. “He is very good immersing himself in the process and then finding a solution. In addition, he thinks commercially and knows everything about the organisation. Marco used to work a lot at our office, so he grew up here. We had a unique one-on-one relationship back then. But I also knew I couldn’t hold on to it.”

Valuable session

GDK Software has grown in the meantime – just like Perfectkeur. “Of course the organisation is getting bigger and then you notice that customers are treated differently,” Gerrit continues. “It is very important to think about the question: what does the customer actually want? That’s why Marco invited me to share my thoughts with the developers. That turned out to be a very nice session. From a technical point of view, developers try to do their work as well as possible, while it also makes sense to understand the customer’s needs. After all, an application has to work in a practical way. Through such a session you grow closer to those people. And they grow closer to me as a customer. That’s very valuable.”