How Ferguson is expanding their business and keeping compliant with the help of Worksuite

As a rapidly growing company, Ferguson was regularly bringing on more third party installation contractors. With their existing internal systems, they were lacking a repository for easily tracking and viewing their legal risk documentation for each job – an essential part of any business that has contractors working inside customers’ homes.

“We needed to advance to a technology that gave us a foundation to have a standard method of storage and the ability to look stuff up, such as compliance and insurance policy underwriting.”

Ferguson’s internal process at that time functioned more like a “chat” or posting system that detailed what contractors were supposed to do – but there were no checks or balances, and no central place to store and view all this critical information to ensure each job was legally covered.

“We would have to reach out to the manager and say, “Hey, do you have this paperwork?” So that was getting quite bad in terms of the number of people we were managing”

The team at Ferguson outlined all the gaps that their new technology platform needed to fill. After speaking with twelve different companies, they narrowed their choices down to four contenders – ultimately deciding on Worksuite as the best option for their needs.

They felt that other providers weren’t a good fit as they didn’t have the flexibility that was needed for their company and contractors. As a growing multi-billion dollar company, they were looking for security that any partner they worked with could handle the needs of their large teams.

“We gave [our dedicated account manager at Worksuite] our list of what we needed, and they made everything look and feel how we wanted. Other companies just seemed more out of the box, like – here’s what it does, take it or leave it’.”

Ferguson found implementation and onboarding with Worksuite to be a smooth process. But with 110 managers and a network of 1500 installation partners, gathering all the necessary information and documents for contractors and compliance took time.

“You know when you’re herding cats? There are so many components and people you’re dealing with across the country. I mean, it’s thousands and thousands of documents.”

Worksuite is renowned for its training and customer support, which was essential for Ferguson in ensuring a smooth transition for everyone to the new platform – at the scale they needed to work at.

“Our dedicated account manager is fabulous. He’s been hand in hand, side by side, helping make sure that we had good training and good knowledge. If something doesn’t work, he can dive in pretty quick.”

Once Ferguson had implemented the Worksuite platform, they began to notice results in the form of cost savings and the ability to locate specific paperwork and information quickly.

“About six months in, for those who had onboarded, we were automatically seeing some wins.”

Outside of time and cost savings, Worksuite also gave Ferguson the peace of mind they were looking for. 

Due to the nature of their business, it was critical that Ferguson had all the necessary documents on hand to ensure they were compliant at all times, reducing their risk for any potential claims.

With the centralized platform, Ferguson could now see at a glance which teams they had in place, how they were using them, and which jobs they were working on at any given time.

“Now I can go on the system and tell you what’s going on pretty much anywhere.”

Worksuite made it easy to ensure that every contractor (whether in-house or external) had background checks completed with a third-party checker integration, and that every job was covered from start to finish – ensuring the safety of both Ferguson and their customers.

“We have peace of mind and security that we’ve done all of the checks and balances on everybody that we’re sending into a home. Whether they’re our own in-house employee or a third party, they’re all treated the same. We don’t want to put a customer at risk.” 

Ferguson’s installation contractors found the system easy to use in terms of onboarding and compliance. 

Worksuite was able to customize the onboarding workflows to suit the specific needs of Ferguson’s business and ensure that the contractors provided everything they needed to begin their tasks and jobs.

The biggest difference for Ferguson was having transparency and visibility into all the jobs that were taking place at any given time.

“Now we can see everything and know who’s doing what. And who’s not doing what is probably more important.”

With their previous systems of internal shared drives, cloud folders, and Outlook emails, keeping track of jobs was becoming a challenge as the company continued to expand. 

With Worksuite, they had all the knowledge they needed at their fingertips, plus concrete proof that work was taking place and being completed by their installers.

“It’s been helping Ferguson expand. We started off with one product category, and now we’re expanding into five others.”

Since implementing Worksuite for their installation teams, other parts of Ferguson’s business have been interested in looking at using the platform. They’re seeing the value of having a more powerful operating system and technology that allows them to gather all their information and keep it together in one place.

“It’s added tremendous value to know that we’re doing the right things in our organization, and managing our business relationships and contacts to give our customers the best experience possible.”