ATF Professional spoke to husband and wife team, Jamie and Millie Davies, directors of Davies Salvage Ltd, a vehicle recycling operation located in Langar, Nottinghamshire, about ScrAPPmate, an app they have created, which they say has improved the process of collecting ELVs, by increasing profits without increasing staff or costs.
Millie, tell us about how you came to create ScrAPPmate
Davies Salvage Ltd was established in 2009. At that time, we were only collecting a couple of cars a week, as both of us still had full-time jobs. We rented a small space in a corner of another registered ATF. After building up a good name for ourselves, Jamie decided to leave his full-time job as an HGV technician to develop the company. With business progressing, a year later, I came on board full-time, leaving my job as a care assistant.
From then on, the business has grown dramatically, not forgetting all the stress and struggle to get us here; we now operate from a one-acre site, just next door to the ATF we shared with originally. Now, we collect around 120 cars a week covering Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Derby and Peterborough. We mainly buy from the public; which is why we needed to develop a system to make this process more efficient; so came up with the idea of ScrAPPmate.
In the past, we worked from an A4 paper diary, splitting each page into four sections for each driver; this worked fine until we had a cancellation, or if someone forgot to mark a car as paid, which, in turn, caused a lot of frustration and confusion. At that time, we collected around 80 cars a week, but once we started using ScrAPPmate, the way we organised our ELV collections became more straightforward. We have been able to increase capacity by 50 percent easily and without increasing staff or costs.
We wanted and needed to use an online service that would help us organise all of these collections. We searched the internet and came across the usual haulage software companies, but there was nothing that was adapted to an ATF. We wanted a service that would send collection notifications, something where customers could upload identification and payment details, so we put the whole team at Davies Salvage together to brainstorm idea’s for a new software specifically designed for us.
We contacted Breeze IT, located in Nottingham, and the Director, Scott Baker was incredibly helpful and understood what we wanted to create. He said:
“Breeze IT develop bespoke business IT solutions. We don’t constrain ourselves to any particular industry sector, so it was great when Millie got in touch with us with the opportunity to develop Scrappmate; it’s always exciting to get involved with something new.
Working on the design of the project was made easier for us with Millie having a clear idea of what she was looking to achieve; we were able to combine her vision with our extensive experience in software design to come up with a feature-rich application with an intuitive user experience at its core, that has hopefully had a dramatic positive effect on their business.
It has been a great experience to get to the point we are now with the software, and we look forward to working closely with ScrAPPmate in the future to develop the concept further.”
Abbie McEwen, one of the office team at Davies Salvage Ltd provided her opinion of ScrAPPmate, she said:
“When I first started working at Davies Salvage, we used a paper diary to book in all our collections. This was very time consuming and began to overflow due to the number of collections we were beginning to book in. When Millie and Jamie created ScrAPPmate, it benefited our company so much!”
Tell us about the ScrAPPmate system and the benefits of using it in your auto recycling business
The system is so easy to use, the simple booking-in tab lets you enter all the details you need, and quickly too! I can now book in a car whilst talking the customer through the process of their collection. No details can be missed either as they will show up red when trying to save.
The customers that have used our system to enter any personal details have all felt comfortable and confident when giving us their payment details and ID. The system is worry-free and ensures the details are stored for the correct amount of time before deleting. This also reduces stress in the office by making sure personal information are removed on time.
Not only has this improved the way we book in cars, but now we have so much more spare time to improve other parts of our company, and it has benefitted not just me but all my colleagues too. ScrAPPmate has changed the way our company works and has made us save time and reduce any mistakes that can happen in a paper diary.
ScrAPPmate came along at the right time for us when coronavirus broke out, we were easily able to offer contactless collections to all our customers, which offered us a safe route back to full capacity after a brief lay off.
Aside from this, there is a feature that allows you to create a buyer login for customers in the UK and worldwide who can then view incoming stock so that customers can pre-order salvageable vehicles or parts in advance. This ensures that you can quickly profit from your incoming stock. We as a company have benefitted from this particular feature, and our trade and export sales have dramatically increased.
Dave, an auto recycler in the UK, who uses ScrAPPmate said:
“The ScrAPPmate app is very user friendly, a few minutes a week of browsing lets me plan some of my incoming stock weeks in advance, and the lads at Davies Salvage Ltd are very accommodating and a pleasure to deal with.”
When it comes to cost, we can offer 30 days free trial with no costs involved.
If ScrAPPmate works for you, we will ask for a £300 setup fee (this can be split into monthly payments if required). After this, we ask for a monthly subscription of £50.
If you are a smaller operator, we can offer a price per vehicle solution for you.
We have tried to create a solution applicable to all ATFs. However, additional functionality can be added to suit anyone’s particular requirements.
In a nutshell, ScraAPPmate streamlines booking, payment, collection and storage of data required for processing ELVs.
To find out more, contact Millie on 01949 861131 or email her at millie@daviessalvage.co.uk, alternatively visit scrappmate.co.uk
