Automated Contract Management

The Pub People – Real Ale, Real Food, Real Friendly

Based in Derbyshire, The Pub People works with licensees to provide “a real warm welcome”. It owns and operates around 60 pubs in the East Midlands, and provides pub management, accounting and marketing support to publicans across the UK.

The Pub People helps those running pubs to focus on the customer, freeing them up to deliver the service and quality they demand, and supporting them to achieve the highest standards in hospitality.

Where they wanted support

The Pub People wanted to save staff time and frustration by automating the renewal of service contracts with the people who run their pubs.

“In getting them signed, there are quite a few steps and quite a number of bits of variable detail that we require,” says Managing Director Kevin Sammons.

“That created a bottleneck and frustration at times”. Kevin says, “it was one of our most time-consuming and difficult processes to get right.”

Often The Pub People had to visit pubs several times to get all the paperwork done.

Developing a solution

In 2020, The Pub People brought in HappyWired to automate this complex process. Previously, the task involved a myriad of email communication and spreadsheets to manage, as well as mountains of paperwork.

Publicans were sent multiple documents to sign and return. The process required frequent telephone reminders, and even visits from head office staff. It could take multiple visits and several weeks to complete.

HappyWired replicated The Pub People’s existing documentation and processes using automation functionality that the company was already paying for as part of its Microsoft 365 package.

“HappyWired looked closely at what we were doing to understand how it could be converted, turning an old-fashioned technique into an automated approach that could be built out methodically,” says Kevin.

The Pub People were hands-on throughout development. “HappyWired followed our logic and our terminology,” says Kevin. “Its ability to personalise the development was important. As we built, it became ours. The approach was seamless, detailed and logical.”

Getting buy-in from staff

The Pub People’s staff were involved throughout, working with HappyWired to help craft the solution through a series of workshops showcasing recent progress. Kevin says, “Our people were involved from the outset, sharing the experiences and asking ‘what if it could do that or this?’”.

Beta testing ironed out quirks, and the HappyWired developers oversaw the launch, pinpointing any regular issues and offering technical solutions and training to staff.

“The oversight from HappyWired’s developer was superb,” says Kevin. “He insisted on being online as we rolled the system out, so he could see where it needed further fine tuning.”

The new process and its success

The new contract-signing process has slashed the time taken to complete this vital process “from weeks to hours”.

“The contract hits the pub manager’s inbox as an email,” Kevin explains. “All they do is open a document, click a yellow indicator, type their name and the document is finished. There are seven points where someone has to interact with the process – authorise or sign. It can happen within two hours. Whereas before it took weeks.

“Our business development manager can set up and oversee the entire process while parked up in their car, and the licensee can do what they need to pretty much anywhere. And we now know at every stage what has happened – when it was sent, received, opened, declined or signed.”

HappyWired looked closely at what we were doing to understand how it could be converted, turning an old-fashioned technique into an automated approach that could be built out methodically.

Kevin Sammons

Director

Would you work with HappyWired again?

“Yes”, says Kevin. “In fact we’re already working on the next projects with them. We’ve seen the scope and the scalability of automation, and there is huge potential to streamline complex, multistep processes within our business in a way that will help our staff, our publicans and – ultimately – the bottom line.”