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In 2017, Shoothill began working on a project for HD Sharman, an innovation-driven company that specialise in the provision of industrial roof lifecycle management products. Shoothill delivered a bespoke CRM (customer relationship management) system that was designed to scale, facilitating the growth and needs of a fast-growing enterprise.
HD Sharman’s exponential growth encouraged them to diversify their services. In 2021, RoofCare Group (‘RoofCare’) was launched as a trial, with a full launch in 2022. RoofCare is HD Sharman’s innovative roof drainage monitoring solution, whose services involve the monitoring, analysing, inspection, planning, and reporting of roof drainage data. A service such as this required an equally sophisticated way of managing customer relationships and project delivery. We were approached for a project management web application which would need to meet these needs and deliver extra value wherever possible.
Shoothill delivered a comprehensive project management system that centralises various data streams in one complete solution, with sections dedicated to project management, customer relationship management, and sensor configuration – the ‘RoofCare Portal’, hosted on Microsoft Azure.
The project management side of the system allows RoofCare staff to monitor ongoing projects and their statuses in real-time, view contact details and view location details under the ‘projects’ tab. Each project is given a status which illustrates where each project sits within the project timeline – everything from ‘new lead’ to ‘active’. The system comes equipped with a signature Shoothill map visualisation tool, built on OpenStreetMap, which displays to the user exactly where each ‘unit’ (sensor) is located down to the building name, and their statuses. This map is populated with data entered once a new project is made, where the location, property name and the number of units are entered. Each unit displays a status of either amber, green, red or flood, under the ‘units’ tab, a status that corresponds with the level of water detected from each sensor inside the property’s gutter lining.
Each sensor takes a reading (a measurement of the water level within the roof guttering in millimetres) every 15 minutes by default, but can be set to take a new reading as frequent as every 60 seconds if required; each property has different rates of flooding depending on roof area, depth of guttering and other environmental conditions. The data from these readings are visualised in the system, so users, at a glance, can see whether or not each roof requires manual human intervention from either RoofCare Group staff or contractors. Each sensor also comes equipped with cameras, which are used to take photographs periodically at preset intervals – these photographs are displayed within the system also, as there are often occasions where quantitative data is not enough to draw conclusions to specific issues, for example, a blockage. These sensors communicate with Shoothill’s dedicated RoofCare Portal API, and sends any unit of measurement and image data to our database. If a new sensor is made, the API will never have seen the sensor before and will automatically create a new sensor in the database – removing the need for manual input every time a new project is launched.
The system was designed to scale along with RoofCare Group, and does so with ease. The system changes frequently to meet RoofCare Group’s desire for new features. Nigel Kilby, Commercial Director at HD Sharman & RoofCare Group said “Shoothill provided the tools we needed to maximise our efficiency. The team not only provided what we needed initially, but they became a source of aid in helping us scale over the long term by consistently delivering digital solutions to technical problems”.
The result of the commercial relationship between HD Sharman, RoofCare Group and Shoothill has been a catalyst to HD Sharman’s success. A fast-growing company demands a great deal of technical support, and we are proud to have become that source since we launched our first solution with HD Sharman in 2017.
As a result of this work, Shoothill has demonstrated:
The ability to centralise data from a variety of sources unique to the client
The ability to utilise APIs to centralise data from unique hardware sources
Trustworthiness to develop on time and to a high standard
The ability to adapt the system to the evolving requirements of a fast-growing client
