Why Pioneer of the year?

MCFT have driven innovations through making best use of the challenging business environment that the COVID pandemic created. In January 2020, MCFT employed a team of 90 technicians and trainees, in a company of nearly 150, looking after the maintenance of commercial kitchen equipment in staff restaurants, education and healthcare.

As widely reported, restaurants of all sorts were catastrophically affected by the pandemic – with a 75% drop off in revenues in April 2020. The business could have folded. Instead, with support from the furlough scheme, the hatches were battened down and a Lifeboat Crew was launched – taking inspiration from the Shackleton expedition – could a small band of shipmates keep the boat afloat until business came back and all could be rescued.

The initial crew of 14 technicians and 7 support team navigated the frightening early days of the pandemic – maintaining essential services for healthcare customers and those customers still operating and needing compliance cover. 

The pandemic forced the organisation to discover new ways to working – from support teams distributed at home, to the challenges of supply and access protocols which had to be followed by the field team. Accurate continuous management of workforce efficiency, optimisation of our customer experiences and day-to-day flexing of resources became essential to the survival of the organisation. 

Business Intelligence

Data quickly became the key to managing the business’ performance effectively using advanced business intelligence (BI) solutions.

With many businesses, they have enough data to drown in. The initial step is to turn that data into information which can inform and guide the business. This takes the form of reports and dashboards - looking at the detail of anything which is not quite going to plan and ensuring that individuals are empowered and resourced to deal with each category.

Phases of Data Evolution

Once reports have been established, the fundamental challenge is to structurally adapt the organisation’s culture by changing human behaviour.

Go beyond reporting: Choice Architecture

MCFT is now going beyond shaping behaviours by retrospective reporting and is actively optimising performance by making changes to the IT systems that directly affect the user experience. The objective is to make it as easy as possible for our staff and customers to do the right thing by use of nudging in the product design.

For example, the organisation used to report on the number of missed van checks by technicians in a BI report – a process that really should take place daily to ensure vehicle safety.

“Using Choice Architecture, our software now requires van checks to be completed before the technician can start their work. This ensures vehicle safety and promotes the right behaviours.” – Terence Horsman, COO ORCA Service Technologies

Focus on Value: Technology is just a tool

It may look like technology, data and reports. It works because it’s designed around human behaviour. The end goal for MCFT was never the technology alone, it was to create value for our customers by promoting the correct human behaviours. We continue to expand this approach in 2022 as we continue to digitalise, innovate and improve the service and value that we provide to our customer base.