Testimonial by Jacob Lynch, originally appeared in Cranes and Lifting on July 18, 2024. Republished with permission.
Manager at McIntosh Cranes, Scott McIntosh, discusses how the Visual Dispatch Software has helped streamline the New Zealand crane hire company’s quoting, scheduling, invoicing and utilisation of its assets.
Every lift at McIntosh is scheduled, allocated, and invoiced through Visual Dispatch’s crane scheduling software
Muddy papers fresh back from the site, illegible handwriting, crumpled up pieces of important information – you name it, and Scott McIntosh has probably seen it when it comes to administrative paperwork.
Throughout his career in the family business, Scott has consistently sought out opportunities for growth and development. Starting out as an equipment operator, he progressed through various roles, including dispatch and operations. In his current position, Scott is constantly striving to optimise processes and enhance efficiency. His commitment to continuous improvement drives him to explore innovative solutions and adopt best practices to elevate the company’s performance and exceed customer expectations.
Across its more than 70 years of experience in the crane hire and transport industries, McIntosh Cranes has accumulated a vast fleet of cranes, hiabs and truck and trailer units to uphold its operations. Now into its third generation of family ownership under the eye of Scott, the business has been steadily expanding both its fleet and industries serviced, with the company almost doubling its fleet capacity since 2017 to expand its operations in – among others – precast concrete and steel work and wind farm maintenance.
As of today, the company possesses a diverse fleet of around 30 assets, with its crane hire fleet spanning from a TIDD PC25 pick and carry crane through to a Liebherr LR 1300, before capping out at a Grove GMK6400. As mentioned, the company possesses a range of Hiab cranes and transport machinery that, in all, is operated and serviced by 26 employees.
What it doesn’t have, however, is the intensive paperwork flow brought on by administrative procedures. Aligning with Scott’s move to fleet management and dispatching, the company has been using Visual Dispatch’s crane scheduling and allocation software since 2017. According to Scott, McIntosh Cranes’ back-of-house procedures have been made so much simpler and effective since the implementation of the software that was developed especially for the crane industry – and, since updating and moving to a newer version of the software in November 2023, everything has gotten even better.
“We’ve moved to e-tickets for all our operations team, all our invoicing is done through the program, and everything can easily be controlled by opening a new job and monitoring everything within that job,” says Scott. “Before we implanted the system, we would use a big pad to allocate everything. Now, we use Visual Dispatch to streamline the entire package for employees, and scheduling everything, for every bit all our machinery, from quoting through to invoicing.”
As mentioned, the story of Visual Dispatch is symbiotic with the crane industry. Developed specifically for the industry in the mid-90s, the software optimises the quoting process, the crane and support equipment scheduling and dispatching process, and the invoicing process. Within the software, companies can add new jobs to equipment and employee schedules to ensure resource allocation and scheduling is as efficient and effective as possible. Intuition and practicality were at front of mind when developing the system that is accessible via mobile phone, tablet, computer – anything electronic, essentially – with the process for opening a new project made extremely simple.
To undertake the process, companies start with a quote or a rental/booking within the software; from that point on, the information is permanently maintained meaning less time wasted by duplicating or copying information between systems/process and also consistent across what the customer receives (Quote, eTicket and Invoice) until it is closed, information is never lost – whether that be job hours worked by a machine or employee, or equipment allocation and distribution. For Scott, Visual Dispatch’s intertwined nature with the crane industry was the major selling point for McIntosh Cranes, saying the New Zealand crane hire company felt comfortable using a software that was so immersed in the industry.
“With the quoting system including the ability to prebuild crane and resource packages, we knew that the software was designed for the cranes and heavy lifting industry,” he says. “For us, the software is holistic, comprehensive, detailed and has solved a lot of our issues as we look to continue growing our fleet and operations.”
Naturally, for Scott, a major aspect of Visual Dispatch is the software system, its integration, its practicality of use, and how it has streamlined the company’s administrative procedures. What he and McIntosh Cranes have also been taken by, however, is the responsiveness and willingness to help provided by the Visual Dispatch team, headed up in Australia and New Zealand by Daniel McBride, the manager for the ANZ region with an extensive history in the crane industry as operations manager.
“When we implemented the latest version of Visual Dispatch back in November 2023, Daniel ensured he was over here with us, walking us through the processes and training everyone in the team to ensure we all understood how to effectively utilise the system,” says Scott. “Since working with Visual Dispatch, we’ve consistently had a responsive team backing us for any questions, queries or issues that we’ve had, and the system has helped us streamline our entire administration process.”
