A heavily backed app devised by an East Yorkshire electrical contractor to aid tradespeople manage work through mobile phone photography has launched.
Sam Overment is behind Yepic, a platform that gives electricians, plumbers, builders, decorators and joiners a unique new way to record progress, and prioritise tasks. Its user-friendly interface is described as empowering those who adopt it, with a multi-million pound investment secured from Labora, the parent company of City Electrical Factors.
A tech and design team has now been established in Leeds as it looks to accelerate subscriptions.
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Sam, who lives in Holderness, was educated in Hornsea and worked from Cottingham, said it has rapidly gained momentum within the construction sector since it went live in May. Bringing his deep understanding of the needs of trades from his years as a time-served electrician, he said: “I know first-hand how much time and energy can go into capturing all your work movements to calculate hours spent on a job for invoices or hours worked for timesheets, let alone completing the work.
“We really care about tradespeople and appreciate the demands of their unique situations, supporting everything they want to achieve, liaising and enabling a flow of discussion and information while creating better solutions for all of them.
“At the heart of this is Yepic’s real USP, which is about putting tradespeople at the centre of everything we do. It enhances tradespeople and has no real barriers to allowing people to use it.
“We are dedicated to continually improving Yepic and exploring opportunities to integrate technology to further enhance tradespeople’s lives.”
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The team includes Gary Worthington, chief technology officer, and Ric Gravina, chief product officer, with Yepic launching on mobile and desktop.
Requiring just a phone, the app captures exact locations of photographs, creating a ‘job’, while using GPS to monitor visits and log time. Notes and tasks can then be added.
Sam said: “Every tradesperson has the problem of needing to record their work movements and jobs with many relying on their memory alone, adding stress to their workday.
“Customers, employers and tutors can challenge how long you are at a job, so having a detailed log of every visit, every hour and a visual record is really helpful, especially when you don’t have to do anything to create it other than take a photo.”
So far the Yepic app has been downloaded by more than 13,000 tradespeople with a target of 50,000 downloads by the end of the year in what is one of the 海角视频’s largest sectors by employment.
The basic version is free through app stores, with an advanced version being offered for £14.99 a month or £149.99 a year, plus VAT.
An early foray into the field had seen Sam launch Trade Chimp in 2017, a move to digitise the large amount of paperwork for the sector, having partnered with developers at C4DI in Hull. This has been described as a serious step up.