The Tonkin Group understood they were blazing a trail when they brought ServiceTitan to their multi-trade business, so the Australian entity approached onboarding strategically.
“We took it super carefully and communicated effectively with our people,” said James Tonkin, CEO of the business that grew from plumbing to eventually include electrical, HVAC and roofing. “Just to make sure it was as seamless as possible. As eventuated, it was.”
Based in Albury, New South Wales, The Tonkin Group has just more than 100 employees—75 tradies and 25 office staff, give or take a few depending on the date and time. The group proudly touts on its website that it provides “peace of mind by looking after everything from the pipes underground to the roof over your head.”
As Tonkin grew in recent years, it recognized its software was not providing what the company needed. The more the group came up with workarounds, the more it realized the software was not getting the job done.
“We more or less Frankensteined it to the end of its life,” Tonkin said.
Tonkin started to search for a new software, but did not find what could take care of its processes and many facets of the trades business until it turned to ServiceTitan, the cloud-based software for the trades.
“All the companies that we were following, companies that we looked up to, were all with ServiceTitan,” Tonkin said. “That was obviously a clue into the success that a lot of these companies, particularly in the U.S. market, are having.”
‘All our processes within one place’
Tonkin became more convinced about ServiceTitan when he attended Pantheon, ServiceTitan’s annual conference for the trades, in Orlando in the fall of 2024. There he got a sense of the community ServiceTitan had developed, and saw a software aligned with Tonkin’s values.
“We just couldn’t continue the way we were,” Tonkin said. “Around October 2024 was when we didn’t look back. (ServiceTitan’s) another level to anything that is available in Australia—for all stakeholders involved.”
Another important factor: ServiceTitan had shown it could handle several different businesses contained in one company.
“Finding a program that could house all of our processes within one place was a huge part of the decision,” said Katherine Green, Construction Project Coordinator and the leader of the onboarding process at Tonkin.
Onboarding began in November and ended in April. Two months after going live, Green said of the switch: “Why would you not do it?”
In the same breath, she adds that there “needs to be intentional planning” when it comes to onboarding. Tonkin credited ServiceTitan implementation consultant Manny Loarca for his help in the process.
“We spent hours talking about how we currently do things, with him trying to understand our business in order for us to configure everything as required for us,” Tonkin said. “I truly believe that that had a huge impact on how successful our onboarding was.”
Intentionality and buy-in
Tonkin did not go through onboarding passively; instead it thought through every step.
“One effective approach that we utilized to make sure that we had buy-in was keeping things as simple as possible for our team,” Tonkin said. “When it comes to changing software, often there's nothing simple about that. This is complicated.”
The business set up milestones for onboarding, and monitored dates to achieve them, down to who needed to be informed at each step.
“We followed that very closely,” Tonkin said, “which allowed us to have the answers for questions. That meant we could keep things as simple as possible, and then have an effective go live, with the buy-in.”
Rather than drop the software on the entire team at once, Tonkin decided to bring in stakeholders throughout implementation. That meant the onboarding team was ready for questions specific team members might ask.
Answering questions to ease the concern of the team clearly was vital. Yodeck digital screens were even placed throughout the building to orient the team on changes in terminology between Australia and the United States. A quote became an estimate, bundles became tasks or services, new construction works became projects, assets became equipment.
“Whilst everyone knew that (ServiceTitan) was coming, we probably held our cards a little bit close to our chest until really eight weeks prior, where we then held some workshops and really made it very exciting for our team,” Green said. “And we made sure we had all the answers to their questions so that we could give them all the information and really mitigate any of that uncertainty from them.”
Key benefits? There are many
Just a couple months into operating with ServiceTitan, Tonkin and Green are quick to name the benefits. Among them:
Increased visibility into different facets of the company. Green specifically cited insights gained into the Customer Service Center. “Having the visibility over how their day is running,” Green said. “Having a live booking rate, having recordings of their calls, being able to link that for the technicians to play on their way to their job. All of those things added visibility that we've never had before.”
Increased appreciation of the value of each tradie. Through increased visibility to their work, top performers are easily identified. “We've seen quite a few of our technicians really shoot as stars in our business in the first two months already,” Tonkin said. The software, he said, allows technicians to “be the best versions of themselves.”
Increased data from the phone systems, with much less effort. “You get all that at your fingertips at ServiceTitan as well as the daily reports that come through,” Tonkin said. “We can look at the dashboard any point in time, know exactly about the health of our business today, month to date, quarter to date, and have everybody involved—with our management team all the way through to our technicians and everybody involved in the business—to see how they're performing, how their peers are performing. And that just drives the culture that we want to set here.”
The results, they say, have been game-changing.
“ServiceTitan is at different level times five to anything that's available in Australia,” Tonkin said. “The thought of going back the way we were makes us physically ill, which is amazing.
“We're proud to have extended ourselves to the U.S. market across the world to find the best software for ourselves and our staff and our customers as well.”
