About
AAC Group is a specialist provider of heat pumps and HVAC solutions based in Folkestone, Kent. The business has been going for over 20 years, and Simon, the director, has more than 30 years' experience in the industry, largely in commercial heating and cooling.
A few years ago, AAC Group added domestic heat pumps to their offering. Simon manages the workflow for those jobs through Spruce, from the initial enquiry through to the post-sale paperwork.
"I can run it like I'm a one-man company. I use Spruce for everything from enquiry, QMS, system designs, customer-facing information, all the way down to applying for the grant." — Simon, Director
The Challenge
AAC Group initially became MCS-registered in 2017, but running domestic projects brought a different set of challenges, so it got put on the back-burner for a number of years. By the time Simon came back to it in 2023, the compliance landscape had shifted. His internal team had built a QMS from scratch using Excel spreadsheets and custom codes. It worked, but it took a lot effort to keep it up to date.
Hard to maintain, easy to fall behind
Every time regulations changed, someone had to update the spreadsheets, check the forms, and make sure the process still matched what MCS expected. AAC Group didn't have a dedicated team for that. Simon eventually moved to another software tool, which handled the compliance updates, but the rest of the workflow was still spread across separate tools for estimates, designs, and documentation. Nothing allowed him to do everything all in one place.
"We wrote our own systems, codes and compliances, and we submitted that to MCS. It was a bunch of Excel spreadsheets and we found it quite difficult to keep up with the change in compliance requirements."
Up to 6 hours of paperwork per job
Each heat pump job meant working through forms across multiple systems. Simon had built a whiteboard tracker so he knew which stage each job was at, but even with that, the admin took 6 hours per job. He knew the route: filling out different forms, applying for the BUS grant, emailing various people. But doing it all by hand, on top of a full day of commercial and domestic work, meant the paperwork ate into his evenings.
"With my old process, the paperwork could typically still take 6 hours."
The Solution
Simon now starts most jobs while the customer is still on the phone. He asks them to visit the AAC Group website, press the enquiry button, and fill out the Spruce form there and then. Within ten minutes he has their details, their EPC data, and enough to give them an initial estimate before anyone has left the office.
On site, the survey runs through Spruce on his phone, with everything syncing to his laptop at the customer's kitchen table. He works through each room, takes photos, records measurements, and checks back halfway through to make sure nothing's been missed. If a section isn't showing as complete, he knows before he leaves the property.
Simon particularly loves the DNO application on Spruce. Getting permission to connect used to mean waiting weeks. Through Spruce, the information he needs is already auto-filled and he can just submit the application.
"I have never, ever had such a good experience than getting the DNO permission to connect. It's so fast. I feel sorry for people having to wait between two to five weeks. I press a button on Spruce and it sends it off."
The Results
Key outcomes:
Reduced time on paperwork: 6 hours → 2 hours per job
Increased job processing: 5 jobs → 20 jobs per week on paperwork alone
Quicker quote turnaround: Full formal proposal on the customer's table by early afternoon after a morning survey
The speed matters commercially. Simon reckons that getting a full contract to a customer by early afternoon, the same day as the survey, gives him a significantly better chance of winning the job. With Spruce, he’s been able to survey two homes in one day, quote them by 6pm, and win both jobs the same evening.
"If you quote a job in 2 hours of you leaving the property, or let's say at least same day, I think that's 60% more chance of winning the job.”
The four hours saved per job aren't going into more paperwork. Simon uses that time on what he calls the bits that Spruce can't do - the verbal selling, the follow-up calls, the twenty-five-minute coffee with a customer who wants to understand how heat pumps work. The compliance still gets done, but it's no longer having to be done in the evening.
"For every 4 hours I'm saving, I can spend 4 hours longer with a client. Time's money. So instead of the solution always being employ more people, you can be more productive."
"I would say it probably saves, without exaggerating, 4 hours a day. In the past I could do 5 jobs but while pulling my hair out, and 10 if I worked overtime. But now I could do probably 20 in a week no problem, if I was just paperwork side."