About

EnergyMyWay is a 27-person renewable energy installer based in Oxford, with regional offices across Hertfordshire, Surrey and Kent. Founded in 2008, the company directly employs all its staff, covering heat pumps, solar PV, batteries, MVHR systems and full mechanical packages across both new build and retrofit projects.

The business is on track for around 200 heat pump installs this year. All of their work comes through referrals and existing relationships, highlighting their quality of work. Jason uses Spruce not just to run the design and compliance workflow, but as the tool he puts in front of customers to win those jobs in the first place.

"What Spruce has done is it's given us confidence to sell and deliver a product. If you want to grow a business, you've got to have confidence in those key areas." — Jason, Managing Director

The Challenge

No clear path from enquiry to quote

EnergyMyWay had been doing heat pumps since the early days of the industry, but the tools available made retrofit work particularly difficult. Jason and his team were using MCS spreadsheets to calculate heat loss, and the team would often struggle to complete a full heat loss report in a single visit. They tried different approaches: charging separately for heat loss reports, getting customers to send drawings first, doing a quick initial visit and coming back again. None of it felt efficient, and each extra step was another chance to lose momentum with the customer.

"We were working off MCS spreadsheets and we found it very difficult to price jobs, very difficult to get accurate heat loss reports. There's just a lot of risk."

Competing on quality

The other challenge was the customer conversation. Heat pumps are a big decision. Customers get three quotes with wildly different specifications and prices. One installer says no radiators need changing, while another says eight need replacing. That difference can be thousands of pounds and, without a way to show the customer why the specification is what it is, the conversation becomes just about price.

"There's a lot of anxiety from customers about choosing the right installer. They're spending a lot of money, even with the grant. You're trying to build confidence within the customer."

The Solution

Before visiting a property, Jason downloads the floor plans and creates a basic heat loss model in Spruce. When he presents this at the first meeting, customers consistently react the same way: you've done quite a lot already, how do you know this? It then sets up a conversation about thoroughness from the start.

From there, Jason sits with customers either on Zoom or face-to-face and walks them through the heat loss report live. Because of the way Spruce displays information, customers can follow the logic of the design. They can see why certain radiators need replacing and they can understand why things are priced a certain way. The report becomes the basis of the conversation rather than a document that gets emailed and never read.

Everything from heat loss calculations through to designs, installation packs and handover documents sits in one place. Information entered once carries through the whole process, so Jason and his team can take a customer from an initial call through to commissioning without duplicating work across separate systems.

"We can sit with our customers and use Spruce as an interface to have a discussion about their project. Because of the way it's designed, it makes it incredibly easy for customers to understand the principles around your design."

The Results

Key outcomes:

• Faster time to proposal: From initial enquiry to full quote in half the time

• Strong company growth: 35-40% in two years

The time saving matters, but Jason is clear that it's not just about speed. His old process, from receiving an enquiry, going out to survey, to sending a full proposal, used to take around 10 hours. He can now do the full detailed process, including iterations, in under half the time. And the old process didn't produce the same quality of output. The customer now gets a more detailed heat loss report, a clearer specification and a more professional experience. It's a competitive market now, with more MCS-accredited installers than ever, and Spruce gives EnergyMyWay an advantage.

"It's not just that it's saved time, but it's given us far greater quality output as well. We could spend ten hours doing it the old fashioned way, but we won't have the same confidence in our design."

That edge shows up commercially. Jason recently quoted several thousand pounds more than another provider on a retrofit project. The customer chose EnergyMyWay because they had greater trust in the specification and the local company behind it. Being able to sit down and show exactly why those radiators needed changing, rather than just asserting it, made the difference.

"We do heat pumps because we have Spruce. If I didn't have Spruce, I wouldn't be able to do heat pumps. It's as simple as that."