Time lost to chasing orders and non-deliveries is costing installers £thousands, as supply chain disruption continues to hit window and door retail.

The warning comes from Business Pilot, the cloud-based business management tool for installers, which has been designed to support installers in running each and every aspect of their business from lead generation and order placement, to installation scheduling, finance and after care.

Managing director Elton Boocock warned delayed and non-deliveries were causing installers an “administrative nightmare” as they struggled to manage multiple systems.

“Incredible demand combined with disruption to the supply chain is having a massive impact on installers’ ability to manage their businesses effectively and, critically, the expectations of their customers,” he said.

“If you have an effective business management tool and CRM, it may not take all of those headaches away, but it will certainly take the edge off them, because rather than having to make multiple changes, it allows you to make a change once and then automatically update all of the other data channels that it impacts.

“In the case of Business Pilot, we can also help you upward manage your supply chain, giving you visibility of what’s ready and when ahead of time, rather than finding hardware or trims are missing and you can’t complete the install.”

Sally Roberts of Leicester-based Harveys Windows, Leicester, said: “One of the things that we have come to rely on is whether things have been delivered or not.

“We use Business Pilot exclusively to place and generate purchase orders. As these are assigned to specific jobs, we can see what we need and when and then check against them that products have been delivered and are in stores when they’re meant to be there.

“We print out a list every day that our storeman goes through and checks off that product has been delivered or, if we’ve received stuff that wasn’t scheduled for that day, why and which job it should be assigned to.”