From outdated system to Procul: the story of Eemland Schoentechniek

Eemland Schoentechniek is a specialised orthopaedic shoemaking workshop with a close-knit team of specialists and office staff. For years we worked with a system that once served us well, but increasingly created bottlenecks over time. Until the switch to Procul.

A system that had been around for years, but no longer worked along with us

The old system we used certainly functioned well for our company in the early years. But as the 10+ years passed, that system fell behind. Using the old system became increasingly difficult as more problems surfaced and no solutions came.

Over the years, our office staff had learned to "work around" the system: notes in separate documents, statuses passed along by phone, handwritten notes on the work floor.

An old system in a new era

In the final years before the switch to Procul, the old system had many problems and outages. Being unable to use the old system for several hours a week had become standard.

The switch to Procul

Once Procul had all the features we needed, we entered into an exploratory conversation. After having a demo, we decided to migrate our data. Procul took on the complete data migration: all client records, order history and documents were transferred.

Everything now runs in the browser, which makes it possible to log in and get to work on basically any device. The first two days took some getting used to for our administrative staff, that's how it goes with a new system. Fortunately, Procul was and is directly reachable and thinks along on solutions.

Everything in one place, no separate programs

Our employee Daan came to us first as an on-call worker and now as a permanent employee, to help out in the company but also to digitalise our business. Because he works across the fitting room, workshop and administration, he knows where the bottlenecks are.

Procul and I are in regular contact. When they told me an agenda function was going to be added, I immediately started thinking about how we could integrate it.

Scheduling appointments was done through an external calendar. Letters, quotes and reminders were typed by hand. Together with Procul, Daan looked at how it could be made as easy as possible for us, but also for other companies.

Every specialist now works with an iPad

We were the first company to start using the agenda. Exciting, but if everything went well, we'd have an integrated system.

All fitting-room staff received an iPad to make appointments, view records and use all the other Procul functions in the fitting room.

I had two to three weeks of pretty long days. Our colleagues are between 22 and 65 years old, so it requires clear explanation and patience from me towards colleagues, but good communication from Procul towards me.

Now the agenda, tasks, client records and basically everything we used to have separate systems for all work together nicely.

Sometimes you have to dare to jump into the deep end and take something on. All the little teething problems are now gone, and I dare to say that Procul is now ready to use out of the box. Even for companies that don't have someone with knowledge of ICT and IT systems.

Out with paper, welcome to digital

Bit by bit, we are now replacing all our paper records with digital records. Efficient and clear. A client calls, and through two pieces of information that administration enters, all other fields are filled in by Procul. An appointment is made and assigned to a fitting-room employee at a location. From the agenda, the fitting-room employee can see the details, but can also go straight into the client record to make notes, quickly schedule a follow-up appointment, or assign a task to another employee. All centrally linked to the client.

The future

I'm now working with Procul to also make sure we can digitalise all our paper forms. I build the system for the fitters, Procul makes sure my data is imported and brought together in Procul. That way we, but also other companies, can simply reuse that same system.

If everything goes well, next year we'll be fully switched over to a completely digital system. That's possible in part thanks to Procul, who supported us throughout this process and thought along at every moment.

Finally, we asked Daan whether he experiences many problems among his colleagues around Procul.

No, the system works and I've only experienced one time that Procul wasn't reachable. The communication was quick, and when I said sorry to one of our administrative staff that they couldn't do anything for a moment, I was told: 'Ah, this is the first time. In the old days this happened daily.' I think that says enough.

For Eemland Schoentechniek, Procul is not just a new system. It is the way they now work: organised, automated where possible, and with full attention for the client.