Bristol Funeral Directors were part of the original user involvement group set up to help develop the Eulogica funeral software for the UK market. Over the years they have had their Eulogica funeral software tailored further to suit their needs. However, the software was only ever installed at their head office in Bristol. As the number of branches has increased over the last few years they have been looking at rolling out Eulogica to all their outlying branches. To give them an idea of how this has worked in practice, Eulogica’s David Wright suggested that they visit Lodge Brothers Funeral Directors to find out their experience of rolling out Eulogica to 40 branches.
Lodge Brothers already knew Bristol Funeral Directors as they visited Bristol to look at their Eulogica installation before signing with Eulogica. Lodge Brothers operate across 40 branches with their head office being located in Feltham, Middlesex. They liked the flexibility of the Eulogica funeral software and wanted to have it installed at all their branches from the outset. Rolling out 40 branches was quite a task and a good plan was put in place by both Lodge Brothers and Eulogica to ensure a smooth roll out.
Eulogica’s David Wright and Laura de Waal took Austin Williams and Andrew Gunningham to the Chertsey Branch of Lodge Brothers Funeral Directors, where they were met by Helen Kempster, who has been a key person in the Eulogica process at Lodge Brothers.
As well as running the Chertsey branch, Helen is also responsible for all internal Eulogica training at Lodge Brothers. She talked to Austin and Andrew about how she trained each staff member on a temporary test Eulogica system. This consisted of a days one to one training, and then the staff member spending a week or so practising on the temporary test system at their own branch. Once Helen was happy with the performance of each staff member, they were then given access to the live Eulogica system.
During the afternoon, Michael Lodge took the group on a tour of Lodge Brothers head office, with the main focus being on the communications office. This is where all the logistics are worked out for the funerals and having all the information about each funeral at their finger tips helps tremendously. Clear and accurate workshop and embalming sheets are printed here with all the information required. Shelly Hamilton comments “Following the installation of Eulogica we have cut down on a huge amount of telephone calls to the branches. Information exchange is much more efficient and presented in a clear and concise format. We can look up details for any of our funerals, add our own notes and also see the status of various tasks to do with a funeral.”
Austin was inspired by the visit and commented, “Today has opened my eyes to the further possibilities which Eulogica can offer. Lodge Brothers have embraced the technology and the benefits that go along with it. We will go away from this visit with new ideas for the futur
Austin Williams, Andrew Gunningham andDavid Wright at the communication office with Shelly Hamilton.