In 2005 the company was struggling to stay afloat. Customer satisfaction and profitability at the fire safety products business had hit an all-time low. It was taking three weeks just to issue quotes.

In July 2006, under new managing director Andy Fox, the company launched a service management system built around the use of digital pen technology. Digital pens capture and store information as it's written, which meant the company's engineers could send back data they'd collected in the field. APS used its own internal expertise in service management with the technology from Destiny Wireless.

The pens gave APS the capacity to issue same-day quotes, job status updates, next-day invoicing and sometimes same-day completion of work.
APS has secured a 25% increase in contracts in the past 12 months. From losses of £350,000 in 2004, the Worcester-based company is now back in the black, expecting profits of £150,000 next year.

"I took a huge gamble back in 2005 after taking over a failing business by investing and putting technology at the forefront of a campaign to get the business back on a firm footing. To develop the solution was going to take 18 months and trying to find funding in our circumstances was virtually impossible. As a previous user of PDA based Service Management systems, I knew all the pitfalls and had a very clear vision of what the system needed to do," said Fox.

And that led to a new venture. "I soon realised that the system I was developing could be used by virtually any other service based company with engineers working out in the field. I therefore took another very tough decision and decided to develop a 'generic' version alongside the one I was creating for my own Fire & security firm. Two years on, APS having used the system for 6 months, was back in profit and so I started Wireless Service Management in February 2007. A steady succession of orders for the system has followed."
The Growing Business Awards were established in 1999 by the CBI and Real Business magazine.