How Rico improves consistency, accuracy and confidence to Allegrow’s professional reports
Find out how Allegrow uses Rico to spend less time on formatting and rework, and more time on planning and technical work.
Summary- Allegrow results with Rico at a glance
About Allegrow
Allegrow is an environmental consultancy based in Ōpōtiki, Bay of Plenty, with a team of around five. They specialise in resource consents, farm environment plans, bore testing and environmental compliance work.
For Allegrow, producing high-quality professional reports is a key part of delivering their services. Reports need to bring together detailed project information, technical assessments and professional planning advice, while remaining accurate, consistent and clear for clients and decision-makers.
Rico has helped Allegrow streamline this process, allowing the team to prepare reports more efficiently while improving consistency and confidence in the accuracy of the finished document.
Challenges Allegrow wanted to tackle with Rico
Before using Rico, Allegrow wanted to improve several aspects of its reporting process:
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Keeping reference information current and accessible to the team
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Maintaining consistency across professional reports
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Reducing the time spent on routine report preparation and formatting
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Ensuring project-specific information was accurately reflected throughout each report
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Giving planners greater confidence when preparing and reviewing reports
For a small consultancy, reducing this administrative workload was important so the team could spend more time on the planning and technical work that requires their professional expertise.
Efficient, more focused report drafting
Sue Clark is an Environmental Consultant at Allegrow, and one of the team’s senior report drafters. She spent seven years at Bay of Plenty Regional Council before joining Allegrow, including time in the Consents Department, so she brings a processing side view to the reports she now writes.
Since adopting Rico, Sue has observed that report writing has become more efficient and accurate.
Improved efficiency per project
Allegrow has seen an average improvement of around 25% in efficiency per project.
The proportion of time spent on routine report preparation has also reduced, allowing the team to put more of its time into planning assessments and technical work.
Time share spent on mechanical work reduced
For Sue, the benefit is about more than the time saved. Rico helps the team produce reports with greater consistency in both their content and presentation.
“Much better consistency in the reports including content (assessment) and formatting. The Rico software assists with this greatly and being able to customise this allows us to tailor each report to the activity.”
Sue Clark
Environmental Consultant
This means Allegrow can maintain a consistent professional standard while still preparing reports that reflect the specific requirements and circumstances of each project.
Greater report accuracy observed during review phase
Accuracy is particularly important when reports contain detailed project-specific information.
Sue spends about the same amount of time reviewing her own reports as she did before using Rico, but she has noticed greater consistency and less rework in the reports she reviews.
Rico helps ensure that key project information is carried through the report accurately and consistently. For example, information such as bore numbers can be connected to the project data and carried through the document, reducing the opportunity for discrepancies between sections.
This gives the team greater confidence when reviewing reports and means less time needs to be spent correcting issues before a report is finalised.
Report configuration
that supports the whole team
The reporting configuration is also helping Allegrow support its wider team, particularly when bringing new planners into the reporting process.
Sue explains:
“We find the configuration of the software and the ability to easily refer to (and pull from) past projects helps with providing guidelines as to what is to be included in the reports.
This provides support to the planner and helps them be more self-reliant in preparing their report.”
Sue Clark
Environmental Consultant
Rico provides the team with a consistent reporting workflow and a clear way of working through the information required for each project.
This gives planners greater confidence when preparing reports and helps Allegrow maintain consistency across the work produced by different members of the team.
Keeping information current
Having information managed within one system also makes it easier for Allegrow to keep its reporting information current.
Sue explains:
“It is much easier to make sure that we are using the most up to date assessment criteria and information as it is accessed and saved in one system.
Making changes is easy which helps ensure that the information is updated as necessary.”
Sue Clark
Environmental Consultant
For Allegrow, this provides greater confidence that planners are working with current information when preparing reports.
A cleaner process for the directors
Lilian Harley, Director at Allegrow, has felt the benefits across the reporting process.
Before Rico, the team was spending significant time maintaining consistency across documents and ensuring that project information was accurately reflected throughout each report.
As Lilian explains:
“Keeping information up to date. Consistent formatting, sourcing information from different documents was causing problems with old formatting and numbering and staff were spending a lot of time fixing up formatting. Accuracy, e.g. the bore number is entered via a field so any changes will be updated throughout the document.”
Lilian Harley
Director
Since introducing Rico, the process has become more streamlined:
“We can update our information, then every report after that has the most up to date information. No need to reformat as Rico does this for us. The reports look consistent and professional.”
Lilian Harley
Director
By reducing the amount of routine work involved in preparing and maintaining reports, Rico allows Allegrow’s team to focus more closely on the substance of each project.
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Business impact
For Lilian, the biggest impact is the ability for the team to spend more time on the work that requires their professional expertise.
“The efficiency of our work has improved significantly, we spend less time on menial formatting work and can focus on the planning and technical assessments. There is less time needed for reviewing as the draft documents are more accurate and the content is updated. Accuracy is improved as the fields carry the correct information through the document.”
Lilian Harley
Director
The result is a reporting process that is more efficient without compromising the quality of the finished report.
“Rico has really helped our team with efficiency and accuracy.”
Lilian Harley
Director
For Allegrow, that means its planners can spend less time on routine report preparation and more time on the technical assessments, professional judgement and client advice that sit at the heart of their work.
Positioned for the RMA reforms
The RMA reforms represent another significant period of change for planning and environmental consultancies.
For a small consultancy like Allegrow, keeping information current and ensuring the team can respond consistently to changing requirements is an important consideration.
Lilian sees Rico as playing an increasingly valuable role as these changes develop:
“We anticipate that Rico is going to be even more valuable to us as we negotiate the changes coming through under the RMA reforms. This scale of change is a huge burden for a small business like ours so we appreciate the support from Rico.”
Lilian Harley
Director
With a centralised and configurable reporting process, Allegrow can update its information and processes as requirements change, while giving the team a consistent way to apply those changes across its work.
For Allegrow, the value of Rico is ultimately about enabling its people to do their work more efficiently and with greater confidence - producing accurate, consistent and professional reports while keeping their focus on the planning and technical expertise their clients rely on.
