Case study · SaaS product
Built by peoplewho had done the job.
ProRota is a workforce platform for the UK security industry, built with a team who had spent years rostering guards on spreadsheets and WhatsApp and knew exactly what was wrong with it.
- Client
- ProRota
- Where
- Manchester, UK
- Sector
- SaaS product
- Built with
- Laravel, Livewire, React Native
The client
Security staffing,which never stands still.
A security firm's week is not a rota, it is a rota being repaired. Somebody calls in sick at four in the morning, a site changes its hours, a licence expires, a client asks for two more bodies on Saturday. The plan is a starting position.
It is also an industry where the paperwork is not optional. Who was where, for how long, with which licence, is the difference between an invoice that gets paid and a contract that gets lost.
The decision
Knowing what is wrongis not the same as fixing it.
Everyone in the industry knows the tools are poor. Rotas get built in spreadsheets, changes get communicated in group chats, and timesheets get reconciled afterwards by somebody with a highlighter. It works, in the sense that the guards turn up.
The ProRota team decided to stop working around it and build the thing properly - which means committing to a product, not a fix, and to the years of maintenance that word implies. Most people with the same complaint carry on complaining.
How it went
They knew the industry.We knew the build.
This is the rare project where the client can tell you not just what they want but why the obvious answer is wrong.
Naseem Shahid and the ProRota team gave us the operational reality: how cover actually gets found at short notice, what a manager is doing when they are not at a desk, which compliance details matter and which are theatre. Every awkward edge case in the platform is there because somebody who had lived it told us about it.
01
We designed for the phone first
The people using this most are not at a desk. If it does not work standing in a car park at midnight, it does not work.
02
Roles before features
A guard, a manager and a client want three different things from the same shift. We mapped that before building any of it.
03
Built modular, on purpose
Security was the first vertical rather than the only one, so the architecture assumes another industry is coming.
What we built
One platform,and an app for the field.
The rota, built once and then repaired all week - which is what it is actually for.
What changed
The part you can count.
95%of field staff on the app
Adoption is the whole game with frontline software. A rota platform the guards will not open is a spreadsheet with a bigger invoice.
80%faster rota creation
The week gets planned in an afternoon instead of over two days, which matters most on the weeks it has to be replanned twice.
Working with Unovo has been transformative for our business. We knew what we wanted - a clean, scalable rota platform that would work for both our operations team and our field staff - and they brought it to life in a way that exceeded expectations.
The mobile app has been a game changer for our team in the field, and the system is already saving us hours of admin each week.
Naseem Shahid
Managing Director, ProRota
Still going
Security first,not security only.
Next is smarter scheduling that proposes cover rather than waiting to be told, payroll and billing integration so the timesheet becomes the invoice, and a move into the care sector, which has the same shape of problem and none of the same suppliers.
More of the work
No pitch, no deck
Tell us what isactually happening.
Describe the mess in your own words. We will say what we think is going on underneath it, and whether there is anything we could usefully do about it.
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Worksop Road, Sheffield S9 3TL
Registered in England and Wales, company no. 16375453