Prepared byIncredible
AI Discovery · MBIE RBP Pilot · From the discovery session, 17 July 2026

One way of working, built to scale

Where AI and automation can help Tū Mai Rā Energy deliver more solar projects with greater consistency and less admin - as one national team. Northland and Taupō are becoming a single business, and this guide captures what we heard and ranked together in the discovery session.

See the whole business Standardise the delivery spine Automate the busywork
Open the Gear List Builder →
The shape of it

Three layers, built in the right order

Since the Northland acquisition and the move into full partnership, Tū Mai Rā is becoming one team rather than a Northland team and a Taupō team - and gearing up for national expansion. Mel's planning day showed each location does things a little differently today. The goal: one scalable operating model with greater consistency, better customer experience and less admin. We read that as three layers - one shared view, a standard way every job runs, then time-saving tools on top.

One source of truth

Fergus · Xero · Smartsheets · HubSpot → one live view

The Operational Dashboard Mel asked for. Job progress, cashflow and the customer pipeline pulled from four systems into one place, so anyone can see where every project stands without opening four tabs.

Foundation

A standard delivery spine

Confirmed sale → handover → install → close-out

Your process map is the backbone. The repeated handovers, scheduling and archiving get automated so every job runs the same way, region to region - which is exactly what a national model needs.

Enabler

Tools that take work off the plate

Gear lists · customer comms · quality capture

Purpose-built helpers on top of the spine: generating the gear list from the design, sending the customer the right message at the right time, and capturing the quality checks that today live in people's heads.

Quick wins

We deliver against pain and impact, not strictly top to bottom - a visible quick win can ride alongside the foundation. We rank it together in the session.

What we'd tackle

Priorities, in order

Ranked by impact against effort, with the pilot's funded hours pointed at the highest-value items first. Tap any item to expand. Solar Plus, HubSpot and the ideas raised in the session are folded in - and nothing is locked, so we can re-rank as the plan firms up.

1

The Operational Dashboard

Mel's headline ask - one live view of the business
Highest valueFergus is the catch

The pain

  • Job status, cashflow and the sales pipeline live in separate systems, so no one has a single picture of the business.
  • Each location reads its own tools, so there is no consistent national view as you merge the two teams.

What we'd build

  • Pull Xero, HubSpot and Smartsheets into one live dashboard: projects in flight, cashflow and pipeline.
  • Built so new regions and metrics slot in without a rebuild.
  • Fergus is the gap - it has no open API today (see Assumptions), so job data is the piece we solve separately.
"Another key requirement for us is an Operational Dashboard report pulling source data from multiple points e.g. Fergus, Xero, Smartsheets, HubSpot."Mel, in her pre-session email
2

Solar Plus proposals in plain English

Richard already does this by hand - let's remove the double-handling
Customer-facing winRichard's halfway there

The pain

  • Solar Plus produces the scope and quote, but its standard letter is generic.
  • Richard copies the proposal into Claude by hand to turn it into plain kWh and payback terms customers understand - double-handling on every quote.

What we'd build

  • Connect Solar Plus and Claude so the plain-English customer narrative is generated straight from the scope - no copy-paste.
  • A consistent proposal voice across both regions.
"It's kind of double handling, taking it from one system and putting into another system."Richard, on today's call - on Solar Plus and Claude
3

The job-preparation planner

Matiu's priority - the gear list as the front door to the whole install plan
Protects marginBigger build

The pain

  • Northland has no gear list at all, and getting a job ready takes a while.
  • Everything from gear to safety, labour, logistics, scheduling and ordering is worked out by hand - Matiu called it genuinely hard to think through end to end.

What we'd build

  • Start from the Solar Plus design and generate the gear list off it.
  • Build the site pack around it: SSSP (site-specific safety plan), a labour plan (hours needed vs available, crew split), and travel/distance.
  • Check scheduling, flag when to bring in a contractor, and drop the install plan into installers' diaries.
  • Cross-match the gear list to inventory, order what's short, then raise supplier quote requests and purchase orders (Mel's extension) and record it in Fergus with delivery timing.
  • Prompt the team through the process - call the customer, and contact the network to complete the DG application - so nothing is missed and people get time back for the human parts.
We built a first working prototype live on the call - a gear-and-install-pack builder pulling from the Fireflies transcript. Rough, but it showed the whole idea in one place. "That's almost everything."Matiu, on today's call
4

Customer comms, on autopilot

The "inform & confirm with customer" step, done for you
High CX impactQuick to build

The pain

  • "Inform and confirm with customer" appears at scheduling, install prep and day one - it is starred on the map for a reason.
  • Today it is done by hand, so it is easy to miss and the experience varies job to job and region to region.

What we'd build

  • Triggered messages at each milestone - date confirmed, day one, handover - drawn from the job's status.
  • Every message logged back against the customer in HubSpot so the record stays complete.
On the map, "inform & confirm with customer" recurs at three separate stages, each flagged as a manual step.From your process map
5

Capture & qualify inbound leads

Every enquiry into HubSpot, sorted by who's a real fit
Growth leverHubSpot connects

The pain

  • Enquiries arrive by phone, email, website, contact form and in person, plus paid leads - all meant to land in HubSpot.
  • No quick way to sort serious from casual, or to flag the customers who are a genuine fit for the work you do best.

What we'd build

  • An assistant that captures enquiries from every channel into HubSpot and triages them - serious vs not, and against your ideal-customer parameters.
  • A drafted first response so no enquiry goes cold.
Richard floated an AI agent to answer and filter queries into "who's serious, who's not" - Matt and Matiu built on it around ideal-customer fit.Richard & Matt, on today's call
6

The Sales → Ops handover pack

Kill the re-keying at the riskiest junction
High painMedium build

The pain

  • At a confirmed sale, Sales passes client details, design, scope and budget to Ops largely by hand.
  • As Matt put it, the job is passed like a rugby ball - and when someone drops it, the context is missing. This junction is where jobs quietly slip before they reach site.

What we'd build

  • An assistant that assembles the handover pack from the confirmed sale and drops it into the job and site doc, ready for Ops.
  • A consistent checklist so nothing is handed over half-complete.
Matt's rugby-team analogy: everyone has a role, but if the ball is passed without the context, it gets dropped and passed back.Matt, on today's call
7

Documentation & archiving

Stop double-handling the site docs
Steady dragMedium build

The pain

  • Archiving to the job record, Site Docs and Smartsheets repeats at nearly every handover and at close-out.
  • Manual filing is slow and easy to skip when the team is busy.

What we'd build

  • Auto-file completed documents to the right place when a job changes status.
  • A tidy, consistent record without anyone remembering the step.
The word "archive" appears at four separate points on the flow - each one a manual filing job today.From your process map
+

On the radar, raised on the call

Worth capturing, ranked lower until the basics are in
Later

Instant online solar estimate

Mel's idea: a website tool where a customer enters an address, picks the best roof, and sees panels, output and savings - like other NZ providers. A customer-facing lead-gen mini-project.

Customer performance portal

Richard's idea: share monitoring data with customers as a point of difference. Depends on getting at the inverter / monitoring data.

Quality-check capture

Codify the Deye inverter-settings check Mel trains Kaz and Chea on, so quality stays consistent as you scale.

Content & social automation

Matiu's example from Richard's nephew: auto-edit and post video content. A neat win, but Matiu was clear it is not the priority.

How we prioritise

Pain against ease of build

We aim top-right first - most value for least effort. The dashboard is the biggest prize, though Fergus having no API pulls its effort right; the proposal win is already half-built by Richard; and the job-preparation planner is high value (Matiu's priority) but a bigger build because it touches gear, safety, labour, scheduling and inventory. This is our read - we move the dots together.

Pain / value →
1Dashboard
2Proposals
3Job-prep planner
4Customer comms
5Lead capture
6Handover pack
7Docs & archiving
+Future
Ease of build →
Foundation - source of truth Delivery spine Tools / quick wins Future / parked
Who connects to whom

The team, and how work flows

Today a job passes hand to hand, and details get re-keyed at each handover. A shared source of truth changes that. Toggle to see the shift.

Routes through a manual handover Feeds the shared view

From confirmed sale to close-out - and where automation plugs in

01

Confirmed sale

Sales

Sale closed; deposit and client details captured.

02

Handover to Ops

Sales → Ops

Client, design, scope and budget handed over - today by hand. The first place automation plugs in.

03

Site assessment

Electrician

Site checked, gear list confirmed, Site Doc created.

04

Install prep

Ops

Schedule, order gear, confirm with the customer.

05

Installation

Installer

Panels on, service runs, customer walkthrough.

06

Close-out

Ops

Photos, COC, ROI, final invoice, archive, handover to Sales.

The people

Ops

Scheduling, assessment, documentation, logistics & handover

The coordination point of the whole flow. Today Ops chases every other role for the latest status. With one shared view, chasing turns into oversight.

Sales

Client management & initial handover

Feeds client details, design, scope and budget into the job. The first feeder in the chain.

Electrician

Site assessment & installation

Feeds the site data and confirms the gear list. A key knowledge source on the ground.

Installer

Installation & customer handover

Feeds install status and the customer walkthrough / feedback back to the record.

Helen

Invoicing & deposits (Xero)

Feeds the finance side - deposits, invoicing, stock confirmation. The link to the cashflow view. (Spelling to confirm.)

Dahlia

Back-office - monitoring setup & DG / import-export

Confirmed on the call as a person, based in the Philippines. Handles monitoring setup, DG import/export and client folders - a key behind-the-scenes feeder into the record.

Where the work lives

The systems, and how they fit

Fergus is home for the job; the others feed into or read from the shared view. The single biggest prize is pulling them together.

The integration prize: one operational view

Bringing Xero, HubSpot and Smartsheets into a single live picture is what unlocks the national operating model. The catch is Fergus, which has no open API today - so we start with the systems that connect and treat opening up Fergus (or a workaround) as the piece to solve.

Core system · Home

Fergus

Job scheduling and the financial/job record - referenced at nearly every stage of the flow.

No open API today - the main gap for the dashboard
CRM

HubSpot

The CRM and first stop for every enquiry - phone, email, website, contact form, in person and paid leads all land here.

Feeds the pipeline view; home for lead capture & comms
Accounting

Xero

Invoicing, deposits and budgets against actuals - handled by Helen through the flow.

Feeds the cashflow view; a standard integration for us
Trackers

Smartsheets

Gear and site tracking, updated at assessment and archived at close-out.

Confirm: source of truth, or duplicated in Fergus?
Health & safety

Site Docs

The H&S tool the delivery team uses to record job scope, installation documentation and health & safety forms.

Auto-filed on status change
Compliance

DG / Meter update

Distributed-generation and meter updates - flagged repeatedly (in red) across your map.

Recurs across the flow; candidate to automate
Monitoring

Inverter monitoring (Deye)

Deye inverter data sits behind the install. Dahlia handles the monitoring setup and DG import/export.

Could feed a customer performance portal (future)
Scoping & proposals

Solar Plus

Your solar analysis, quoting and proposal system. Richard already pairs it with Claude by hand to write the customer narrative.

Connect to Claude for proposals & gear lists (priority 2)
Inventory · name to confirm

Inventory system

An inventory tool was named on the call but the name did not come through clearly - one to confirm.

Confirm the tool and whether it connects
What we still need to know

Open questions

A few answers sharpen the roadmap. We work through these together in the session.

The dashboard

?
Who is the dashboard for - exec, ops leads, regional managers?It changes the top-level design and which numbers lead.
?
What are the five numbers or decisions it must drive?Keeps version one focused on what actually matters.

The systems

?
Can Tū Mai Rā push Fergus to open an API - and what job data could we get via a workaround meanwhile?Confirmed on the call that Fergus has no open API; it is the main gap for the dashboard.
?
What is the inventory tool called, and does it connect?One was named on the call but the name did not come through clearly.
?
Are the Smartsheets trackers the source of truth, or duplicated in Fergus?Avoids building on a copy of the data.

Upstream - quoting & design

?
Does Solar Plus expose an API we can integrate, or is export/import the route?Confirmed as the scoping/proposal tool; the integration path is what we need (priority 2).
?
Can we load your component, inverter and battery lists so the planner remembers them?Richard's question - a stored catalogue makes the gear list accurate rather than generic.

People & data

?
What Deye monitoring data can we get at, and could it be shown to customers?Dahlia (confirmed a person, based in the Philippines) owns the monitoring setup - the data could power a customer portal later.
?
Which steps vary region to region today?The national model standardises exactly those.
?
How do we handle data sovereignty and where your data lives?Raised on the call - it matters to a Māori-owned business, and the connected-data approach lets you choose the model without your data scattering.
What we're banking on

Working assumptions

These shape the estimates. The first is the big lever - the rest we firm up as we get access.

Fergus has no open API - confirmed

This is the one that reshapes the dashboard: Fergus, where the jobs and history live, does not expose an API we can connect to today. The plan is to build the dashboard on the systems that do connect (Xero, HubSpot, Smartsheets), press Fergus to open an API, and use a workaround for job data in the meantime. Switching off Fergus is not recommended - the good alternative is expensive and you would lose the history.

Xero connects cleanly

We integrate Xero routinely, so the cashflow side of the dashboard is low risk.

High confidence

HubSpot is the CRM and first stop for leads

Confirmed on the call - every enquiry channel and paid leads land in HubSpot. A connection is well-trodden for us.

Confirmed

Smartsheets exposes its data

Smartsheet has an API; we need account access to confirm the fit.

To confirm

"Dahlia" is a person, not a system

Confirmed on the call - Dahlia is a Philippines-based team member handling monitoring setup and DG import/export, so she is a role in the flow, not an integration target.

Confirmed

Solar Plus can be integrated

Confirmed as the scoping, quoting and proposal system - Richard already feeds its output to Claude by hand. Whether it exposes an API for a proper integration (priority 2) is the thing to verify.

Must verify

Mel's map is the post-sale delivery flow

Confirmed from your process map. Quoting and design sit upstream of it.

Confirmed

Where to from here

  • We turn this session into the Part One roadmap - the funded 100 hours - with the job-preparation planner as the flagship first build, since it touches the most points and strips the most admin.
  • We start on the "brain" foundation: connect the tools that do connect (Xero, HubSpot, Smartsheets, Solar Plus) so your data is shared, then build agents on top.
  • We chase Fergus on opening an API - the main gap for the dashboard - and confirm a workaround for job data meanwhile.
  • We verify the integration paths: Solar Plus API, the inventory tool (name to confirm), and whether we can load your component and battery catalogue.
  • You decide how hands-on to be - done-for-you, or a foundation you build on with us on hand - and who holds the librarian role internally.
  • This guide stays a living document - updated from the call, and again as the plan firms up.