How B10 Rebuilt Catalyst’s Reactive Maintenance System
6th May 2026
How better operational systems help businesses scale with more control
Many businesses in Northern Ireland are not held back by a lack of effort. They are held back by the systems behind the work.
As organisations grow, internal processes often become more complex. Requests come through different routes. Teams rely on email, calls, spreadsheets, messages and memory. Contractors or external suppliers need chased. Customers, tenants or internal users ask for updates. Managers need visibility, but the information is spread across too many places.
At first, this can feel manageable. The team knows the work. People step in. Problems are solved manually. However, as volume increases, the limits of that model become clear.
b10 recently worked with Catalyst to rebuild its reactive maintenance workflow. The project focused on turning a fragmented, manual process into a centralised and automated operating system for maintenance requests.
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Before the rebuild, reactive maintenance requests could be raised through multiple routes. Contractor communication was handled manually. Ticket progress was not visible enough in one controlled place. Tenant updates depended heavily on manual communication. The process relied too much on staff intervention to keep work moving.
b10 redesigned the workflow around a single controlled entry point, a central monday.com Service operational board, Make automation, WhatsApp contractor communication through 360dialog, and Microsoft 365. The new system captures tickets through a structured form, allows the facilities team to assign ownership and priority, automatically notifies contractors, captures contractor responses, updates ticket status and supports tenant communication.
The value is practical. It reduces manual administration. It improves visibility. It creates clearer ownership. It supports SLA tracking. It reduces the risk of issues being missed or delayed because information is sitting in the wrong channel.
This kind of work matters beyond facilities management. Many businesses have similar workflow challenges in sales, customer onboarding, service delivery, support, finance, operations and account management. The tools may already exist, but the process is often not joined up.
That is where productivity is lost. People spend time chasing updates instead of managing outcomes. Managers make decisions without a full view. Customers experience delays or uncertainty. Growth creates more manual work instead of more operating control.
For SMEs and scaling organisations, this is a competitiveness issue. Productivity is not improved only by asking teams to work harder. It improves when the business removes unnecessary handoffs, standardises repeated work, gives staff better visibility and reduces the number of places where information can be lost. The most efficient organisations are often not the ones with the most software. They are the ones where the software, process and people work together through a clear operating model.
That is why projects like this matter. They help a business move from informal coordination to structured execution. They also make future improvement easier because the organisation starts collecting cleaner operational data. Once ticket status, response points, completion evidence and follow-up work are held in one workflow, leaders can see where delays happen and where further improvement is needed.
The lesson from the Catalyst project is that automation works best when it follows good process design. A business should not automate a broken workflow. It should first understand how work enters the system, who owns it, what decisions need to happen, what communication can be standardised, where external parties need to respond, and what reporting is needed.
Only then does automation create meaningful improvement.
For local businesses, this is becoming increasingly important. Competitiveness is not only about winning more work. It is also about handling work more efficiently once it arrives. Businesses that want to scale need operational systems that reduce unnecessary administration, improve visibility and support better customer experience.
b10 describes this as part of Commercial Transformation: connecting the systems, workflows and processes behind growth so organisations can operate with more control from first contact through to delivery, retention and recurring revenue.
The Catalyst project is one example of that principle in action. It shows that practical workflow redesign can create immediate operational clarity while also building a foundation for future improvements such as preventative maintenance, contractor performance tracking and better operational reporting.
For any organisation still relying heavily on manual chasing, the question is simple:
could your current workflow handle twice the volume without twice the admin?
If not, the system behind the work may need rebuilt.
