Bespoke Booking System Case Study
How Hawkes Walks Tripled Turnover and Got Its Weekends Back
Hawkes Walks was already an established dog walking business, but managing bookings manually was taking over its owner’s weekends and making further growth increasingly difficult.
Probeck developed a bespoke booking and management system that allows customers to book their own walks, automates recurring bookings and invoicing, and gives staff the information they need to manage their schedules.
Within approximately 18 months, Hawkes Walks had tripled its turnover, staff and customer base. More importantly, owner Tracy had her weekends back and was able to step away from carrying out walks herself to focus on managing and developing the business.
- 3x
- Turnover
- 3x
- Staff
- 3x
- Customer base
- Weekends back
- Less time spent administering bookings
The outcome
The Result
The impact went considerably further than simply making bookings easier.
Within approximately 18 months, Hawkes Walks had tripled its turnover, staff and customer base. The system gave the business the infrastructure needed to handle that growth without creating the same increase in administration behind the scenes.
For Tracy, one of the biggest changes was time.
Before the system was introduced, weekends were regularly spent organising the following week’s walks and communicating with customers. That administration has largely been removed from her workload.
She has since been able to step away from carrying out the walks herself and concentrate on managing her growing team and developing the business.
The additional time has also allowed Tracy to invest in her own professional development. Within the first two years of the system being live, she completed three diplomas and gained accreditation with recognised governing bodies within her industry.
The result is not simply a business processing bookings faster. Hawkes Walks has been able to grow while giving its owner more time to work on the business rather than constantly working in it.
Customer testimonial
Hear From Tracy
The best explanation of the difference the system has made comes from Tracy herself.
Hear Tracy describe the effect the booking system has had on Hawkes Walks and on her own working week.
The Challenge
Seven Days a Week Wasn’t Sustainable
Hawkes Walks had been established for more than a decade before Probeck became involved.
The business was successful, but its administrative processes had not grown with it.
Customers relied heavily on manual communication to arrange walks, with Tracy spending significant amounts of time each week coordinating bookings and staff availability. Weekends were regularly used to organise the following week’s walks.
Invoicing created another substantial administrative task at the end of each month.
The problem was therefore not a lack of customers. It was that the processes behind the business were consuming Tracy’s time and placing a practical limit on how easily Hawkes Walks could continue to grow. Adding more customers using the same processes would also mean adding more administration.
Hawkes Walks needed a system designed around the way the business actually operated rather than forcing the business to change its processes to fit an off-the-shelf booking system.
The Solution
A Booking System Built Around Hawkes Walks
After discussing how Hawkes Walks operated and where Tracy was losing the most time, Probeck developed a bespoke web-based booking and management application specifically around the business.
The customer-facing system allows customers to log into their own account and book walks themselves, including setting up recurring walks.
Behind the scenes, the application provides the tools needed to manage customers, bookings and staff without relying on the previous manual processes.
Automation with a practical purpose
Automation was not introduced simply for the sake of automation. The objective was to remove repetitive administration while retaining the flexibility Hawkes Walks needed to operate its service.
Automated invoicing is a good example. Rather than spending significant time manually preparing invoices at the end of each month, the system can generate and send them based on the bookings recorded within the application.
This project brought together online booking, a secure bespoke application and focused business process automation.
Built to keep working
Growth Without Adding the Same Amount of Admin
The real test of a business system is not simply whether it works today. It is whether it continues to work as the business grows.
As Hawkes Walks grew, the booking platform grew with it. Approximately three times as many customers and staff could be managed without requiring Tracy to return to spending her weekends organising bookings.
This is an important distinction between simply putting a booking form on a website and developing a system around the operational requirements of a business. The wider app development service explains how Probeck approaches connected customer and staff workflows.
Best Business Enabler Finalist 2026
National Award Recognition
The impact of the Hawkes Walks project has also received wider recognition, with the work contributing to Probeck being named a Best Business Enabler Finalist 2026 in a national business award.
For us, the strongest part of the story remains the measurable difference the system has made to a real business: supporting growth while giving its owner back time that had previously been consumed by administration.
Look at the process first
Spending Too Much Time Running Your Processes Manually?
Hawkes Walks didn’t need another piece of software. It needed to remove the repetitive administration that was taking up time and restricting how easily the business could grow.
If bookings, spreadsheets, invoicing, customer administration or other repetitive processes are consuming too much of your working week, Probeck can look at whether a bespoke application or automation could simplify them.