Design Mechanical Accelerated its Quoting and Documentation Processes with XOi, and Grew Revenue by 20%

The Challenge

Design Mechanical Inc.’s technicians used a mix of COINS ERP+, Fluix and Excel spreadsheets to document their work and generate customer quotes. This required a significant amount of manual data entry across multiple systems on their mobile tablets. Tasking was performed and documented on COINS Mobile Tech, which was embedded in the company’s service reports. Repair quotes were created manually in an Excel spreadsheet, while Strategic Account PMs were handled via PDF forms in Fluix. These processes mean that it could take days or weeks to generate quotes, and it was difficult to provide sufficient documentation of work, which sometimes led to invoicing disputes. The associated delays in quoting, closing sales, and billing made it harder for the company to sign new business and collect revenue. Design Mechanical needed a way to streamline quoting and proof-of-work processes, while making it easier for the company to demonstrate the value customers were getting from their maintenance programs. The company also wanted to automate check-in/check-out and safety reporting processes.

The Solution

With XOi, Design Mechanical found a solution that made it easy to create customized workflows and reports, while easily providing visual documentation of work performed and streamlining quoting processes. The company has seen a number of significant improvements since deploying XOi, including:

• Accelerated Repair Quoting and Approval: Design Mechanical replaced its Excel spreadsheets with quotes generated through NorthBoundary software, and populated with information from XOi and directly from the equipment data plate. The company uses recommended repair workflows and automatic notifications so that the team can build the quote quickly and get a fast response from the customer.
• Improved Safety Processes: Each workflow begins with a series of safety-related questions the technician must answer. Using conditional logic, if there are any safety concerns raised during this process the XOi solution automatically generates a Job Hazard analysis workflow and notifies the safety team.
• Reduced Billing/Invoicing Disputes: With thorough documentation, including images and videos that supplement tasking checklists and that can easily be shared with customers, the company has been able to significantly reduce the number of billing disputes once work is completed, and accelerated payments.
• Increased Sales Opportunities: In addition to increasing the amount of repair work performed, XOi has allowed Design Mechanical to track the equipment the technicians are working on to identify end-of-life opportunities. The company can then share those reports with the customers and assist them with capital planning and unit replacements.
• Improved Service for Strategic Accounts: Design Mechanical was able to create Strategic Account-specific workflows for check-in/check-out and to ensure completion of customer-specific checklists.
• Improved Visibility: The company can monitor technician’s use of XOi to use as a metric for performance evaluation.

The Results:

1. 24-Hour Quote-to-Approval Turnaround: Quotes are completed within a few hours, compared to days or weeks that would pass using Fluix and Excel spreadsheets. As a result, customer approvals typically arrive within 24 hours.
2. 20% Revenue Increase: With a faster quote/approval process, Design Mechanical has seen a 20% increase in revenue.
3. 80% Customer Approval Rating Increase: With an automated way to demonstrate value, document work, and create fast, accurate quotes, customer approval ratings have increased 80%.
4. 65% Reduction in Invoice Disputes: Improved documentation (including images and videos) helped cut billing disputes by 65%.
5. Faster Check-In/Check-Out: Design Mechanical was able to eliminate check-in/check-out call times, which ranged from 5 minutes to several hours depending on the scale of the job.

Implementation and Change Management:

When implementing XOi, Design Mechanical emphasized direct benefits to the technicians, who no longer have to toggle between applications and copy/paste information in order to generate a quote or document their work. Technician safety concerns are immediately addressed by the safety team because of the alerts built into XOi, which has improved working conditions and provided the technicians with a higher level of responsiveness. The technicians believe in the system because it saves time and streamlines administrative tasks. Once they were trained on the XOi solution and how it integrates with COINS, NorthBoundary, and other software tools, the technicians quickly saw the advantages and bought into the new system.

Conclusion:

Design Mechanical, Inc. has solved its quoting and documentation challenges using XOi. In the process, they not only streamlined workflows for their technicians and sales team, but also greatly accelerated quoting and customer approvals. Faster quotes and approvals have increased revenue, and provided bandwidth for business growth and expansion. Using XOi has improved customer satisfaction while expanding revenue opportunities, giving Design Mechanical the tools and positive reputation needed to achieve their business goals.