Custom Air: Contractor finds greater value by taking full advantage of WennSoft solution functionalities.
"There is more accountability among staff members. If we don’t have good information, we really have no idea how the company is doing. The information has to be plentiful and accurate."
Bev McCain
Office Manage, Custom Air
Custom Air (www.customairco.com) provides residential and commercial heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) service throughout central Ohio. Founded in 1976, Custom Air’s primary business is in heating and cooling for new custom homes, existing homes and all types of new commercial buildings. Custom Air also operates a service department 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
When the company first implemented WennSoft Job Cost and Service Management Series, along with Microsoft® Dynamics™ GP, in 1999, they had two goals in mind; replace an antiquated system and implement an integrated job cost and service management solution. In recent years, staff members learned that while the WennSoft solution had improved processes, they weren’t taking advantage of its full functionality.
That realization, combined with the efforts of their business partner Socius LLP, led to the beginning of a marked improvement for the company. Bev McCain first worked with Custom Air in 2005, when she assisted in the Microsoft Dynamics GP implementation as a member of Socius staff. Later, Custom Air hired McCain as office manager, leading to in-house updates to procedures that have produced improved results for a company that tracks 175-200 open jobs at a time.
Updated Processes
“The Custom Air staff had been teaching themselves the WennSoft solution on their own, which meant customer names were not entered the same way and job descriptions were different from job to job,” McCain said.
A new job might be opened by any of 10 Custom Air employees. The first improvement was realized when data was entered into the system the same way by more and more staffers – providing more consistency in solution usage – along with a more complete implementation of Purchase Order Processing.
“Instead of using Purchase Order Processing as a glorified report writer, there is now full functionality,” McCain said. “For example, a job might have cancelled an order for a $500 part. But if the vendor sent it along anyway, Custom Air might take delivery and the job became a negative. Today, those parts are being tracked more consistently.”
Custom Air is now closing months out not just more quickly, but more accurately. “The company clearly was sometimes over budget because of duplicate invoices,” McCain said. “We were occasionally making a payment twice because a supplier would send another invoice after 30 days and we were not tracking payment information in one place.”
Staff is becoming accustomed to accessing more information from jobs, though challenges will always remain in a business as diverse as Custom Air. For example, a residential job may take one day while a commercial job may be open up to six months.
McCain has also implemented regular staff training. “The retail division meets weekly to review open jobs and go over those ready to be closed,” she said. “We are getting more people involved and specifically assigning who is responsible for what role. There is more accountability among staff members. I try to impress on staff that if we don’t have good information, we really have no idea how the company is doing. The information has to be plentiful and accurate.”
Inventory Improvements
Another area of improvement is cataloging warehouse inventory. “Most material we buy is for a specific job, but what we buy in quantity is stocked in our warehouse” McCain said. “In 2008, each service van will be tracked as a warehouse site. The inventory in a service truck will be updated and tracked just as we do on a jobsite.”
The two-fold benefit for Custom Air is that technicians will no longer spend time away from a job to purchase specific parts and back office staff will make better buying decisions knowing what is needed to resupply stocked materials.
“The strength of the people we have in the field is for them to be in the field,” McCain said. “We have come a long way in terms of the information gathered and using it to improve our company, but there is more we can do.”
How can Custom Air continue to find improvement with their WennSoft solution? Accuracy. “We strive to improve our accuracy,” McCain said. “What material and equipment is discharged to the job? That can be answered by making sure we keep updated stock inventory when jobs have an accurate list of everything that was used.
“Being accurate at the start of job helps us know if we are pricing too high or if we can lower the price on a bid and still make a profit from the job.”
Custom Air has also benefitted by McCain’s attendance at the WennSoft customer conference, Synergy.
“I will be attending my third Synergy event in 2008,” McCain said. “I listen to how other people are using the WennSoft solution and get ideas that we can implement. You learn from the people who use it day in and day out. Those are the folks I need to communicate with.”