Stanley Elevator
"The ability to modify the software in-house has net yielded about 104 days a year for one person and that is a pretty big net gain. This has allowed us to save large amounts of time with our back office staff."
Raymond Peeples
Logistics and IT Manager, Stanley Elevator
Stanley Elevator Company, Inc. is a family owned business that was founded in 1951 by Irving M Stanley. Stanley Elevator provides new elevator installation, modernization, service and repair to hospitals, colleges, hotels, manufactures and other businesses. With more than 130 employees and 120 ongoing construction projects, Stanley Elevator is one of New England’s largest independent elevator companies.
In 2003, the executive team at Stanley Elevator realized they needed to make a systems change. Their financials were being stored in an unsupported older system and all other project and service information was stored in several separate databases managed by several different employees. They needed to pull all of their data together on one platform.
“There was no way to get a handle on what was going on across the board,” said Raymond Peeples, Logistics and IT Manager for Stanley Elevator. “We needed to get things unified.”
“We had no way to report what was going on within all areas of the company,” added Peeples. “When we needed reports we had to have a programmer come in and it was very expensive.”
After looking at several software vendors, Stanley decided to implement WennSoft Job Cost, Service Management Series and TimeTrack along with Microsoft Dynamics™ GP (Great Plains). WennSoft develops and supports software for project-oriented, field service and equipment management industries — a focus that allows for a deep understanding of the challenges faced by companies like Stanley. All of the WennSoft products integrate and enhance Microsoft Dynamics™ GP.
The integration between the operations side of the business and Dynamics GP Financials was one of the main reasons Stanley Elevator chose WennSoft. The old system could not deliver the information that was needed.
“We told the executives, if it was a Microsoft product it would be easy to support,” explained Peeples. “We already use many Microsoft products so everything would tie in together and with the employees already being familiar with Windows applications, it would make for a smoother transition.”
Now, Stanley uses the WennSoft solution to manage all aspects of their business — accounting, service, new construction, parts inventory and dispatching. Since going live on the new solution in 2005 they have seen improvements in several areas.
“Now when employees need information they can log into one program that is unified across all the desktops and get to the information they need,” said Peeples. “It has brought a whole new meaning to information at your fingertips.”
With over 4,000 maintenance visits a month, the scalability and flexibility of the solution is one of the biggest benefits for Stanley, especially when managing maintenance tasks.
To help manage the large amount of time tickets, Stanley incorporated barcodes on all tickets and invoices. Each barcode contains the customer details — customer number and name, location, equipment ID and service call ID — from the WennSoft database.
When the maintenance tickets come back in, they are scanned into EasyFile, a Scanpoint-USA document system and stored as a PDF. Using the Scanpoint EasyIndex program, an auto recognition process reads the barcode and places the information in the SQL database. A simple SQL job matches the Service Call ID with the appropriate open service ticket and updates the WennSoft Service Management database marking the call and the tasks complete.
Once per week a SQL job looks for completed Maintenance Contract Calls, closes them based on specific criteria, and posts the cost. All of the original time tickets are stored in the Easyfile database as PDFs and are available at any time. A custom button added to the WennSoft service call window brings back any documents stored for that service call ID.
“To close 4,000 plus maintenance calls took one person two days, with the Scanpoint system and the flexibility of the WennSoft solution it now takes a couple minutes.”
Stanley puts the same barcode on their service invoices — allowing them to attach other documents associated with that job. Invoices and other documents can be scanned and automatically attached to the customer record in the WennSoft database.
“The ability to modify the software in-house for that one job has net yielded about 104 days a year for one person and that is a pretty big net gain,” said Peeples. “This has allowed us to save large amounts of time with our back office staff.”
Stanley is also looking forward to the assistance their WennSoft solution can provide in restructuring their parts inventory. They plan to add barcodes to their parts to improve accuracy and speed up transactions.
Another benefit Stanley has experienced is the level of detail available for every new installation or modernization job.
“We didn’t track hardly any operational data in comparison to what we do today,” said Peeples. “Our old system was very simple and didn’t allow us to track much information, it was mostly financial. We now have a lot more detail for those trying to get the job done.”
The increased job detail had improved communication across the organization, especially between the financial department and the company executives.
“Information that is being communicated to the president and vice president has greatly improved,” added Peeples. “In the old system they couldn’t look at a job and know whether the labor and materials were on budget or not. Now I can walk past their offices and see them clicking through the job status window in WennSoft.”
“WennSoft has become a business management tool that we can’t do without,” said Peeples.
Stanley also has been very pleased with the support and services WennSoft offer.
“The WennSoft consultants have been invaluable,” said Peeples. “We have a strong relationship with WennSoft and the extra attention they provide really impacted the success of our implementation.”
In addition to utilizing WennSoft’s training, consulting and support services, Stanley also works closely with their WennSoft Sales and Services Partner, Navint Consulting.
“We have a great relationship with Navint Consulting, they are terrific,” said Peeples. “The best part about Navint is that they bring consultants to the table that are helpful and knowledgeable from the technical and financial side.”
With more than 800 clients, and a focus on small, midsize and fortune 1000 companies, Navint Consulting has a strong presence in New York, New Jersey, New England, Southern California, and is growing quickly in other areas of the country. Navint has experience in the manufacturing, distribution, public sector, media, retail, financial services, life sciences/healthcare and professional services verticals.
“I believe we have partnered with the right people for our continued success. “We would recommend WennSoft, Navint and Scanpoint to anyone,” added Peeples.