Gavant Software, Inc.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Stone Management is a warehousing distribution business in upstate New York. We warehouse products for big companies like Pepsi and Owens Corning, who need flexible space options. In their manufacturing, if they outgrow their space, they can utilize ours on an as-needed basis. My role is as Vice President.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Gavant Software?

We have had a proprietary system to manage our inventory and our customer billing for the majority of our existence. We decided to take a look at that. Our programmer had been with us for about ten years and was a one-man show, and he decided that he basically was burned out from the project. We decided to take advantage of this situation to decide if we wanted to continue doing this in-house if we wanted to buy a canned system, write a new system, or go with a company instead.

We looked at all of the options and actually purchased a canned software that I couldn’t actually go through and execute using. We left a lot of money on the table but ultimately walked away from it because it just wasn’t going to fit for the flexibility that my customers needed. After that experience, I decided that we definitely did want to write our own but that I didn’t want to do the one-man show again. Gavant came on our radar as a business that was relatively local to us and that was large enough to have multiple programmers know our business, know us, and know the software that we’re going to write. The experience from the partnership really just blossomed from there.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We needed to have an inventory management system that would also handle our billing. We have 80 different customers with 80 different contract models, 80 different billing structures, and complex models that handle things for straight monthly billing, pallet-in, pallet-out, and complicated pick-pack billing where you’re billing based on man hours or the time invested into doing a project. Some of it is based on a full month of storage, or a half month on storage. We offer a lot of flexibility to meet the needs of our customers.

We had multiple users. We were growing locations. We needed to be able to take the software with us as we grew, so we hashed out if we wanted a cloud environment or if we wanted to have it on our servers. We ended up doing a hybrid of both, and it worked out very successfully for us. From a layman’s term, I asked them to not write it in something that was going to be outdated in a year. One of the aspects of our business is that we integrate it and are able to do EDI [electronic data interchange] capabilities with large companies. I have not had an issue with having other companies integrate with the software or the potential to integrate with it.

How did you come to work with Gavant Software?

They found me. It happened to be at just the perfect time because I was in the middle of that search, and their salesperson just happened to have literally walked in our door. That’s how we ended up getting connected. It couldn’t have been at a better time.

One of the things I really liked was that they had about 15 programmers at the time with various roles within the company. I really liked that idea, that concept of not just having one or two people but that it was a legitimate business. They came with lots of references, and I liked that a lot. The other piece I really liked was that the owner, Jon [Kloptosky], just seemed to take a hands-on approach with the project. They considered our project to be a large undertaking. I know he’s had maybe larger projects revenue-wise, but we were a complicated undertaking. He was very hands on through the project but didn’t just own it either where I just felt like he was the only one that knew it.

How much have you invested with Gavant Software?

This is confidential.

What is the status of this engagement?

We are working with them. We started about five years ago in 2012.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

I couldn’t have asked for a better outcome. My users love it. We’ve got 12 users on the software. We have over 125 customers who use our customer portal and love it. It’s a similar user interface to what my customer service rep and billing people use. It’s streamlined in all of the various portals that we have.

We were able to cut our billing process in half. It used to take us 3 days to process our billing from 80-something different customers. In the new billing portal that we created in our system, we are down to half a day, maybe a full day if it absolutely has to be. My billing person loves it. The reporting that the billing generates is fantastic. 

We also saw an improvement in our shipment accuracy. We made the system have certain defaults. I wanted to eliminate the need for my customer service reps to have to remember the details of 80 different customers. We were able to build in certain wizards that you could set up on the customer side, so we saw an increase in our shipment accuracy. We had a 99.7% physical inventory accuracy in a very large physical that we just did, which yes, has to do with the guys on the floor doing the right thing, but the system also helps us to maintain that accuracy. We shaved 50 hours off of our physical inventory process by using the new physical inventory module that the system has. It went from 250 hours to about 200 hours.

How did Gavant Software perform from a project management standpoint?

From the start, we developed a scope of work together. One of the approaches I liked is that they didn’t really look at what we had existing. They looked at what I wanted for the long haul, so I didn’t feel like we were spring-boarding off of something that was old and already outdated. He said, “I don’t even want to see what you currently have right now. Just tell me what you want and the functionality that you need for your business to grow, and then we’ll develop something around that.” I appreciated that perspective.

They set up a portal for me to do my own testing. I’m a pretty hands-on tester, as the system thinks the way I think and it does what I know that my business needs it to do. They never once made me feel like I was overstepping my bounds or being too pushy by asking for us to perfect it just that little bit more. I would say I’m probably more of a high maintenance customer, and yet they made me feel like a partner from start to finish. Jon and I work incredibly well together. I feel like he got a sense of my style because I wanted the system to look good as well. I wanted it to be very user-friendly. I wanted it to be intuitive, and I would say that we used that word, "intuitive," throughout the production and build of the software.

Jon stepped aside after the scope of work was developed and handed me over to his very capable programmers and the architect that does everything from the color and the styling. That person and I worked closely to develop the right hue that we wanted for the colors, the font sizes, and the screen fit and all of that. Then, there was another person that did the programming and they would show me each screen template. They were really good about doing large chunks of the project and then pulling me into it. Then I wouldn’t see them for a couple weeks, and then they’d circle back and say, “Okay, we finished this chunky section. Take a look. Go ahead.” I could go into the test environment and play with it and look at it before we had the finished product.

What did you find most impressive about Gavant Software?

Partnership. I would say they do that very well.

Are there any areas Gavant Software could improve?

This is minor, and I know that they are working on it, but the ticketing system that they used, in the beginning, was somewhat flawed, and we ditched it relatively quickly. We just compensated with doing it in a more personal point-to-point way versus in a ticketing system.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We're a consulting firm for commercial janitorial services. We work with schools, universities, high-tech industry clean rooms, and hospitals to develop high-performance cleaning systems.

I'm a Senior Consultant.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Gavant Software?

Gavant worked with us to create software to assist us with our consulting practice. One of the things that we were really looking to support is a system called Team Cleaning. We hold a series of seminars throughout the year, working with people on this system, which basically utilizes team specialists for the delivery of cleaning services throughout different environments. One of the things that we heard for years as we were presenting these seminars was that there needed to be software to make the implementation and operation simpler. After hearing that for many years, we decided to pursue the idea and started looking at what could be done to automate the process or to streamline it.

There are a lot of tools out there on the market that people were using. There were offerings that could capture square footage. You could use Excel to put job cards together to perform calculations, but nothing was really tying that into a unified package. We went to Gavant with an idea and a model to unify all those different pieces and get it into something that people could start using for capturing information about the facility, square footage, and job requirements. The result needed to be an actual job card that told a custodian or a janitor what needed to be done on a daily basis, including what to perform, how long they had to do it, where they should be at a given time. Basically, a route card for them to follow to keep them on task and on time.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

One of the biggest things is that people don't want to take the time to become familiar with AutoCAD and things like that. They want to be able to capture information about a facility quickly and easily with a minimal learning curve. For our purposes, that's basically cleanable square footage. We need to know if an area is an office, a corridor,or a breakroom, what kind of floor surface it has and then tie that information into what we want to do in that room. Does it need to be mopped daily, dust mopped daily, do the tables need to be disinfected, is it a classroom where each student desk needs to be disinfected, etc.? We need to tie that information together.

When people went to implement Team Cleaning, things either didn't get done, were approximated, or people would be forced to actually go out and do things like count ceiling tiles, count floor tiles, etc to get information. They might have to go from room to room and measure with a wheel to get that information because people just weren't really ready to jump into CAD. We don't always have access to CAD files, either. Most of the time what we get access to are JPEG, PNG, or PDFs created from those CAD files or even simply scanned in. What Gavant did is they came up with a way that people could upload their JPEG, PNG, or PDF, set the scale within that file, and then visually capture space very quickly and log that into a nice database. So that people could very quickly capture, maintain, and access that facility information and tie it into the cleaning specifications with correct production rates for the tasks that need to be performed.

It makes the capture visual, it makes it a lot quicker, and it also makes it a lot easier for people to update and maintain. If a room changes or somebody wants to change a task or frequency, it's immediately reflected into the duties assigned to the individual. It's a Cloud application, so it is web-accessible, but at this point, there is no mobile component.

How did you come to work with Gavant Software?

We really started just looking on the web, doing some browsing and also just checking locally with some people. In one of the cities around here, Troy, where Gavant's located, there's actually a push to generate small businesses and Gavant was part of that area. We heard about them eventually through word of mouth.

We met with Jon [Kloptosky, President], and as soon as we met with Jon, we liked his take on what we were presenting. He seemed very interested where a lot of other companies thought it was just "cleaning." They didn't see the challenges that were involved and the complexity of what we were actually looking to do. Jon immediately did. He started to look a little bit deeper. He started to look at what type of information we were looking to capture, and the types of organizations we were looking to help and what was involved in making it usable for our clients.

How much have you invested with Gavant Software?

We're probably around $400,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

It's probably been five or more years now that we've been involved with Gavant [and work is ongoing].

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

A building service contractor utilizes our software a great deal, and what they've been able to do with it is really streamline not just staff routing but also the bidding and estimating side. They've actually had a lot of success in being able to refine bids down to a more detailed level in a much quicker timeframe than what they were able to do in the past. It's hard to put an exact figure on this, but I've been in the industry about 30 years and what I can tell you is for years the industry used a lot of percentages. If you measured a building and you said it was X number square feet, you would take off a percentage for things like walls or things that weren't going to be cleaned within that building.

What the software's done on the estimating side is it has allowed them to be very precise, to actually go in and capture the interior of areas so the cleanable square footage is exact. Service delivery time is no longer just a "rough" estimate. That has really refined their bidding process and has done a couple of things for our clients. One, it's actually helped to make their estimates and their bids a lot more accurate and more competitive. Also, at times, when the bids have been higher or outside of what people have expected or what others have turned in, they've had the information that other organizations haven't to justify the cost, which put them on a totally different level than other organizations.

What did you find most impressive about Gavant Software?

If I had to say the one thing that's really stuck, and I alluded to this in the beginning, is that they actually embrace the project. Because of it being the cleaning industry and how people view that, when we reached out to other people, they didn't look at the value that this was going to bring and how big the cleaning industry actually is. Gavant embraced it from the beginning. They also brought a lot of insight, and took the time to really listen to and understand our goals. I think that's really been key to the relationship.

They've taken the time to really understand what it is needed at each stage of development. In a lot of cases, they don't just answer questions - they seek to understand what we want to accomplish so they can contribute. In a lot of cases, they even take us in a slightly different direction to enable more features and enhancements that we hadn't even really considered. They've done a lot to really delve deeper into not just giving us what we're asking for, but giving us what we need.

Are there any areas Gavant Software could improve?

You always wish that things could happen faster. That's probably the only thing that I would say, but that's the same for anything you do. You always wish you could get it the next day, but that's probably the only thing.