What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
The app has a feature I use a lot for quoting projects early on in an opportunity phase, which helps me to track profit margins very tightly and have a holistic understanding of where our profit margin is at any point within that quoting process. This enables me to remain competitive when I know we need to be at certain budget numbers.
Additionally, because we have separate people who do order entry versus myself more on the sales side, there is less of a chance for miscommunication when it goes from a sales opportunity to an actual order and gets handed off to other people. All of the information is embedded into each opportunity, and there is a lower likelihood that communication will be lost or a number transcribed incorrectly because it is all pushed from an opportunity into the order. After a project is complete, all of that information stays embedded into that database. I am seeing it reduce errors in communication for the duration of a project.
Also, at the beginning, we were looking to hire a project manager and had a huge workload that was fairly complex. Ultimately for us, we were able to put off that hire by about 6 months because of the efficiency and database created using Kinetech.
How did Kinetech Cloud perform from a project management standpoint?
Initially, we set up several GoToMeetings where Morgan [Partner and Director of Sales] ran us through the entire app. She was proficient and interactive in the training. There were very few things they didn’t have a solution for. They changed things as we needed them to change. Fortunately, Morgan lives locally, and she comes to our office if we have questions or new employees that need training.
What did you find most impressive about them?
They took a complicated process, which was prone to a lot of errors that cost us time and money, and made it user-friendly. The user interface became very simple, and once datasets were created within the app, it became repeatable simply and easily. The appeal for us was that it streamlined our process, reduced the number of errors, and saved us time and money when we placed an order. They were very responsive to our feedback to make the tool even better.
Are there any areas they could improve?
A more robust CRM tool would be helpful. At Corporate Concepts, we started as a furniture dealership and now have a completely dedicated DIRTT team. As a company, we recently launched a CRM tool, but the way we track sales cycles and opportunities in DIRTT is unique, and we have to adapt to the furniture mentality. If Kinetech had a more robust CRM capability, we would use it a lot more, both for personally tracking our own pipelines and also as a team understanding who is contacting who. There tends to be a lot of overlap between contacts within architecture firms, clients, general contractors, and brokers. We have not figured out a clean and easy way to communicate that with each other, and there is efficiency that could be gained from having that tool.
Also, we would like to coordinate with our backend accounting system. Within the app, we are able to issue purchase orders, but there is no backend accounting to it so we are still using another program for all accounting purposes. In the past, they said this doesn’t align with Kinetech’s purpose, but they have been talking about ways that the software could communicate with other software programs.
New functions within the system continue to provide additional insight. Kinetech Cloud’s team has completed supplementary research to provide the best solution for this project. Remaining responsive to database issues and questions and improving functionality, they’re reliable partners.