East Coast Facilities Plows Forward with Custom ERP Solution
Product Development
The Challenge
When you run a massive commercial facilities maintenance business, off-the-shelf ERP solutions often don’t meet your needs.
Our client runs a full-service facility maintenance company that provides landscaping, snow removal, painting, and many other similar services. Their customers include immense logistic parks, universities, hospitals, office parks, retail centers, commercial real estate portfolios, and residential communities.
On a daily basis, they juggle hundreds of site workers performing a wide variety of services for dozens of major organizations. Some services, such as ice mitigation, have a critical impact on the operation of their clients’ businesses. Imagine owning a shipping company whose trucks couldn’t get out of the parking lot on a winter day.
Our client struggled with a commercial CRM system that didn’t meet their complex needs. They could manage leads and opportunities, but they relied on complicated Excel spreadsheets to create accurate estimates. It was far from an ideal solution.
The company leadership had a clear vision of a custom ERP software application for managing leads, contacts, accounts, locations, opportunities, and estimates.
Once those estimates became contracts, they envisioned the solution tracking and managing the equipment, employees, worksites, supplies, and services needed to perform the work on an ongoing or as-needed basis.
For example, if an area received four inches of snow, they needed to quickly and accurately estimate the workforce, equipment, and supplies necessary to service all customers in that area.
Our client’s goal was threefold: Reduce their commercial CRM license fees, improve efficiencies of both Sales and Services, and sell the resulting solution to other facilities maintenance companies.
For this custom ERP software development project, the client hired Taazaa.
The Design
Working closely with the client, the Taazaa team designed a solution that could be built incrementally.
The design consists of two connected applications: one for the sales team and the other for site workers.
We started on the sales application first. Although it will ultimately cover all services, the client wanted to complete the snow and ice removal service first.
We used Angular to create an intuitive front-end that makes the complex, multi-function application easy to understand and use. For the back-end and database functions, we used .Net Core and MongoDB.
A key feature is the universal chat function, which allows in-house users to add comments and replies to specific customer records in real-time. The chats are then preserved as part of the customer record, enabling internal communication about each customer’s unique needs.
The solution also includes technologies to generate reports in both PDF and Excel formats and send email notifications directly from the system.
Our cohesive team works closely with the client to ensure the product design aligns with their vision.
The Solution
At present, the custom ERP solution covers all aspects of the snow and ice mitigation services the client provides. The highly complex application involves multiple menus and sub-menus, multiple roles per menu, and multiple permissions per role.
The estimation module alone includes hundreds of variables involved in providing snow and ice services. Despite this complexity, the application delivers speedy and reliable performance. Users find the intuitive interface very easy to use.
Users can be assigned one of 18 different roles. Each role has multiple permissions that can be added or taken away from each user to customize that user’s role.
The application enables the sales team to track a lead throughout the entire sales funnel. Sales reps can define a contact or customer as a Lead, a Contact, an Opportunity, an Account, a Location, or an Estimate. Each record can easily be converted as the customer moves through the sales funnel. In other words, it’s easy to turn a Lead into an Account, and so on.
Each Opportunity can have multiple estimates, and pricing is calculated within the application from the various services menus.
Pricing is granular down to the task level. For example, the application interfaces with a weather service, so the system knows the amount and type of accumulation for a customer’s area. Pricing can be determined for a wintry mix, 1-3 inches of snow, and so on, based on the square footage of the customer’s property.
An aerial image of the property can be attached to the customer’s record, so site workers know what specific areas need priority or special treatment. Notes in the record also convey this information.
Internal chat features facilitate team communication and get stored as part of a customer’s record. The status of site workers can be tracked, as well, so the client knows who is on standby, who has been contacted, who confirmed that they are on-site, and more. Their on-site hours are tracked, too.
With the new application, the client can now track and manage everything related to their snow and ice removal services in one system.
From this application, the Taazaa team will build a complete system that encompasses all aspects of the client’s facility maintenance services.
Design System
More Success Stories
Product Development, Support, Digital Marketing
