Raymond Building Supply

Less Typing, More Bids

Results came quickly. Raymond found itself processing quotes more quickly and losing documents less often. The fact that sales reps were typing project information into a system rather than filling out a paper routing sheet meant that the information could be repurposed in myriad ways, eliminating the need for others to retype it.

Significantly, department managers scanning the inbox started finding projects they could bid on, thus giving Raymond additional opportunities to get work. For instance, there were times in the past in which Raymond might help several different contractors bid on the same project but fail to give one of those contractors a quote on a particular product–wood windows, for instance. That might have occurred because the window estimator got all but that particular contractor’s set of plans. Since he already had done the same estimate on the same project for the other contractors, it would be no problem to write that additional estimate–and possibly win extra business for Raymond if that other contractor ended up with the job.

In 2009, Raymond began implementing the bisTrack point-of-sale program from Progressive Solutions of Vancouver, British Columbia. The bisTrack system includes the ability to create dashboards to track company performance on various measures, as well as “smart views” to drill down into certain areas and “smart objects” that let users create their own ways to examine and manage data. Loweke began creating smart objects for the EDOCS process that have improved the workflow and reduced the burden on the e-mail system.

The transformation required as much personal as electronic change. Loweke, who spent most of her 35-year LBM career in the truss business, says she also had come to be dependent on paper goods. During her first few times reading plans on a screen, “my palms would literally itch from not having something in front of me,” she recalls.

Thus she knew from experience when millwork estimators would talk about how dependent they were on using a measuring wheel. And she also knew what it would take to get them to change.

“We use 36-inch flat-panel TV screens to read the plans,” she says. “I said to them, ‘If you try this, I’ll make sure you’ll be one of the first guys to get the TV. What guy would turn that down? And two weeks later, they would come sheepishly into my office and say ‘I think this is going to work maybe better even than the wheel.’ You’ve got to find their pain points.”

Likewise, sales reps liked the fact that they didn’t have to use up daylight hours to enter information into the system. “They appreciate it when you can give them more windshield time,” Loweke says.

Feeling Social Pressures

That’s not to say everyone has jumped on board with equal enthusiasm–or equal ability to do their chores. But Loweke says having a transparent system that emphasizes sharing also brings with it a self-enforcement benefit. A sales rep no longer can cut out of the action a department he doesn’t like, because he knows that department’s manager can go into the system and see what projects the sales rep has entered.

Enlightened self-interest also figures in when a sales rep who doesn’t feel much like filling out forms has to enter the initial information.

“I tell them, ‘When you put the info in there, this is the same info the credit department is going to use, what the guys at the counter are going to use.

It would behoove you to put all this information in correctly, or otherwise they’ll be calling you,'” Loweke says.

Notably, while many of the functions that Raymond uses for EDOCS were created in-house, the company doesn’t have a programmer. Loweke, who rates herself “on the high end of a power user–not a coder,” did much of the work.

Graham Rigby, a bisTrack product manager who helped oversee Progressive Solutions’ software installation, says that what Raymond did can be done by just about any LBM operation that’s having trouble tracking its documents. But what makes Raymond special, he says, is that Loweke looked at the company’s software “not just as replacement of legacy systems, but as a new set of tools.” And with those tools, Raymond now does a better job than ever before of keeping track of its business.

Paper Cuts

Here’s how the Candy Loweke-led EDOCS system flows at Raymond Building Supply:

1. A sales rep seeking to give an estimate to a customer gets the plans from the customer.
2. The sales rep fills out an electronic routing form with information about the project and then files it. The system in turn gives the rep a job number.
3. If the sales rep received a paper version of the plans, he puts the job number on it and drops it off in the EDOCS “inbox” for scanning into PDF format. If he gets the document in electronic format, he forwards it to the EDOCS inbox with the job number.
4. An EDOCS processor checks the inbox and sees the new routing form. The processor reviews the routing form and converts the plans into a PDF format.
5. The PDF is stored in the EDOCS file-sharing system and the routing form status is updated to “Drawings Processed.”
6. The system alerts the lead estimator in each department regarding the new estimating opportunity. The alerts include a link to the routing form and to the folder where the PDF of the plans can be found. The system also creates an entry in another library called Quote Tracker.
7. The lead estimator reviews the routing form info and drawings, then uses a dropdown box to assign the project to a particular estimator.
8. The assigned estimator sees the assignment on his to-do list, does the estimate, and updates Quote Tracker. Doing so removes the project from his to-do list.
9. Now that the estimate is complete, the sales rep needs to take the estimate to the customer. A series of automated e-mails will keep reminding the sales rep to send the estimate to the customer. They will continue until the sales rep updates the status to either “accepted” or “rejected.” If the bid is accepted, it is converted to an order. If it’s rejected, the sales rep is prompted to select the reason for the rejection (competition, pricing etc.). And if he doesn’t provide a reason, he’ll keep getting e-mail nags until he does.