Introduction
Find out how Capitan Appliance was able to reduce the amount of time they were spending on administrative tasks that didn’t generate value by partnering with Matter of Fact Technology to build a custom Google AppSheet Mobile App. This reduction of administrative time has allowed Capitan Appliance to take on more home service calls in addition to improving the work-life balance of the owners.
The Story of Capitan Appliance
Capitan Appliance is a family and veteran owned kitchen and laundry appliance repair company servicing the Indianapolis area. They started business in May of 2019 when two brothers started repairing appliances together. Today, Capitan Appliance has 5 employees including 4 technicians and 1 admin, and performs approximately 5,700 home service calls per year.
The Challenge of Increasing Administrative Tasks
As Capitan Appliance grew, keeping track of all the data about their jobs and correctly calculating how much commision each of their technicians should be paid required more and more administrative time. They had started using Workiz to schedule and route their service calls, but the way it calculated commissions didn’t match the way they wanted their commissions to work. They had started using a system of Google Sheets to track the data about their jobs and calculate commissions. However, processing all the data, and following up on inconsistent data, was taking a lot of time. The brothers found themselves either spending less time out in the field, or less time with their families on the weekends to attend to these administrative tasks. As one of the brothers had a new baby on the way, they decided it was time to find a solution that would decrease their administrative time and posted on Facebook looking for a company that could build a custom app for them.
How Matter of Fact Technology Responded
Matter of Fact Technology responded to Sol’s Facebook post and setup a meeting to discuss the project. As with all projects, we started with a Solution Assessment. In this process, we strive to understand the problem the business is experiencing and determine a proposed solution. We always look for an existing solution before we propose a custom solution. However, after reviewing the functionality available in Workiz and several similar tools available, we determined that a custom solution would be the best fit. We proposed building an app for the technicians to use to enter information about the jobs they perform instead of entering that data directly in the spreadsheet. We were also able to build a simple prototype app to show with the proposal to give the client an idea what the app may look like when complete. This solution would ensure the technicians are entering all the information that is needed for each job and would also keep the data in a Google Sheet that allows for quick and efficient reviews and updates on the administrative side.
Within 30 days of the accepted proposal, Capitan Appliance technicians were using the app to track the information about their jobs and payroll reporting had been updated to use the data collected from the app to calculate commissions.
The Results
Using this new app, Capitan Appliance was able to reduce the amount of administrative time needed to process payroll every two weeks by 75%. Using the app was so helpful they decided to add on some additional features. The initial version was having technicians enter data about the parts they were using on their jobs, so we made some enhancements to the app so that it would manage their inventory of parts, and then a final update added reporting on custom order parts that had not been used within 15-days to ensure they got returned if they were no longer needed while they were still eligible for a refund. This system was a lot less prone to human error than the manual process they were using before, which resulted in a lot less administrative time tracking down those errors and fixing them.
I recently asked Capitan Appliance if there were any surprise benefits they received from this project.
I think the biggest surprise is how much more on top of scheduling Back-With-Parts we now are. Before the app we had a lot of calls getting lost where we lost track of an order, a customer, or a customer-order pairing. So a lot of times a part wouldn’t get ordered and customers would get mad, or a part would get ordered but we would forget to setup the follow-up visit once we received the part and customers would get mad. This happens far less frequently now.
All in all, the app has reduced administrative time calculating commissions by 75%, saved thousands of dollars a year ensuring unused parts get returned while they are still eligible for refunds, and improved customer satisfaction by reducing the number of issues with scheduling follow-up visits when parts needed to be ordered.
How Can We Help You?
Do you have processes that you spend a lot of time on that you dread doing each month? Are you tracking things in spreadsheets and struggling to keep everything updated or dealing with other members of your team not entering all the needed information? Contact us and let us help you improve these processes and save you time and money. See how you can Unleash the Potential of Your Business with Google AppSheet.
