CLIENT: Rackley Roofing
TYPE: Roofing Contractor
PARTNERSHIP LENGTH: 12 Years
TOP RESULTS
- Enabled service team to grow from 1 to 25 service crews since 2010
- Saved employees countless hours a week of organizational work
- Delight customers with smart relationship nurturing features
- Seamless transition to 100% paperless after pandemic
COMPANY QUOTE
“There’s no way that we could have gone from one service crew in 2010 to 25 in 2022 without Dataforma. They completely changed the way we conduct business for the better!”
– Michelle Boykin, COO
CHALLENGES
When Rackley Roofing integrated Dataforma into their daily operations, the business had been run off paper tickets and a dizzying amount of excel spreadsheets for some time. This was back before 2010 when employees had to keep track of piles of paper service tickets and input data into an array of excel spreadsheets.
They admittedly ran an antiquated and inefficient process that could not sustain the company in the years to come. Michelle Boykin, the company COO remembers this period as one fraught with endless manual processes for employees and a lot of stress regarding organization.
Productivity suffered when employees wasted hours each week digging through filing cabinets to find pertinent information. As frustrating an exercise as this was for Rackley roofing’s employees it was an even more painful process for the customers.
The process of managing a roofing company’s schedules, work order history, estimates, before/after photos, warranty information, and invoices on paper was just not working.
Michelle decided that they had enough of doing things the old-school way and committed to bringing new technology into their company. Aware that the roofing industry had a penchant for doing things the old-fashioned way, she was convinced there would be a painful learning curve for the Rackley Roofing staff. What she needed was an “easy-button” roofing software option to get her team up to speed!
PROCESS/HIGHLIGHTS
Ms. Boykin began looking at digital cloud-based solutions on the market but found many of them were not geared toward the roofing industry, which required specific features. Most of the solutions were sleek looking applications, but lacked the robust features and storage capacity to handle the thousands of service tickets, warranty information, and job photos her employees would need to upload every week.
Through a little research, Michelle learned about Dataforma and soon realized it was the best roofing software option to handle her service department’s needs. The service technicians would now have a tool to upload work orders’ notes, before/after photos, labor hours, materials used, and additional recommendations. No longer were they having to scroll through their smartphone trying to remember which photos were from which project.
As they integrated the platform with their business, the Rackley Roofing team began to fully realize the full scope of Dataforma’s uses. Originally, it was a service department roofing software solution which soon expanded to impact more departments and processes. Now they were able to have a deeper understanding of their customers and projects. Rackley now uses as many of the software features as possible.
The follow-up function helped keep employees on track with on-time reminders, and the entire staff uses the in-app shareable calendars to schedule their workdays and help hold each other accountable.
Invoicing and collections have been simplified and are far less stressful now that the documentation is attached to the respective jobs. The fact that they no longer misplace and forget crucial invoices is enough to thrill Ms. Boykin and the executive team.
Prospecting, proposals, and client information all have a home in Dataforma as well. The one-system for tracking leads and managing projects has given employees hours of their day back to continue doing what they do best, constructing roofs and building relationships. Rackley goes as far as to save personal information about their clients in their CRM profile to delight them when possible – they even bought a valued customer concert tickets as a thank you!
RESULTS
For Michelle Boykin and the Rackley Roofing team implementing Dataforma helped solidify the company’s bright future and stay ahead of the competition. It gave them the ability to operate lean and nimble, making everyone on the team more productive and better at nurturing integral customer relationships.
She realized that the fears they had around implementing a new roofing software were unfounded, as there was a short learning curve for Dataforma. With a wide range of employee ages and technical skill levels in the company, office staff and field service techs managed to learn and thrive with the software all the same.
The time, money, and headaches saved with the software has obviously been a huge success, says Michelle. She added that working with the Dataforma template team made the relationship sweeter, as the customized platform has only helped to improve speed and productivity further.
Dataforma’s development team is eager to tackle challenges and product requests she throws their way, and on many occasions, she says they were already working on features she was only dreaming about! The whole Rackley team has been enthused with Dataforma’s willingness to be transparent and honest, and it has been a major factor in their desire to work on new features together.
Now they can’t imagine doing business without Dataforma. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit in early 2020 they were one of the first roofing contractors to go 100% paperless. The transition was seamless as they already had been building contactless processes into their operations. The preparedness gave them a leg up on their competitors and helped shield the company from many of the challenges that affected so many other construction businesses.
The success of Rackley Roofing in Middle Tennessee is a testament to the power of innovative technology in the world of service contractors. Businesses who take the leap to bring their operations to the cloud from the antiquated world of paper tickets and filing cabinets are delighted when they reclaim their time, money, and sanity.
