A Case Study of Pettus Mechanical Services
Increase project collaboration and reduce back-office processing time with iBuild Document Management System.
Pettus Mechanical Services
Founded in 1983, Pettus Mechanical Services provides quality plumbing construction services at competitive prices. Pettus has experienced double digit growth by serving some of the largest retail and industrial operations in the world, including Wal-Mart, Lowe’s Home Improvement, McDonald’s, International Paper, US Armed Forces, and NASA.
Critical Issues:
Project crews working in 48 states, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week were drowning Pettus Mechanical with documentation. Project documents were being converted to pdf files and stored on file servers but the lack of control over where documents were stored and the ability to quickly retrieve them kept many parts of the organization from participating in this file storage effort.
Enormous time and expense was being spent on processing paper and digital documents to satisfy growing legal and business requirements. Office staff was being doubled almost on a yearly basis in order to handle the influx of documentation. Supporting paper-based filing procedures, digital filing procedures, and retrieving the critical documentation for those in the field threatened to prevent Pettus Mechanical from continued strong growth.
Solutions:
Implementation of the iBuild Document Management System gave Pettus Mechanical a central repository to store all documents securely. Using customized document types ensured documents were stored correctly with the required search information for quick retrieval. Integration with ComputerEase Job Cost Accounting made the most up-to-date job numbers, customers, and vendors available for users to attach search information from convenient dropdown lists.
Since iBuild Document Management is built from the ground up for use over the internet, all features are equally available in the home office, at branch offices, or the job site. Users don’t have to be afraid of losing documents because of unreliable internet connections; iBuild takes care of the documents for you. Automatic document status alerts let users know immediately about documents that require their attention and can email them an alert.
Pay off:
Pettus Mechanical has dramatically reduced the time it takes to process materials received for projects, thereby reducing the retention of inventory, and increasing customer service performance. Project Managers can quickly retrieve documents for editing anywhere they have an Internet connection and publish documents for others to review or edit. Expenses can be more quickly processed into the ComputerEase Job Cost Accounting System so that they can be more closely managed.
Automated document alerts have become an indispensable part of project work processes. Alerts immediately notify users of documents needing their attention, streamlining the process of getting project drawings reviewed, approved, fabricated, and shipped to the job.
For the first time, the accounting department is not stuffing filing cabinets almost faster than they can be bought. iBuild Document Management System (DMS) has allowed Pettus to reclaim valuable square footage by reducing the amount of paper documentation kept on site. iBuild DMS brought the ability to dramatically shorten costly yearly audits that had taken close to three months to complete.
The flood of mail arriving at the door every day is now quickly scanned into iBuild DMS so that project managers now have access to their job invoices with an hour of arrival to the office. They can then easily process the documents, attaching vital search information for later retrieval.
Utilizing Version control and document audit records, company owners and administrators can be assured that all users are accountable to their responsibilities. |
