Scale FX Shows Off Their Branded Cart

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Scale FX founder Jason Miller has been thrilled with his company’s modernization. His customers have been impressed and he has seen a lot of success since he has started running Gravity CRM about eight months ago. But he was worried about his technicians’ tablets falling off of the top of the carts they were pushing.

So Miller did what any ingenuitive entrepreneur would do: he came up with a solution! The young business owner went down to the machine shop and had a custom cart created complete with a computer tray to secure that tablet, hooks for tools and other supplies, and it holds 500 pounds in 50 lb. test weights. The sturdy metal cart, which weights only 45 pounds, has his company’s logo is also silk-screened on the front giving a professional touch and building his branding.

Features: holds 10×50lb weights, (2) tool bag hooks, company logo on front, easy to push even fully loaded, quiet rolling, weights 45lb empty, computer tray keeps laptop secure, computer tray pad to absorb movement and vibration. Additional Options: Computer tray lock, extra storage shelf for weight kit and such, extra battery compartment, and possibly even a rear wing spoiler and nitro!!! (Jason told me to say that!) If you are interested, Scale FX can have one made for you, complete with your company’s logo on it. Contact scalefx@hotmail.com

This Click on the photos below to see it up close.

Toting Your Tablet the Easy Way

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Scale People has been using Gravity CRM software with Samsung Ultra Mobile PCs for over a year now. To solve the problem of where to put the tablet PC and alleviate the need for the techs to carry them under their arm, they went to a local machine shop and had them build these babies. Quite simple. Utilize the weight carts the technicians already take around with them to hold the tablets in a custom cradle.

The unit has a compartment for the external battery underneath (for extended power life) and the external keyboard. Technicians can simply unplug the top half with the screen, grab it and go when they need to carry it around with them away from the cart!

Case Study: Florida Industrial Scale

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The new system has touched and improved productivity in literally every area of the business, some high points are as follows:

- Double-entry of data was virtually eliminated. Time spent typing and re-typing or hand-writing customer and equipment information was staggering. By having this information simply transfer from one form or phase of the job to the next and auto-populating form data, this costly redundancy was removed.

- Technicians were spending far too much time in the office. Getting them into the office, rather than going straight to a customer where they can bill was expensive on its own. It was another ordeal to try to get them back on the road once they were in the office. An eight hour day was quickly reduced to seven. With Gravity CRM, the technicians no longer need to come into the office to receive and drop off their paperwork—it is transmitted back and forth wirelessly to their tablet PC. Florida Industrial Scale is now able to keep them in the field more often where they can generate income!

- The cost of carbonless forms is increasing every year and it seems customers are always requiring more data (meaning more forms). By eliminating these costly forms altogether, the company was able to save an average of $85/month per technician on carbonless forms alone.

- In addition to saving money on the cost of the carbonless forms, FISC also realized gains by practically eliminating the accelerating demand for filing cabinet real estate. The company went from filling up one large filing cabinet drawer per month to now only utilizing one per year over the last three years.

- A customer calls and wants information about their account status, past service performed, or wants copies of a calibration certificate. Previously, this would require sifting through the mountains of folders in the aforementioned filing cabinets… no longer. Now all it requires is typing in the customer’s name and pulling up their file. Need to print a copy of a previous calibration certificate or generate a new one? Just click one button. Cook’s office staff can now access a full invoice and payment history, service orders, rental orders, sales orders, listing of all customer equipment, calibration (preventative maintenance) agreements, and even a record of all interactions (phone calls, emails, etc.) with this customer. It’s all in one place.

- The software has also been integrated into Florida Industrial Scale’s web site. A new Customer Care module to their web site has added great value for their customers. By assigning them a customer number and a password, clients are able to login 24-hours a day and access their complete account history including printable copies of their signed approval forms from service orders and calibration certificates. That’s one less phone call that the FISC staff has to field and one happy customer when they’re being audited. And don’t think they’ll forget that value-added service! Can the competition do that?

- Verbally-delivered instructions to technicians were often misinterpreted or forgotten and hand-written paperwork received from technicians were worse than doctor-scratch. These miscommunications were often costly for FISC resulting in more time spent on the job or worse yet free call-backs. By having this communication delivered in type, Florida Industrial Scale has been able to cut down on these kind of call-backs and created some really happy customers who can now actually read what is on the forms!

- Getting the completed orders back in the office (especially from the branches) could often take several days to a week. By the time the paperwork was processed, verified, the information re-typed into an invoice, printed, and mailed two weeks may have passed! This not only wasted the time of the office staff but extended the company’s cash flow. Now the information is received in the office the same day it is completed and an invoice is generated with a single mouse click. The customer may not pay it any faster, but by getting the invoice to their A/P quicker the time between job completion and payment being received has been reduced by an average of 10 business days. Cook’s quip may sound familiar to some of you, he explains “Looking at our invoice dates you would think that we did not work the first three weeks of the month. Eighty percent of all invoices were dated the last week of the month.” Not anymore.

- Not only has the software saved FISC from hiring more office staff, but it has freed up their time to focus on other areas like assisting with the development of new accounts. Office staff overtime is also at an all-time low. The company’s single employee in charge of accounts receivable has gone from working every Saturday to keep up with the workload to only having half-time hours. Cook says, “if I wasn’t married to her, I’d be able to cut her salary!”

Size Matters? Go Ultra Mobile!

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Our service software was originally designed with a tablet/laptop in mind, which has worked great for some. But one of our customers felt a laptop was a bit to bulky. The solution? A brand new form factor of computers that was just released in April 2006. These new light-weight and small-form computers are called Ultra Mobile PCs. They weigh about 1.5 pounds and have a 7″ display. The perfect meeting point between a laptop and a PDA! Ideal for technicians on the go!

There are a few models available, the one we reviewed (pictured to the right) is the Samsung Q1. See the product web site for more details.