Company Cuts Manual Input Time in Half
The Herman Goldner Company expected that adopting Key2Act’s MobileTech would help them streamline processes and become more efficient. The mobile approach has also helped make technicians more independent, because they can rapidly exchange information with the home office, and it has reduced manual scanning and archiving.
Customers are seeing the impacts too. “The number-one positive feedback was that customers are getting their call summary report electronically delivered much quicker, and it’s a nicer presentation, as opposed to a handwritten copy,” said Tony Le, system administrator for the company.
The Roots of a Relationship
While many mechanical contracting companies can boast decades of service to their community, few can date their history as far back as The Herman Goldner Company. Founded in 1887, the company recently celebrated its 130th year in business. The company goes so far back, in fact, that when founder Herman J. Goldner started the business in his Philadelphia basement, he delivered supplies to his jobs using a wheelbarrow and a horse-drawn cart.
Ever since those humble beginnings, Herman Goldner has been providing mechanical services to the Philadelphia area and the Greater Delaware Valley. The company, which specializes in HVAC and plumbing systems, provides quality craftsmanship with an emphasis on customer service to the commercial, industrial, and residential sectors.
In 1998, Herman Goldner began using Key2Act’s Signature Service Management and Job Cost solutions to help manage the company’s service and project needs. Over the past 20 years, Key2Act’s solutions have helped Herman Goldner adapt and change through periods of extensive growth. Key2Act became a true partner to the company, so when the Herman Goldner team started looking into mobility solutions a few years ago, they did not have to look far.
Why Go Mobile?
Over the past few decades, Herman Goldner has become almost completely paperless, which has helped the company streamline processes and created multiple efficiencies. However, the Herman Goldner leadership team knew that mobility was the next logical step toward providing the best service to its customers. “We understand that now we’re in a marketplace where mobile is the platform that everybody uses, so we had to get into it,” said Le.
MobileTech, from Key2Act, was the company’s first and only choice. MobileTech connects field staff with the back office, enabling field workers to manage service calls and job appointments, access full customer and equipment history, and capture opportunities for additional work.
Best of all, MobileTech fully integrates with Signature. “It was the only product we ever looked at, because we wanted it to integrate with our ERP [enterprise resource planning system],” Le said.
Smooth Rollout
Herman Goldner introduced MobileTech to the company’s technicians at a deliberately slow pace. “We started small,” Le said. “We started with five, and those five were selected based on their past experience with mobile, from either a previous employer or just their own personal understanding of mobility. They were our champions. They were the ones who worked out all the bugs.
“Once they got over the learning curve, they were able to share that experience and the knowledge with their fellow techs. It went really smooth. We added groups of five, 10, then the last couple batches were a lot larger. It was really, really smooth,” Le said.
Strong Results
Now that all of Herman Goldner’s techs are using MobileTech, the company has a good picture of the improvements facilitated by the mobility solution. “We really didn’t understand what we didn’t have; you know, the old saying is, ‘You don’t know what you don’t know,’” Le said. “By having MobileTech now, we’ve really extended the systems out to the field.”
One of the biggest observations Le has made about MobileTech’s impact is that it has made Herman Goldner’s technicians more independent, largely due to the quantity of additional information the techs can now access. Information is also exchanged much more quickly between the office and the technicians than it was in the premobility era.
Efficiencies enabled by MobileTech have been felt by the back office as well. Job-related documentation can now be submitted by the techs through the solution. “We get the email to index the documents right away,” Le said. “Before, it would be manual scanning and archiving, which was double work.”
Le expects that as Herman Goldner continues to use MobileTech, the solution will help the company strengthen relationships with its customers. “It is a very relationship-based industry,” Le said. “I’m sure the customers will be happier that we can respond quicker, we can be dispatched faster.”
Overall, Le is excited about the success that Herman Goldner has achieved with MobileTech and is looking forward to discovering new efficiencies through the solution. “I think MobileTech is a game changer,” Le said. “Mobility is really becoming the standard. To stay ahead of the market, then you really need mobility.”
For more information, visit www.key2act.com.
