Harris Electric knows a thing or two about good service. After more than 16 years in the electrical contracting business, it has learned how to keep an ever-growing list of commercial and residential customers happy. Still, a few years back this full service electrical contractor knew it had to come up with a more efficient way of running its business if it was going to remain competitive in the Kansas City metro area.
Realizing the company needed to streamline operations, president James Harris wanted to make it easier to track both invoices and costs. As a result, Harris Electric underwent a thorough review of the available service management and accounting software packages geared towards electrical contractors. The firm also saw this as an opportunity to bring its payroll in-house, a task that it was outsourcing.
Harris Electric ultimately decided on SAM Pro Enterprise from Data-Basics but not solely for the product's list of features. In the course of evaluating software packages, Harris Electric met sales and support expert Albert Winemiller and soon built up a rapport with him.
"The relationship with Albert got us into SAM Pro," said Chris Meier, office manager, Harris Electric. "We trusted his opinion, but more importantly, he understood our business. That was important."
Still, SAM Pro Enterprise also met the needs of the company and, in many ways, represented a better way of doing things. For example, Meier continued, "In SAM Pro you can instantly look and see how many hours are on a job. Since paperwork can sometimes get lost, having all the information in the database meant we wouldn't misplace time cards or let hours go unbilled any more."
As a result of implementing key components from SAM Pro Enterprise – including the service management and accounting portions of the software – Harris Electric has been able to improve efficiency and eliminate a great deal of paperwork.
"We're simply more efficient," said Meier. "It's a lot easier to review costs and find invoices in SAM Pro than to dig through paperwork in a file folder."
This improvement to internal processes has helped the company save time while realizing true savings through the elimination of the recurring costs associated with outsourcing biweekly payroll. To help smooth the transition of bringing payroll in house, Harris Electric has been guided by Data-Basics' support staff.
"Data-Basics support staff are incredibly helpful and friendly," said Meier. "They always take the time to explain things."
It has been this relationship between Harris Electric's employees and Data-Basics' support staff that, in many ways, has made all the difference during the transition from a paper-based system to an integrated software solution.
"If we didn't have our support people, we wouldn't be nearly as happy with the software as we are."
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