Customer Story

We cut the time from identifying a repair in the field to sending the proposal to the client by 50%.

— Jeremy Goodland, Western Allied Mechanical

Q&A with Western Allied’s Jeremy Goodland

In 2021, the Western Allied Mechanical service department implemented ServiceTrade, the software platform for commercial contractors. They wanted to streamline clunky processes, speed up their quote delivery timeline, and provide more visibility to customers. All while maintaining back-office procedures built on Spectrum, their accounting software.

ServiceTrade helped them streamline their operations and improve the customer experience while sticking with their existing accounting software and processes.

ServiceTrade recently talked with Western Allied VP Jeremy Goodland about how the company has been improving operations, customer experience, and sales since implementing ServiceTrade in 2021.

Tell us about your prior processes and the journey to ServiceTrade.

Five or six years ago, we were doing everything in editable PDFs. Time cards, repair work orders, everything was a PDF. Techs would either email them as attachments or upload them to the cloud. Then we’d take all that information and manually enter it into Spectrum, our accounting software.

In 2018, we began utilizing Spectrum’s service component, but it fell short in a few areas where we knew we could do better. One of the areas we really felt was lacking was proposal (or quote) generation. We were doing all of our estimates in an Excel spreadsheet. So every job would have an Excel estimate and a Word proposal that we’d have to type up, save as a PDF, and email to the client to sign for approval. Then they’d have to email it back.

It was a clunky process, and given that we’re a service business generating hundreds of proposals each month, we felt it was in our best interest to try and streamline that process.

Was streamlining that quoting process a big factor when deciding to bring on ServiceTrade? What kind of results have you seen?

It was. We knew that if we were able to reduce that turnaround time by even just 20%, we’d be able to crank out that many more proposals and generate that much more business. We ended up cutting the time from identifying a repair in the field to sending the proposal to the client by 50% on average.

You said that previous solutions were lacking in terms of customer communications. How has that changed with ServiceTrade?

ServiceTrade’s customer portal allows our clients to access all of their information. Which is great for them, of course, but also for our account managers. I can’t tell you how often our clients reach out, saying: “Hey, can you send me the last two years of records for our account?” Now, with this portal, they have all that data at their fingertips, and that’s really helping out our account managers with that pain point.

And you said it’s helping with sales, as well, right?

The client portal is huge. It has a big impact on how we’re able to go to market. We’re able to pitch that added value to the client and differentiate ourselves.

So prospective clients really see that value?

Yes. Tasking is also well received, and it’s nice to be able to sell it as it connects to the customer portal. As soon as the tech submits a task sheet, the client can access it through the portal.

Does that visibility help you sell to bigger or more complex clients?

Our construction division does a lot of work in life science and biotech buildings. Those clients have strict requirements and have to run a pretty tight ship. In order to work with these types of clients on the service side, we need the ability to send them the information they need right away. So yes, it has definitely been a big selling point for these clients.

Read more customer stories.