 Trav-Ad Signs and Electric, Inc. - Huntsville, Alabama
For over thirty years, this family owned Sign Company has been providing custom sign systems to the mid-south region of the United States. Trav-Ad Signs and Electric (“Trav-Ad”) began as a one-man operation and has grown to over thirty employees. All manufacturing and sales efforts are handled within a single facility in the Huntsville area.
Environment prior to dataSIGN:
- Office people, sales people and supervisors had computers for e-mail and job status reports.
- All work orders were hand written on carbon copy work orders.
- The old accounting system no longer had tech support or any updates available.
- We had to figure job cost on every single job by hand. Not only was it time consuming, there was a better chance for human error.
- There was no easy way to clean up inventory, customer lists, etc.
- Our legacy system was no longer supported and was very inefficient. We had to go through several steps to achieve a simple goal.
- It didn’t automatically figure job cost.
Trav-Ad realized that they a needed a dependable business system that fit their “Custom Sign” environment as well as integrating all their other business processes together. Five specific issues were important as selection criteria:
- Features/functions of the product
- Technology
- Ongoing Customer Support
- Ability to “cater” to Trav-Ad’s individual needs
- User friendliness
Implementation Impressions
Describing the Implementation Process, Vice President Sandi Singletary, comments:
Implementation was detailed and intensive. I definitely think that everyone must be “onboard” for dataSIGN to be a success. Of course, our legacy system was not at all user friendly, so that made it even more difficult to transfer data. Now, it is a simple copy/paste to a Word document and it automatically creates a chart!
Thoroughness – Datacom was always on top of the game. They supplied us with worksheets, flow charts, “How To” instructions, etc. They made sure that we knew what would happen next and when.
Support quality/quantity – Support was and still is AWESOME. You talk to an actual person. Datacom always offered a helping hand whenever possible. They offered many suggestions on making the process easier and run smoother.
Format – I figured out pretty quickly that there is a method to the dataSIGN methodology. I would go through a process and think it was strange or made no sense. Datacom would explain it, and then give me their reasoning….and it made sense. I learned to keep an open mind – you have to remember that I was in an antiquated world.
Post Implementation Impressions
The system is very easy to use, and is very user friendly. The quote process is very simple – all the materials are listed with your cost and customer cost. You get to set the parameters on everything – how much you mark up materials, your labor overhead, taxes, etc. Datacom is always improving their product. They take our input and other companies’ input to make their product even better.
The job cost processing is much quicker and more efficient now that we have everyone reporting labor and materials on the correct Work Order. |
