Executive Summary
When a thriving East Coast HVAC contractor needed to unify their commercial and residential operations and automate service management, Jonas Software delivered results that went beyond management expectations.
Customer Profile
R.M. Schmidt, Inc. is a family owned and operated HVAC contracting firm located in Westminster, MD. Founded in 1981 by Ronald M. Schmidt, the company’s brand was originally built around design-build commercial HVAC. More recently, R.M. Schmidt has also established leadership in the residential service market by adding a proprietary system designer/energy analyzer to their website and by becoming the exclusive Maytag dealer in five area counties.
As their tagline “Experience an Air of Difference” implies, R.M. Schmidt differentiates themselves from the competition by consistently delivering the highest quality HVAC installation and service to customers. Every lead technician carries a MD State Journeyman’s license and all Helpers are MD State licensed apprentices, educated through the standardized, accredited training program offered by the Air Conditioning Contractors of America (ACCA). Company leaders pride themselves on drug testing and background checking every employee to ensure homeowner peace of mind and job site safety.
Today, R.M. Schmidt’s 42 employees and 21 field trucks generate approximately $6.5M in annual revenues. Company accolades include the ACCA’s 2006 Contractor of the Year Award. More recently, Ronald Schmidt’s son Sean, who joined the company in 2006 as Executive Vice President and is currently vice president of the ACCA’s Mid-Atlantic Chapter, received a 2007 award from the organization for his individual 15 years of service to the HVAC industry.
Business Challenge
When Sean joined R.M. Schmidt’s management team, he quickly realized that the company’s Legacy Software systems had to go. The generic accounting program was too basic for the growing enterprise and each division was using a separate database and inconsistent software tools. Vital information was often stored on individual hard drives rather than a server. The lack of data visibility made decision making a challenge.
The firm’s service dispatching system was also a problem. A huge, wall-sized board with customer-labeled index cards took manual dispatching to a whole new level of inefficiency. “It was the most antiquated, unorganized mess I had ever seen at a company of our size and caliber,” Sean recalls with a chuckle. So he set out to find a single, construction-specific software solution to unify R.M. Schmidt’s entire operations.
Jonas Solution
After evaluating nearly two dozen systems over an intense three-month period, Sean narrowed the search to two programs: Jonas Software and Sage Timberline. “We concluded that Jonas was the best product for the short term and for the long term advancement of the company – five or ten years into the future,” Sean states.
Aside from Jonas’ ability to handle all of the company’s construction accounting and service management needs, what solidified R.M. Schmidt’s decision was the software development firm’s commitment to customer service. “Jonas is a relationship-driven company,” Sean says. “We feel like we’re in partnership with them rather than just being an account number.”
In addition to purchasing core accounting modules and key tools like Job Costing, Purchase Order and Service Contract, R.M. Schmidt invested in Jonas’ Dispatch Board and Dispatch Paging solutions. Flexible reporting was also a must-have for company managers. As expected, Jonas had a solution: a powerful add-on application called Silent Partner.
A robust business intelligence (BI) tool, Silent Partner delivers automated reports and system alerts to designated software users. “Silent Partner actually generates the key reports we utilize on a daily, weekly and monthly basis and sends them to the appropriate staff by email, which allows us to react to data in real time,” Sean explains. “If there’s a work order that’s below margin, for example, Silent Partner gives us a red flag to find out why so we can learn from it.”
Having the ability to automate data utilization is the beauty of Silent Partner. “As a data repository, Jonas can do amazing things,” Sean explains. “But having a single database means nothing if you can’t extrapolate information in meaningful ways. That’s where Silent Partner comes in, and why we’ve reaped so many benefits from Jonas.”
Benefits for R.M. Schmidt
According to Sean, in addition to unifying the company’s commercial and residential operations, Jonas has made R.M. Schmidt much more efficient and profitable. “Jonas has improved our business processes in so many ways,” he says. “As a result, our overhead costs have dropped significantly and we’ve been able to grow our revenues without adding administrative staff.”
Even seemingly minor improvements have had a big impact. Take service dispatching for instance. The manual index card process probably took five minutes or more per service call to complete. With Jonas, that same action can be accomplished in 15 seconds. Over hundreds of calls, that adds up. “For both the commercial and residential service departments, we’ve gone from having a physical board on the wall to an automated, database-driven system,” Sean states. “It’s difficult to even articulate the change that’s made.”
Having a single database and real-time information has also improved R.M. Schmidt’s cash flow. Service work has gone from being billed in batches, often several weeks after jobs were completed, to being billed on a daily basis. Plus, past due service accounts now get flagged and locked. This has prompted slow-paying customers to keep their accounts more current. “We never had these types of controls before,” Sean says.
Looking Forward
It’s been two years since R.M. Schmidt purchased their Jonas solution. Although Sean feels they still have more to learn about their robust software, one thing, he says, is clear: “Jonas has been everything I could ask for – and probably more.”
Looking forward, the next investment the company will make is to add Jonas Mobile to their solution line-up. “That’s the next logical step towards greater efficiency and will give us the greatest return on investment,” Sean states. Document Management is on their wish list, too, but further down the road. “We look forward to Jonas’ continued help in the coming years as we learn to utilize more of the system’s functions.”