Overview
While evaluating current lighting audit and project development processes, team members at Rogers Electric, an industry leader focused on creating productive, secure and sustainable energy solutions, knew they had to make a change. With goals centered around winning national account projects with speed, precision, and efficiency, a solution was proposed.
Leveraging an industrial-grade retrofit software platform, Rogers Electric was able to eliminate a slow, error prone auditing process to remove their backlog and win more projects.
The Problem
With 9 nationwide offices and over 1000 employees, Rogers Electric provides electrical, lighting and technology solutions to a large number of properties across the country. Over the 30 years that Rogers Electric has been in business, the company has experienced significant growth as the demand for lighting efficiency increased.
As Rogers Electric began to take on more projects, a problem became evident in the manor that lighting audit information was collected, transposed and used for quotations and install work. Using the traditional “pen and paper” method, the Rogers team faced the challenges of an auditing, quotation, and implementation process that was manual, too slow for their volume, and prone to error.
The pace at which Rogers Electric was conducting lighting audits lead to the potential risk of missing critical deadlines and client expectations. Due in part to a project backlog, Rogers aimed to find an auditing process that was both digital and tablet based and would enable their technicians to assess all fixtures, locations, and conditions while providing visuals such as photos, floor plans and locations. This data could then be shared amongst a team to increase speed and efficiency. Rogers also wished to implement a process where someone besides the auditor could review the audit prior to the technician leaving the site. This would help eliminate errors and improve quality control.
The Solution
Rogers Electric searched for a digital retrofit platform that would accommodate the various use cases and distributed workflow required by their team. They evaluated a number software-based tools and ultimately selected SnapCount by StreamLinx as their solution of choice. Rogers selected SnapCount because it offered an end-to-end solution from audit through implementation and allowed for a number of company-specific custom configurations that accommodated their workflow requirements. SnapCount allowed auditors to collect fixture, location and condition information on a tablet platform, and enabled the required collaboration to occur with the needed visuals such as photos, videos and floor plans.
With a tablet based software, Rogers Electric was able to eliminate the pen and paper method and related transcription of hand written notes to a computer software such as Microsoft Excel. SnapCount also allowed for collaboration among users, empowering Rogers Electric to improve quality control via a secondary review step from users other than the auditor.
The Results
Upon implementing SnapCount, Rogers Electric experienced a reduced audit error rate of 30%. This reduction was due to more accurate identification of current fixtures by eliminating the transcription of hand-written notes from paper to a spreadsheet. Collaborative features within SnapCount also allowed for a user other than the auditor (typically a more senior designer or project manager) to review the audit and fix any errors prior to the auditor leaving the site.
Rogers Electric enjoyed an increase in speed and capacity of 3 times the norm with SnapCount. As digital bits are faster than manual data entry and review, an audit team can perform more audits at a faster pace with a digital platform versus traditional hand written notes. With this increased speed of audit and quote, Rogers Electric was able to eliminate a 50-site project backlog in just one week.
With the use of SnapCount, Rogers Electric was able to create a central oversight of more junior auditors in the field by the senior lighting professionals. With SnapCount, more junior auditors could be in the field performing audits, while senior auditors reviewed their work remotely. This also reduced the number of auditors needed to complete the same number of projects.
Rogers Electric's Reaction
Given the industries’ growth and increased demand for their services, the Rogers Electric team was very pleased with the results of automating their retrofit process. “This has revolutionized the way we operate”, said Mike Hunter, Senior Project Manager and Rogers Electric. “Our ability to retrieve accurate data, combined with photographs and floorplans means we no longer have to design in the dark. The platform also provides us with central control and visibility of our entire project operation”.
