Working in an industry that’s still dominated by pen and paper is definitely a challenge in today’s fast-paced digital world—at least that’s the scoop we got from Beth Morris, CFO and Treasurer of JL Minter Inc. As CFO for a Class A commercial contractor—dealing in electrical, mechanical, and plumbing services—it’s their job to ensure responsibility is always top of mind when it comes to managing cash flow, providing job costing data, and overseeing accounts both payable and receivable for the entire company. A job, by the way, made a whole lot easier when they switched over to BuildOps.
A Little Bit of Background on JL Minter Inc.
In their own words, JL Minter Inc. has been delivering innovative design-build solutions in central Virginia for nearly 60 years. With a host of architects, general contractors, construction managers, and facility owners at their back, the Class A contracting company has developed a wide variety of projects ranging from office warehouses and recreational facilities, all the way to auto dealerships and aircraft hangars. Their experience and dedication to their craft have made them one of the go-to industry professionals that firms and individuals across the state are happy to work with—again and again.
An Era Before Digital Automation
Before joining the BuildOps family, JL Minter Inc. was reliant on antiquated software for tracking work hours, and an archaic paper ticketing system to manage costs and client billing. “Prior to BuildOps, scheduling was done manually,” Beth told us in an interview earlier this month. “Journeyman workers and apprentices would continuously clock into the wrong jobs,” she said. “And purchase orders were pieces of paper clipped to tickets, while inventory and stock used by our technicians would only be submitted once jobs were completed—when they happened to drop by the office.” These practices created an environment where billing even the smallest jobs would become increasingly laborious—as the need to track down missing information was near constant.
Once their processes were integrated with BuildOps software, the Class A contracting company was able to bill out their jobs the moment a technician was finished working. All the information needed comes in one easy-to-access digital location. “The software even has a new reporting dashboard that tracks our average billing efficiency,” she was happy to note. “We reduced our average billing time from 30 days to only 8.”
Looking Toward a Brighter Future With BuildOps
After increasing their billing efficiency by upwards of 250%, JL Minter Inc. hopes to continue improving all of its processes by further leveraging each and every feature BuildOps has to offer. “We were looking for software with strong dispatch features that could handle job costing and streamline purchase orders and inventory tracking for smaller jobs,” she told us. “I was most surprised at how easy it was to integrate. New software integration always comes with challenges, but the BuildOps customer service and engineering teams were excellent to work with.”
In the future, the company plans to have project managers begin using the quote feature more regularly when meeting with their clients. As it stands, they use separate pieces of software to generate an estimate before emailing it to their clients. The philosophy behind BuildOps’ service offering has always been to provide a full-service end-to-end experience for our customers. Having their technicians use BuildOps from the very beginning of the process would allow all documentation to be sent to the client immediately and archived in one convenient digital location.
Our business relationships mean the world to us, and there’s nothing more satisfying than hearing that our clients’ professional lives have been enriched and simplified by using our product. “To wrap up, I would recommend BuildOps to any other small to medium-sized builders,” Beth told us. “It covers every aspect of both project management and service jobs, and has really helped our company organize our day-to-day workflow.”
Ready to take a test drive of BuildOps? Contact us for a demo to get started.
