Moores Electrical & Mechanical Construction, Inc.

Dale Moore founded Moore's Electrical & Mechanical Construction, Inc. in 1985 with a three part vision. In addition to building a company that his team could be proud of and giving back to the community, Moore wanted to "give our customers the best service they had ever experienced."

To help fulfill his vision, Moore has been using Maxwell Systems Management Suite software since the late 1980s to manage their construction and service business. Leveraging the robust capabilities of the solution's Service Management module for streamlining communications between its back office and service technicians and providing the best possible service to its customers, Moore's has grown to a $50 million company with the service division making up $6 million of the company's total revenue.

Serving the entire state of Virginia and northern North Carolina, Moore's has grown to more than 400 full-time employees at its headquarters in Altavista, Va. and at its branch offices in Charlottesville, Richmond, and Chesapeake. The company's services include new construction, electrical, HVAC, plumbing, piping, chillers, refrigeration, design/build, sales and services, technology, communications, controls, industrial maintenance, facilities management, and 24-hour emergency service.

Easing Dispatch Management

Providing comprehensive dispatching/scheduling, work order tracking, pricing and billing, contract maintenance, and financial reporting, Service Management enables Moore's four dispatchers to easily handle the approximately 50 customer service request calls and emails each day. Using the single-screen Dispatch Board in Management Suite Service Management, the dispatchers can instantly access customer information and technician locations and schedules for quick and accurate response to customer calls and then create a work order and send it to the appropriate technician to complete the job.

Communicating to the Field

Moore's has 30 technicians for its commercial service business which covers the entire state of Virginia, and eight for the residential side that cover the central Virginia area. All of the technicians have laptops and printers/scanners in their vans providing them with convenient access to their email, the Internet, and MaxService, a Management Suite module that streamlines communications with the field technicians. As a fully integrated, wireless solution, MaxService enables the technicians to receive work orders on the road, indicate work completed, provide timecard information, and review equipment information and history.

With all the necessary information right at their fingertips, the service technicians can access historical data by site and by piece of equipment while on a customer call. "The ability to view information in MaxService on the last 10 service calls made to a particular customer makes it much easier for the technicians to diagnose problems and provide quick, high quality service to our customers," said Troy Shelton, vice president of Service for Moore's Electrical & Mechanical. "And, with access to the Internet, they can also go to manufacturer's websites to look for information on parts or to help diagnose problems."

MaxService enables the technicians to upload information right into the Management Suite system, enter their description of work, print documents, and get customer signatures electronically by having them sign their computer tablet screens. If the back office has questions, they can simply email back and forth with the technician. Before using MaxService, the technicians had to complete the appropriate paper forms and fax them back to the office. The office staff would then have to decipher the technician's notes and key them into Management Suite. This was time consuming and prone to error.

"The technicians can now key in information on a customer visit while still on the clock, reducing the office staff's non-billable time," explained Shelton. "It also eliminates the errors associated with retyping and deciphering technician's notes. It is much easier for our technicians to understand a description of work performed entered by a technician than what a person in the office has translated from technician notes and re-entered into the system."

Shelton adds, "Billing has also been made easier with MaxService. Technicians can now complete parts information and labor data on the MaxService work order, and use drop-down lists to enter parts information that pulls into the billing process so much easier than having to re-type the information from handwritten tickets. Speeding up our billing has improved our cash flow."

Further explaining how the software helps manage their technicians' workloads and reduce overhead time, Shelton says, "MaxService is not just an advantage for our dispatch center, but has also saved us at least one or two overhead positions in our back office. By utilizing e-mail with our techs, we have greatly improved our communications and reduced the number of non-billable technician meetings we need to hold."

Managing Service Contracts

Furthermore, to more effectively manage its $1 million preventative contract base, Moore's utilizes the software's Contract Management capabilities, which provide multiple and single-site contract coverage, blanket and individual contracts, and variable inclusion/exclusion options. The software also handles billing on completion, deferred revenue from prepaid contracts, automatic renewals, and profitability reporting.

"I couldn't imagine running our services operation without a system like Maxwell Systems Management Suite and its Service Management features," Shelton concluded.