Success Story:
Allied Glass

Company

Based in Victoria, British Columbia, Allied Glass & Aluminum Products has been in business since 1960, serving a wide range of commercial and residential clients for their glass-related needs.

They pride themselves on top quality workmanship and products, expertise and personalized customer service. In addition to standard window treatments, the company’s services include the installation and design of skylights, sunrooms, custom showers and railings.

Allied Glass is a booming business. In addition to installation services, they also provide replacement, repair, and maintenance of commercial doors and windows for property managers. They are on call 24/7 for emergency repairs, which makes their day-today operations challenging.

Challenge

With such a wide range of services to manage, Jeff Devine, president and owner of Allied Glass, says they started running into the “usual problems” with keeping track of jobs.

“Basically, we were all paper,” Jeff says. “It was paper work orders, paper invoices, paper everything. It was difficult to coordinate everyone because it was all manual.”

“Technicians had to come in to the office to receive new jobs. Also, we had difficulty coordinating our systems because we had a number of different ones.”

To streamline their processes, Allied Glass recognized they wanted to implement an automated management system.

“We looked at multiple systems and we ended up choosing FieldAware by GPS Insight. They had a seamless integration with QuickBooks, there was support included and it was the most economical.”

Solution

The GPS Insight field service management software, FieldAware, is a comprehensive cloud-based field service management solution using modern web and mobile technologies that allow organizations to easily and efficiently manage service requests, scheduling, dispatching, invoicing and reporting.

FieldAware was built to integrate seamlessly with other business software and solutions, including QuickBooks. The flexibility of integration is due to the open-API (application programming interface) framework, which means that it can integrate easily with Accounting, CRM or ERP solutions, without the need for complexity.

Benefits

When Allied Glass started looking at different field service solutions, Jeff Devine liked that FieldAware is cloud-based and made-formobile. This means that the solution is accessible in real-time from any Internet browser, as well as from the FieldAware Mobile App, available for iOS- and Android-based smartphones.

This meant Allied Glass was able to connect teams easily and eliminate excessive paperwork. Before implementing FieldAware, one of the company’s problem areas was lost paperwork.

Now, all of the orders get sent to the technicians’ smartphones. The jobs are all dispatched out of one place so they can all be managed efficiently and they don’t get lost in the paperwork shuffle.

The company now looks to FieldAware to keep the business organized. The intuitive scheduling tool means that jobs can be scheduled at the touch of a button and then as the day progresses the status viewed in real-time. This status includes start and stop times and job locations, which means changes can be made easily as any emergency work comes in to see who is the best technician in terms of availability and location.

FieldAware also stood out to Allied Glass from other field service solutions because of the wide variety of customizable tools that help the user streamline processes and speed efficiency. FieldAware also helped improve the invoicing process, which previously consumed a lot of time.

“We can send invoices through FieldAware, and then they get copied to our QuickBooks accounting software,” says Jeff. “Before we were invoicing on a weekly basis; now we do it on just about a daily basis.”

GPS Insight is helping Allied Glass transform their field service and is proving the right decision for their field service management.

“We are saving days for sure. We’re not running around chasing guys down in the field, and they’re not chasing us down. We are more on top of customer service and it is easier to get to them, and get them their quotes and invoices as well. It definitely is a timesaver.”