Tholl Fence is a fence company with over a hundred years of experience providing residential, commercial, and government fencing needs in Nevada.
Background
The sales team at Tholl Fence spends many hours a week creating estimates for fence contracts and building detailed work orders. Both steps are completed using templates in Microsoft Excel; however, the spreadsheets in use were many years old, locked from editing, and the creator of the spreadsheets was no longer employed at the company to make revisions. Some of the formatting was unreadable, unnecessary, and much of the data was outdated. Many steps were redundant, with duplicate information manually entered at several points in the process.
Solution
To start, the entire process was reviewed with the whole team at a high level, to make sure all details were in line with the overall sales process objective. Feedback and requests were collected from each team member to make a solution that suited each function and team involved, as opposed to a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach. Due to formatting inconsistencies, the spreadsheets were rebuilt from scratch to create a much cleaner spreadsheet that would be more easily edited in the future. Data fields from the estimate sheet, such as customer information, that had previously been duplicated manually, were automatically fed into the work order sheet. Drop down lists were used for data that was frequently entered. Input methods were taken into consideration so that manual data entered on paper by field teams and digital data entered on screen by sales teams would both be streamlined with easy formatting and intuitive processes. To prevent confusion and unwanted changes to print areas, formulas, and formatting, selected cells were locked while others were editable.
Feedback
One of the sales team members stated that the new process would be “life-changing.” Another sales team member said participating in the revision process provided the best training he had ever received on the estimate to work order process.
Used with permission.
