• Home
• Contact

SBS Case Study

Posted on February 15, 2007
Filed Under Articles |

Making the Leap to SBS2003

A small business eliminates the complexity of paper and embraces its first server

Aurora, IL-based Premier Exteriors has provided siding, soffit, window, fascia and gutter installation services to Chicago and its outlying suburbs for more than 25 years. Premier Exteriors serves a demanding market consisting primarily of individual homeowners, regional builders and developers. Through 2003, Premier Exteriors maintained a paper-based system for managing all aspects of its business, from accounting and administration to sales.

THE CHALLENGE

To improve responsiveness to customers while simplifying administration, Premier Exteriors’ general manager, Phil Maxstadt, decided to invest in the company’s first server.

While the particular mission of Premier is working with homeowners, builders and developers on residential exteriors, gutters, windows, doors and siding, Maxstadt admits the company’s core competency is really project management.

“Making our business work is about getting the right people the right information so they can do the right thing at the right time,” Maxstadt said. “It is a complex dance and we’ve gotten very good at it.

“Our competitive edge is doing things faster and better than our competitors. Sometimes the right information comes from our vendors and other times it comes from our staff or the sales force. Wherever it comes from, I knew that a three-person administrative staff sharing two PCs in order to oversee 40 crew members just wasn’t going to work.”

FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN

Maxstadt’s business needed to evolve past its reliance on paper-driven systems and the unproductive process of ‘phone tag.’ Although he’d never managed a new server project before, Maxstadt wouldn’t let fear of the unknown stop his progress. He knew he couldn’t grow his business when his staff outnumbered the office’s computer resources.

“We revamped our web presence before upgrading our network,” Maxstadt said. “When you set-up a website, you invite people to reach out to you electronically. When your customers can reach you immediately, their expectations change. They want a response NOW. Seeing prospects and customers take advantage of the website confirmed that we were on the right track.”

According to Maxstadt, sales proposal volume noticeably increased and a dedicated sales executive was hired to absorb the new workload. “With more leads, more suppliers and more subcontractors performing more work, we needed better information throughout the day, as events occur, not just when staff can be reached by phone.”

Maxstadt’s biggest concern was to get his company on the right technology path, while also making the upgrade work within his very limited budget. In late 2004, Premier Exteriors made the leap, acquired several new PC’s and installed them in a peer-to-peer network. Then Maxstadt began planning for the inevitable next step.

KEY ISSUES

According to Robert Hamilton (techtangle.com), the business consultant hired by Premier Exteriors to assist the conversion to server-based computing, any server product requires regular care and maintenance — there is no product on the market that you can just turn on and abandon.

Hamilton and Premier Exteriors selected Small Business Server 2003 from Microsoft because it includes a number of important features for small business; including e-mail, fax, database, collaboration, back-up and security – all in one package with a simplified, wizard driven set-up and management via single console.

“Big companies have entire departments that manage these kinds of solutions,” Hamilton said. “At $599 (MSRP) SBS2003 –is a new high-water mark for small businesses that want to improve collaboration thanks to the tight integration of Exchange 2003, SharePoint and Outlook. All that said, though, SBS2003 is more than just an operating system upgrade, and you need more than just a basic understanding of networks to make it work.”

While the decision to use SBS2003 was simple, the most important step of any SBS2003 implementation is understanding and preserving a company’s sacred cows. “SBS2003 is a powerful set of enterprise tools re-engineered for small businesses.”

Hamilton advises anyone considering SBS2003 to take the time to determine which features are must-haves that need to be activated immediately and which are nice-to-haves that can be brought up after the users have completed an initial orientation process.

The opportunities for streamlining workflow through the office to the desktops and outside are numerous, and every company’s culture absorbs change at a different rate. “The last thing you want to do is to re-engineer the core workflows to such a degree that hardly any employee can follow it, or document it,” advises Hamilton. “Especially with small businesses, where routines are sometimes entrenched, knocking over the sacred cows all at once can be disorienting.”

DETERMINING ROI BY ELIMINATING COMPLEXITY

The move to server-based networking enabled Premier Exteriors to achieve better management of customer-related information. Premier also automated key record keeping (and in the process improved responsiveness to customers, without increasing staff).

According to Hamilton, “What Phil (Maxstadt) needed is a reliable way to reduce reliance on ad-hoc interactions among people on any given project. There will always be ad-hoc communication but gambling that critical information gets communicated properly is dangerous, especially as you increase the number of active projects. Mistakes mean re-work and I know that Phil hates rework more than anything.”

“So many people fixate on the technology instead of the process the technology improves,” Maxstadt said. “What we wanted and what we accomplished was just a better way to work together. Putting a dollar amount on these things is difficult to do. Over time, we expect to see a reduction in rework and customer service issues. What we wanted to accomplish, beyond the need to perform more work, more reliably, with the same resources, is the need to free people from as much drudge-work as possible. It is easier to keep your staff motivated if you can minimize the ‘adminis-trivia’ that needs to be done manually – if you can automate the dull tasks, you can spend more quality time on customer issues.”

Maxstadt knows his staff is getting more done in the same amount of time. “But I don’t think ROI is the right way to describe the efficiencies we’re gaining,” he said. “The things were doing now are an order of magnitude beyond faster/cheaper. Since we’ve never experienced shared calendars and bid documentation accessible from anywhere, it is hard to put a specific dollar value on these things.”

“This is not about technology. This is about our ability to rapidly create and collaborate on documents. This is really a better way to manage projects: rapidly understand the opportunity, gather the relevant info and agree on the details of a proposal and send it to a prospective client. With all these moving parts, shortening the time on all those cycles was essential to increase our share of bids “won” and in enabling our team to create better quality bids that are delivered faster.”

Maxstadt reasons that the company is now bidding on five more projects each week with no increase in staff.

Maxstadt claims he worried about adding technical complexity and candidly comments that complexity in any business can be bad. “We’re not in the business of making sure our network technology works. Our customers don’t care about our network, or server, or intranet. When you’re still doing things manually and thinking about collaboration, it all seems overwhelming. But what I have discovered that my team now has greater clarity around what we need to do to deliver what our customers need. As far as I’m concerned, the complexity has been absorbed by the technology, where it belongs, freeing people to be able to think smarter about our customers. By adding SBS, we’ve actually reduced complexity.”

 

SIDEBAR:
SIDEBAR:

GOTCHAS

According to Robert Hamilton (www.techtangle.com), the consultant hired by Premier Exteriors to manage their network, here are some of the Small Business Server “gotchas” you should understand if you’re thinking about SBS for your business…

1) Regular care and feeding. No matter what anyone tells you, Small Business Server requires some regular care and feeding. Because there are so many server functions inside the SBS package, monitoring and reporting is something you need to stay on top of. It does an excellent job of revealing open issues, and configuration problems, but it is not something you can just turn-on and abandon.
2) Smooth set-up more likely in consistent environment. The fact that all our machines were XP sp2 greatly simplified the entire process.
3) It’s not as easy as Microsoft claims – but it is close. You need more than a basic understanding of networks to make it work, especially if you are integrating it into a functioning network infrastructure and migrating users/settings/files/profiles
4) Watch feature creep. SBS has so many great features it is easy to be seduced by all the possibilities. Have a plan for introducing new features to your employees. Too many new features too fast can quickly become overwhelming.
5) Watch the wiring. If you’re in an old building, make sure that new wiring is anticipated in your budget.

 

Comments