Sweeney Metal Fabricators Grows Revenue, Saves 8 Hours Every Week with Paperless Parts and JobBOSS Integration

Background

Sweeney Metal Fabricators, Inc., based in Nashua, New Hampshire, is a leading provider of Sheet Metal, CNC Machining, and CNC Turning in the Northeast. Founded by John Sweeney in 1988, the shop now has over two dozen employees and caters to nearly all sectors of manufacturing, including the high-tech, military, and medical sectors.

Challenge

For years, Sweeney Metal Fabricators used the ERP platform JobBOSS for all of its operational needs, including quoting. The quoting process was very labor-intensive, where they would look at a stack of drawings to try to figure out what the process required and then enter all of that data into their ERP system. Chris Sweeney, the shop’s Director of Operations since 1998, recognized that there was a need for a software solution solely dedicated to quoting that could work alongside their ERP system.

When Chris came across Paperless Parts, he knew that it would be the right solution for his shop; he was intrigued by the platform’s part interrogation and ability to deliver more accurate quotes significantly quicker. For the following three years, he continued to use JobBOSS for the majority of his business operations and Paperless Parts to streamline the quoting process. This enabled Chris to reap the benefits of JobBOSS’ usefulness in a realm of operational areas and Paperless Parts’ advanced functionality to transform the shop’s quoting and get more team members involved in the process.

Still, by having the two systems working separately from one another, Chris and his team struggled with having to manually input quote-specific information from Paperless Parts to JobBOSS. “Our biggest question was how we could get the high-quality data we had from quoting through Paperless Parts into the other system quickly”, Chris said. “We really just wanted processing our orders to be about verifying prices, deliveries, and part numbers, so we didn’t want to keep doubling our efforts in terms of data entry.”

The doubling of efforts Chris and team experienced not only meant slower quoting and booking processes, but it also increased the risk for human error and made it more difficult to harness the full potential of both Paperless Parts and JobBOSS; integrating the two systems, Chris knew, would be the ideal way to further streamline his shop’s internal operations.

Solution

Paperless Parts integrated with JobBOSS to give Sweeney the level of efficiency it was looking for between its two software solutions. Firstly, the integration saves Chris and team valuable time in addition to the time they were already saving using Paperless Parts for their quoting needs. In total, the team saves 8 hours every week because of the integration and over 5 minutes on every line item ordered. “Because of the integration, we’re able to quote more jobs consistently and I am often able to offload those quotes to other members of the team”, Chris said. “That time has allowed me to focus on building revenue in other areas of the business.”

The nature of Paperless Parts and the integration has made it far more feasible for more people to get involved with quoting at Sweeney. Quoting used to require a very experienced, knowledgeable person with extensive verification of numbers; now, through automation, Chris said, “People are off and running quickly and I have the confidence that they will not miss anything in the quotes.”

“The integration has simplified the quote to order process. The detailed parts of quoting are not something that everyone on the team can do. We are in a time where it is really hard to hire people. We are looking at automation changes on our production floor, so it is only natural for us to look at automating things we hadn’t thought to automate before, such as order entry and the quoting process. By automating this, I can hire someone who can ramp up quickly and there is a level of confidence that they are not missing things. You only get one opportunity with a customer to tell them you missed something, if that. Now I don’t feel like I am taking as much risk. Customer confidence is incredibly important.” – Chris Sweeney, Director of Operations

In addition to the time Chris saves in the quoting and booking processes, he has also benefited from improvements in the quality of the data living in the systems. “The confidence we have in our numbers continues to go up and up”, Chris said. Not only is the data very consistent and protected from user error in the quoting process, but the Paperless Parts system is also flexible enough that the team can go in and easily update numbers and make these tweaks globally. This data is reflected in JobBOSS with the integration.

With the integration, Chris and his team are now able to facilitate quotes from anywhere quicker than ever, elevating the customer experience. “When we quote these days off-site or after hours, our customers don’t even realize that we’re not in our office cranking out quotes,” Chris said. “It gives our customers the feeling that we’re stopping everything to get them what they need.”

Results

Using Paperless Parts and its integration with JobBOSS, Sweeney Metal Fabricators:

• Saves 8 hours every week: By streamlining the quoting process and not ever having to do double data entry into the ERP system, Chris and his team save close to a full work day every single week.
• Saves over 5 minutes for every line item ordered: Paperless Parts’ automation and its ability to integrate with Sweeney’s ERP system means that Chris saves more than 5 minutes on every line item, accumulating to over an hour and half saved every day.
• Grows revenue: A higher quote throughput means that the Sweeney team is able to choose the types of jobs it takes, growing the shop’s revenue from more lucrative jobs that fit its priorities.
• Reduces human error in the quoting process: Chris and his team have been able to reduce the risk of mistakes made in the quoting and data entry processes. “The integration has essentially set up guardrails for potential misses in quotes,” Chris said.
• Disperses quoting work to more team members: By simplifying quoting and reducing the risk for human error, Chris is now able to pass quoting work onto new, less experienced team members with the confidence that they will be able to deliver fast, accurate quotes.