JONAS SOFTWARE PUTS ACTION ELECTRICAL & MECHANICAL CONTRACTORS ON THE CUTTING EDGE OF INFORMATION MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY

Executive Summary

To keep pace with the rapidly changing construction industry, a leading specialty contracting firm needed to replace their legacy software with cutting edge technology. Jonas Software quickly got their attention.

Customer Profile

Action Electrical & Mechanical Contractors is a turnkey specialty contractor that provides plan and spec, design-build and maintenance services to a wide range of clients in the commercial and industrial markets. In addition to electrical and mechanical construction and service, Action offers sheet metal fabrication, pipe fitting and millwright services.

Founded in 1945 as Painter Electric, the Smyrna, GA-based company was purchased by Mickey S. Poe in 1978. At that time, the company was a relatively small electrical contractor generating just $600K a year in revenue. Under Poe’s leadership, however, Action has grown into a thriving, full-service union contracting firm with $53M in annual revenues and solid ranking on ENR’s Top 600 Specialty Contractors list. The company has distinguished itself from the competition by consistently completing plant shutdown work on schedule, which gets the customer back online without delay.

To stay informed about industry changes and network with other leaders in the electrical and mechanical construction field, Action is an active member in a number of professional trade organizations, including the Mechanical Contractors Association of America (MCAA).

Business Challenge

At Action, ‘work hard, play hard’ is more than an attitude – it’s a way of life. Yet the company’s legacy software systems were making some of Action’s staff work a little too hard. Using various stand-alone applications and multiple databases for accounting, service, time and material (T&M) billing and purchasing created the need for duplicate data entry. Keeping all of these systems current was very time consuming and left too much room for error. In addition, multi-step work-arounds were required to calculate accurate job costs, manage service operations and generate project management reports.

William Redding, the company’s Chief Operating Officer (COO), decided it was time for a technology upgrade and initially looked at a third party service management solution that interfaced with the company’s current accounting software. When that option didn’t work out, Redding began the search for a new construction management solution to replace the company’s disparate systems. “I wanted a software program that had strong integration,” he says, “and a solid service management component.”

Jonas Solution

After evaluating nearly a dozen different systems, Action selected Jonas Software. “What initially got my attention is how Jonas listens to their customers and continually improves their program,” Redding states. “They are very proactive about turning customer needs into software enhancements.” In fact, once Action became a customer, Jonas quickly enhanced the Payroll module’s core functionality to accommodate their complex, multi-craft, multi-union requirements.

Jonas’ integrated, modular system allowed Action to choose the specific applications they needed to efficiently manage their entire operations. Using one solution with a single database, Action integrated core accounting and job costing with service management and dispatching, and added functions like purchasing, inventory, T&M billing, equipment management and tool crib tracking.

Action also added the Jonas Document Management System (DMS) to their solution set to electronically manage and share the volumes of paperwork that flow through the company. “More companies are moving toward paperless processes, and we actually looked at another document management system before we got Jonas,” Redding explains. “The cost for that system was phenomenal – I had to sit down when they told me how much it was going to be. The Jonas DMS offers full functionality at an affordable price.”

It’s been just over a year since Action purchased Jonas and Redding has used the time wisely. “Jonas spent a lot of time learning how we do things and helping us improve our processes,” he says. “Although change is hard, and I did get some resistance at first, modifying the way we operate to better fit with Jonas was worth the effort. We ended up with a very successful conversion.”

Benefits for Action Contractors

Although Action has realized many benefits from their Jonas solution, increased efficiency due to integration and single data entry has made the biggest impact. Time entered once in the service system, for instance, automatically flows to Payroll and to Accounts Receivable for billing.

Accounts payable (AP) processing, which was previously a full time job, is a great example of this new efficiency. Today, the person in charge of AP also handles bank account reconciliation and asset management. “One of our goals with Jonas wasn’t to cut back on staff, but to handle more work with the same number of people,” Redding explains. “After converting to Jonas, I believe we could handle 50% more work volume without adding staff.”

Accurate job costing is another benefit realized by Action. “Greater efficiency allows us to stay current with our committed costs,” Redding says. “We didn’t have that before.” The ability to consolidate tasks and shift responsibilities has also allowed Action to offer more support to their project managers. “Not only do our project managers have more current information, they have more time to manage their jobs,” Redding says. “Now they can see when a cost is getting out of line and they have time to dig in and correct the problem.”

Looking Forward

At Action, ‘work hard, play hard’ is still a way of life. But with Jonas in place, duplicate data entry is a thing of the past. “We’ve cut a lot of steps from our accounting procedures compared to our old system,” Redding states, “and we’ve got easier, more flexible options around everyday tasks. Jonas is a good fit for us.”

Looking forward, Action plans to further streamline their service operations by implementing Jonas Mobile, possibly with GPS tracking functionality. Eventually, they will add Jonas’ eService portal solution, which allows customers to securely log work orders and access account information from any Internet connection.

“The construction industry is changing at a very fast pace. To keep up, you need to have a system like Jonas in place,” Redding states. “If we had stayed with our old system, we probably would have been left behind in our ability to process information and monitor the financial health of our company. By moving to Jonas, which is on the cutting edge of technology, Action is now on the cutting edge of information management.”