Siteline Interior Carpentry Gains Insight it Uses to Expand Operations Profitably
Industry
Construction
Service
Domo
In Business
Since 2003
Customer
Since 2018
Siteline Interior Carpentry, Inc.
Some companies expand operations with the goal of capturing new market share. Siteline Interior Carpentry, Inc. expanded its operations because its customers begged it to do so. Launched in Chicago in 2003, the company provides discriminating commercial customers with professional, high-quality carpentry, cabinetry, and millwork services. Maintaining its reputation for consistent excellence requires comprehensive insight into its workforce, project costs, scheduling, and more. Siteline gains that insight with help from BT Partners and Domo.
"Domo provides a window into our operations that empowers management and staff alike to make better decisions, while BT Partners helps us leverage Domo for even more gain."
Growth Brings Challenges
As Siteline’s customers expanded their own operations beyond the state, they would fly in the Siteline team to perform the work. It happened often enough that the company opened satellite offices in Los Angeles and Austin. “It’s a good problem to have,” jokes Greg Mangieri, Director of Operations for Siteline. “We made ourselves indispensable.”
As the company grew, it became increasingly difficult for management to wrap their arms around all of the moving parts. Siteline is engaged in fast-paced, labor-intensive work, and costs can quickly escalate if not continually monitored. Additionally, with operations in multiple states with different base pay rates, it was difficult to accurately compare projects’ profitability.
Scheduling was another challenge — ensuring personnel with the right skills were matched to a project. “We were using multiple software applications, plus dozens of spreadsheets to manage each of these business areas, but we had no way to bring that data together,” recalls Mangieri.
Domo Proves Transformational
Mangieri’s predecessor made the smart choice of selecting Domo and BT Partners to help. “It’s been transformational,” he says. “Domo provides a window into our operations that empowers management and staff alike to make better decisions, while BT Partners helps us leverage Domo for even more gain.”
Siteline uses the analytic data it gets through Domo to help identify projects that show signs of going off track, and then works to right them. “We can stay out in front, and as a result our jobs are more efficient and more profitable,” Mangieri notes. “Things move fast around here and there are many working parts. We need to be proactive so we can keep our projects moving along on time and on budget.”
Workforce Optimization
Mangieri estimates that as much as 80% of the company’s revenue comes from labor. With so much at stake, Siteline works to understand and optimize its teams’ performance. BT Partners is helping Siteline discover new and powerful ways to leverage Domo’s capabilities — including uncovering metrics surrounding its labor resources.
“Before Domo, we didn’t have an easy way of knowing how teams were performing on any job,” Mangieri says. “Our estimates of a jobs’ performance were based on hunches. Now, we are working with the facts. We combine payroll data with contract data and estimate data and can see if we’re hitting our marks on labor hours, labor costs, and project progress.”
The same data gives Siteline management insight into each carpenter and foreman’s productivity levels — by comparing labor rates against the project’s percentage complete. Management is using the information to ensure the appropriate personnel are placed on each job.
“We built Domo cards that show each foreman’s past and current performance,” explains Steve Mike, Operations Manager. “We’re pulling data from both Sage 100 Construction and Real Estate (CRE) and from spreadsheets to give us some unique insight.”
Another Domo card, or report, tracks residency requirements for projects in municipalities that require a percentage of the workforce to live within its limits. Yet another provides an easily accessible phone book of each project’s personnel. “We’re creating smart, quick views into the data we need to monitor on a daily or weekly basis,” Mike adds. “Seemingly simple queries like these would take hours to produce without Domo. And we can share the queries too, putting the information into the hands of our field staff in near real time.”
Distributing work schedules is another example of how Siteline is using Domo to communicate more effectively. The company performs its project scheduling in spreadsheets and uses Domo to intelligently deliver scheduling data to each of its carpenters. “This was a benefit we didn’t anticipate,” notes Mike. “We can have up to 250 carpenters working on any day, and previously we would have had to send the day’s schedule to each one manually. With Domo, we can schedule the report to run each day and have it automatically sent to our carpenters. It’s a tremendous time-saver and ensures everyone is up to date.”
Connecting Vital Business Applications
Siteline finds the single largest benefit of using Domo is the cross-company, cross-function visibility it provides. With so many projects going at once and with personnel relying on different business software applications, it wouldn’t be possible to unite that information without Domo. Another key benefit is that even if Siteline outgrows or changes one or more of its current business applications, it can continue to use Domo, leveraging the connectors that allow it to pull data from virtually any other application.
By connecting the business applications Siteline relies on, BT Partners is bringing together information that is essential for Siteline’s operations. “BT Partners configured everything, developed many of our cards, and trained us to create our own, which has been empowering.”
He concludes, “BT Partners is a real partner in this effort. One call and they’re on it. They are invested in our operation and really want us to succeed. Their knowledge of Domo is extensive — they are a great resource.”
