There are two things Scott Murphy has learned from a lifetime in the granite and marble business:

1. You must be willing to change in order to survive and,
2. Quality always wins out.

“When I opened Dream Stone in 2000 I would have told you point blank that I would never work for the prices I am getting now,” Murphy says.

“Ten years ago Uba Tuba was going for $65 per sq ft in our area. Now there are guys doing it in Denver for $25 per sq ft installed. They have driven prices so far down, how do you ever get them back up?”

Well, maybe you don’t.

If They Pay, We’ll Go Anywhere

But, that hasn’t stopped Murphy. His company, Dream Stone Marble & Granite in Longmont, Colorado, has responded to the downward pressure on prices by diversifying its product offering, expanding its market area and focusing on high-end clients who appreciate the kind of quality Dream Stone is able to deliver.

“We work everywhere in the state of Colorado and we ship some of our jobs all over the country,” Murphy says. “We do a lot of work for Sears Home Improvement. We do work for flooring companies. We do some big millwork companies. We work for stainless steel companies, as well as custom home builders and even Harry the Homeowner, who walks in off of the street. All of our business is pretty much word of mouth.”

And there’s more. Dream Stone has also partnered with a company in Arkansas to manufacture custom shower systems under the brand name Salita Shower Systems And, Dream Stone utilizes its two, five-axis and one, four-axis CNCs to do custom stone carving, as well as one-off prototypes for millwork houses. “Bring me some wood and I’ll make anything you want,” quips Murphy.

Taking The High Road

Of course, the company also pursues more traditional countertop business, getting down and dirty with competitors who think the only way to land a job is to lower their prices. Murphy says that almost always results in lower quality and bad service, a game which Dream Stone refuses to play. “We recently brought on a big builder that was told by his fabrication company they didn’t pay enough to get a good job,” he says. “I don’t get that.”

Nor, does he understand why some stone importers in his market have decided to sell slabs directly to homeowners. “The homeowner builds himself an A-frame and buys the slab at an inflated price from the importer,” Murphy explains. “If the homeowner has a fabricator, the importer gives the fabricator a kickback. So, now the fabricator is not paying for any material, he is just getting paid for labor, and he is fabricating the slab in the customer’s garage. So what happens if the slab gets broken? Who is responsible – the homeowner or the fabricator?”

In some ways, it’s like the Wild West all over again. But Murphy, who is an experienced fabricator with a reputation for delivering quality product, is quick on the draw. “We still do a lot of the high-end work,” he says. “I am known for the high-end. That will always be there. At any given time we could have a high-end job going as well as 20 tract homes. I don’t even know how you could survive as a granite fabrication company today without some kind of diversification.”

Want to know more? At Moraware, we make software for countertop fabricators. CounterGo is countertop drawing, layout, and estimating software. JobTracker is scheduling software that helps you eliminate the time you waste looking for job folders. RemnantSwap is a free place to buy and sell granite remnants with fabricators near you.

Profile at a Glance:

Custom fabricators of natural stone, marble and quartz surfacing, Schneider Stone of Asheboro, NC has been in business since 2001. In 2007 brothers Paul and Ryan Boger, both employees of Schneider Stone at the time, purchased the company.

“When my brother started working here there 6-8 employees,” says Paull Boger. “At our peak there were about 48 people and, today, there are about 40.”

Boger says his company’s bread and butter market is residential and remodeling, with about 15% coming from commercial customers. The company is considering expanding into solid surface as a vehicle for the company to become a one-stop source for the commercial market. Schneider Stone currently has four locations: Asheboro, Greensboro, Chapel Hill and Wilmington, North Carolina.

The Old System:

“We inherited quoting software designed for the glass industry,” Boger explains. “With us having four locations it just couldn’t keep up. It got to where I was calling our IT company everyday saying the quoting system was down.”

Even more frustrating, there was no way to forecast where the next problem would crop up. “We would have issues at one place and not the other, and then suddenly we were having issues everywhere,” he recalls. “Two IT companies later we determined that the software really wasn’t up to the task.”

The Solution:

“I had heard about Moraware for what seems like forever,” Boger says. “When we called the company we told them that we had an interest in JobTracker but what we really needed was a quoting system that worked in multiple locations – and we needed it right away. CounterGo sounded like the solution we were looking for.”

Having already dealt with the vagaries of an unruly software program, with no apparent way to address critical issues other than trial and error, the Bogers set a high priority on finding a company with a good track record for providing customer support.

Boger likes the way CounterGo gets “smarter” the more it is used. “It builds on itself as we add things in, which is nice. We have three or four people using it. One person might quote a laminated edge with a half bull ogee and then enters that into the system. From that point on that edge profile is part of the quoting system for the next person who comes along. You just use what’s been done for you.”

Next to its reliability, the folks at Schneider Stone like how much time CounterGo saves the company. “It cuts the time to generate a quote in half, if not more. A standard quote in the system might have taken 10-15 minutes before. Now, we get it done in five minutes.”

Since CounterGo generates a drawing with every quote, Boger says communication between the company and its customers is greatly enhanced. “People would come in with their kitchen drawn out on a napkin,” he says. “That left a lot of room for misinterpretation. Now that a dimensioned drawing is attached to the quote, there is total clarity of what we have quoted.”

“Just like with any change, we were skeptical at the beginning if CounterGo was really the solution,” remembers Boger. “That is why we were asking how available Moraware would be for support. Come to find out we’ve only called them four or five times, and that’s really all we’ve needed.”

Want to know more? At Moraware, we make software for countertop fabricators. CounterGo is countertop drawing, layout, and estimating software. JobTracker is scheduling software that helps you eliminate the time you waste looking for job folders. RemnantSwap is a free place to buy and sell granite remnants with fabricators near you.

Profile at a Glance:

Rocks Tops is currently located in Clovis, New Mexico, but will soon be moving the operation to Texas. The company now fabricates and installs natural stone, quartz and solid surface countertops exclusively for big box store customers, but will expand into retail sales once the move is complete.

Rock Tops take pride in being a full-service custom countertops fabricator that is able to produce quality countertops at a lower installed cost than its competitors.

The Old System:

The company was using a bidding software program from another company. According to office manager, Cynthia Zolman, the program did a reasonable job generating a quotation, but it took longer to produce a bid, and there were sometimes problems with accuracy.

“Going back and comparing bids in the two programs,” she says, “I found that we had missed some things in the old program that CounterGo was able to pick up.”

The Solution:

Because Rock Tops was already using JobTracker, CounterGo was able to integrate into the workflow system almost seamlessly. That saved the company time entering customer information.

“We also like CounterGo for our box store business because it is very easy for us to generate change orders when needed,” Zolman explains. “All of our quotes now include a dimensioned drawing, which we can send them immediately electronically. Even though they are not quoting using the CounterGo system, it is very easy for them to adjust a quote when they see our drawing. It is much more efficient, which saves everyone time and money.”

Zolman thinks CounterGo will come in handy when the company begins selling to retail customers in its new location. “It will allow us to standardize our quoting system,” she says. “All of the materials and colors are already in the program, along with pricing, which makes it very easy to put together a quote.”

“The combination of JobTracker and CounterGo make it possible for us to be more professional with our customers, which translates into a happier clientele,” Zolman says.

It is that flexibility which has made it possible for Rock Tops to customize the way they track customers over a large geographical area. “We wanted Moraware to incorporate a display of customers’ activities using Google Maps,” says Zolman.

“Integrating that feature into the program is something our in-house computer programmer has done for us. We cover most of the Texas panhandle and eastern New Mexico. Now, at a glance, we can see where our customers are located and the stage of completion of their projects. This helps us better serve our customers.”

Want to know more? At Moraware, we make software for countertop fabricators. CounterGo is countertop drawing, layout, and estimating software. JobTracker is scheduling software that helps you eliminate the time you waste looking for job folders. RemnantSwap is a free place to buy and sell granite remnants with fabricators near you.

It’s not often you get the chance to meet someone from the Old South anymore. Jeremy Werthan, of Werthan LLC just happens to be one of those people. His family roots go back to 1868, when Meier Werthan began selling rags from a vendor cart in Nashville.

That evolved into manufacturing burlap bags in what was once the Marathon Motors building. Over the years the Werthans expanded their sphere of influence to include making paper and plastic bags, distributing auto parts and opening a check printing company.

“We were involved in a lot of different businesses,” Jeremy Werthan says rather dismissively, “some of which were more profitable than others.”

Jeremy was an investment banker and helped run a hedge fund around the turn of the 21st century. But the world of high finance wasn’t very satisfying for him. “I was really disenchanted with coming home and not having much to show for what I had done that day,” he remembers. “There were a lot of deals, but very little substance.”

The School Of Hard Knocks

So he decided to buy a business. “At the time, everything was very overvalued – there was just no buying a company at the right price,” he says.

Long story short, Werthan’s interest in granite was piqued when he tried to get quotes for replacing his kitchen countertops. Turns out, there were only two companies in town that offered granite countertops and they were expensive. “I thought the pricing was outrageous,” he says. “I thought maybe there is some margin there. It got me thinking.”

So, he bought a container of blanks from China. Then, while waiting for the blanks to arrive he bought a shop full of equipment while attending Coverings 2002 in Orlando. The next order of business was to find a shop to put it in, which he did.

“I never got the container of blanks,” he recalls. “The guy took my money and it never showed up. That was a lesson learned. I haven’t had any dealings with China since.”

Finding Customers – And Employees

But Werthan had acquired a shop and there was all this equipment on its way, so he felt it was time to get to know the folks who would be supplying him with granite. “I hung out at those places,” he says. “I got to know the managers, got to know the people and got to know the customers who were walking in.”

And he began chatting up those customers. “I would walk around with them and say, ‘Do you have a fabricator? We do it. Let’s go talk.’ I was poaching customers.”

Through networking Werthan found experienced fabricators and hired them. Fortunately, he hired well. In the summer of 2002, Werthan LLC had five employees. Today it has 35.

“We have automated a lot,” he says. “In 2006 I bought a robot saw/water jet and I bought a couple of line polishers. We extended the shop by two-thirds – from 10,000 to 30,000 sq ft.”

More Products

Werthan LLC mostly fabricates custom granite for high-end retail residential customers, but also does some work for tract builders and last year began going after commercial work. The commercial connection prompted the company to add solid surface to the product offering.

“Solid surface is beautiful,” Werthan says. “It’s a whole new division, a whole new area of the shop, a whole different schedule, and it’s a whole different set of people, equipment, everything. The production solid surface gets us into the commercial market and acts as a feeder for the quartz. Let’s say most of what the project uses is solid surface, but they have needs for stone or quartz, then we get the bleed off from that. Our goal is to get to about 40% more commercial. Everything else will be high-end residential custom.”

Want to know more? At Moraware, we make software for countertop fabricators. CounterGo is countertop drawing, layout, and estimating software. JobTracker is scheduling software that helps you eliminate the time you waste looking for job folders. RemnantSwap is a free place to buy and sell granite remnants with fabricators near you.

It’s not often you see a mid-size fabrication company where the new owner purchases the operation and then goes to work in the shop; where the main showroom is located across town from the fab shop; and where the company opens a satellite showroom 100 miles away and stocks it with slabs, just so customers can pick their colors locally without having to drive into town.

Add to that a general manager who knows the company could bring in more jobs by increasing its Web advertising but, frankly, is happy with the volume of work they are currently turning out.

Meet USA Stone in Nashville, TN.

“It may sound crazy,” says general manger, Darryl Miller, “but we don’t want to get too big. I’ve seen companies get too big, too fast. Then they lose that attention to detail and they lose focus on customer service.”

Mostly Retail

Customer service is huge for USA Stone, because the company lives and dies on referrals from satisfied customers. “The bulk of our work is renovation,” Miller explains, “and the majority of our jobs come from referrals. We track where all of our sales are coming from, so we know that most of it comes from satisfied customers.”

Of course, everyone says their quality and customer service are the best in town. But listen to Miller talk and you begin to think that, maybe, USA Stone is the real deal. Take their policy on correcting mistakes, for example.

“We are like anybody else,” he says. “We are not 100% all the time. If we mess up, we do whatever it takes to make it right. We don’t hesitate.

Above all, we don’t offer the customer a discount to keep a sub-standard countertop. We replace it. We are not in the discount business. I’ve had customers ask if it wouldn’t be cheaper just to knock $300 off the price. I tell them we don’t want their friends to see something wrong with the top and know they accepted it at a discount. That’s not the impression we want to make.”

It’s a philosophy that seems to work for USA Stone. According to Miller, the company is not only profitable, it has grown every year since he was hired over four years ago.

What Recession?

“We really haven’t been affected by the recession,” he explains. “We have a very simple philosophy here: it’s about making the customer happy. We don’t have high pressure sales. Even when doing the template, if I get any idea that the customer is unsure about the stone they have selected I tell them, ‘We are not going to rush you. If you are not 100% sure that this is what you want to do, we can start all over.’ It’s all focused on the customer and making their experience the best it can be. It works for us.”

USA Stone stocks 80-100 different colors in the warehouse behind its Nashville showroom, which is currently undergoing a major renovation. That comes on the heels of opening the satellite showroom in Cookville, which involved investing heavily in improvements to the building. It seems an awful big bite for a 12 man operation.

“We do have overhead,” Miller acknowledges. “We have no desire to be the low price leader and we are not foolish enough to think that we can do all the stone work in Nashville. We have a highly focused target market. If people are looking for someone that is going to give them a good experience, from the sales end all the way through to the finished product, that is where we come in.”

Want to know more? At Moraware, we make software for countertop fabricators. CounterGo is countertop drawing, layout, and estimating software. JobTracker is scheduling software that helps you eliminate the time you waste looking for job folders. RemnantSwap is a free place to buy and sell granite remnants with fabricators near you.

Wax. What kind of company would fire a fabricator just for having it on his person? Turns out, Old World Stone, in Huntley, IL will. And for good reason.

“When I first started making stone countertops I didn’t really know that much about the business,” explains Jim Vaccaro, owner of Old World Stone.

“I kept catching the guys with wax and I asked them what they were using it for. ‘Oh,’ they said, ‘this is for little spots where it is hard to get to, where it’s hard to polish.’ I said, ‘No! Our customers are paying for a polished job, so polish it. There is no more wax allowed in the shop.’ Then, later, I found out a couple of guys were sneaking wax into the shop and I said, ‘If I find any wax in the shop, someone’s going to get fired over it.’ We haven’t had any wax since. That was eight years ago.”

It’s that uncompromising commitment to quality that has helped Vaccaro grow his business from start-up to becoming a major player in Chicagoland over the last 10 years. And that’s with no prior experience.

Serendipity or Insanity?

“I started this company with a couple of partners,” he explains. “They had come to me asking questions about starting a business, like where do you find a lawyer, and an accountant? So I said, ‘Do you guys want another partner in this thing?’ And they said, ‘We thought you would never ask.’ That lasted about a year. They just wanted to build the tops quickly and get them out the door. We parted company and they are still dong one or two kitchens per week, and we are doing 3-4 kitchens per day.”

A plumber by trade, Vaccaro has dipped his toe into all kinds of water, including home and commercial construction and owning his very own ostrich farm. “We had 43 ostriches at my house. It was something else trying not to get kicked at feeding time.”

So, even though he was a total newbie when it came to stone fabrication, Vaccaro knew how to hire the right people – and he is good at solving problems. Things like rodding all countertops at every cutout to reduce breakage in transit; furnishing uniforms for the installers and requiring them to wear booties anytime they entered a customer’s home; or completely changing his customer base from 95% new construction in 2008 to 95% kitchen and bath dealer in 2009.

Facing Reality

“In 2008 I looked at my general manager and said, ‘We are either going to roll over and die, or we need to get some work in here.’ So we hired a fellow who was familiar with a lot of kitchen and bath companies and he kept us alive,” Vaccaro remembers. “He started bringing the work in. We managed to do about the same volume in 2009 as we did in 2008, and we increased 30% in 2010. In 2011 we went up about 18%, and this past year we went up another 18%.”

It was quite an accomplishment, especially when one considers the highly competitive Chicago market, where kitchen and bath dealers had become practically an endangered species. This was in an environment where it seemed the only thing that was mattered was how low you could go on price.

“We only approached the dealers who were really interested in a quality product,” he says. “We would just stop in and keep introducing ourselves over and over again until they knew who we were. Finally, that job would come around where they would call us at 8 in the morning and ask if we could come and measure a kitchen right away. Our response was always, ‘What time do you want us there?’ Then once they used us, and then tried us again, we would get all their work.”

Want to know more? At Moraware, we make software for countertop fabricators. CounterGo is countertop drawing, layout, and estimating software. JobTracker is scheduling software that helps you eliminate the time you waste looking for job folders. RemnantSwap is a free place to buy and sell granite remnants with fabricators near you.

It’s pretty much a given: if you’ve been in business more than five years and have experienced rapid and steady growth during that time, opportunities most likely exist to improve your operational efficiency and, hence, the bottom line. At least, that’s what Chris Schnetzler, Owner of Distinctive Marble & Granite in Powell, Ohio believed. Which is why he brought in Chip Gleine, a man with more than 13 years experience in the countertop business, to take over the role of General Manager.

“Distinctive Marble & Granite has been around since 2001 and they had a good base of business,” Gleine explains, “but they had operational issues in terms of quick response times to customer’s needs and scheduling issues. So we tightened up the operation. We put scheduling on track, and now we are turning all of our jobs in 3-5 days.”
Just how important that kind of organizational discipline can be is illustrated by Distinctive Marble’s numbers. “We grew sales by over 50% in 2012,” Gleine says. “It took about 10 months for us to get the operational changes done and all the procedures in place. The last two months we have finally been able to focus more on selling, which made it the biggest quarter we have ever had. We expect to grow even more in 2013 now that the procedures are in place and we can focus more on sales.”

Growth From The Inside

Keep in mind that the company did very little advertising to generate all this growth, and doesn’t rely much on technology to achieve efficiency in production. “It’s all about tightening up the ship,” says Gleine. “We have a bridge saw and a flat polisher – and we pay extreme attention to details. Everything else is done by hand.”

Gleine explains that Distinctive Marble & Granite’s marketing strategy is built almost entirely on word-of-mouth advertising. The company doesn’t advertise in local magazines and it doesn’t send out fliers, although it does attend the odd home show here and there.

“About 85% of our business is residential,” he says. “Mostly builders and retail, I would say. We have a good location. We stand behind our products 100% and we guarantee satisfaction – so we live and die with our referral business. It is a matter of company policy that we don’t ever have a bad referral.”

Follow-Through, And More Follow-Through

A longtime user of Moraware’s JobTracker program, Gleine relied heavily on its job tracking and scheduling features to build efficiencies into the operation. “Most of our growth was operational growth in how we were able to schedule in Moraware and track jobs,” he explains. “We don’t just quote a job and forget about it. We are tracking and following up on every single job we quote. We know what happens on every quote. If we lose a job we know how and why. If a customer has a better number, 9 times out of 10 we will match it.”

The same kind of attention to detail is applied to scheduling in the shop and on the installation truck. “I basically developed an operations manual to track sales and forecast lead times to help us be more efficient. We use the Activities setting in JobTracker to track activities and material selections for our sales team.”

As happens with all change, there were bumps along the way, including getting buy-in from the existing staff. “That was a challenge,” Gleine admits. “We had some turnover in the beginning. I brought in some people that I had worked with before – people we trust. At about six months we were doing pretty well. It took us about 10 months to get operationally sound.”

Want to know more? At Moraware, we make software for countertop fabricators. CounterGo is countertop drawing, layout, and estimating software. JobTracker is scheduling software that helps you eliminate the time you waste looking for job folders. RemnantSwap is a free place to buy and sell granite remnants with fabricators near you.

When Frank and Antoinette DeLorenzo started out in business 33 years ago it all seemed so straightforward. As a recent immigrant to the United States from Italy, Frank’s experience was in the marble tile business, and that is what he pursued in his new homeland. In the mid 80’s slab granite gained in popularity and the company shifted its focus to kitchen countertops.

“We have since moved away from tile, except for some of our contractor customers who want a package deal,” says Frank’s son, Joe, who oversees technical operations for the company. “And now what I call ‘basic granite’ is gone from our market. It’s crazy, when my dad was around less than 10 years ago he wouldn’t even do engineered stone – and now we are over 50% engineered stone. It’s either quartz, exotic stones or quartzite for the kitchen areas.”

Get Out The Crystal Ball

And so the evolution continues. Now that the economy is gradually improving, trying to gauge where the Los Angeles market will go next is a bit of an exercise in gazing into the future. “It’s ridiculous how many material options are out there,” Joe says.

“We cater to the high end market with very unique stones and try to figure which way the market is going. It is very difficult to read right now because everyone wants something different. I have designers coming in everyday saying, ‘I don’t know what I want, but I don’t want granite.’ Knowing what to stock these days is very difficult.”

DeLorenzo Marble & Tile, which operates out of 16,000 sq ft facility just south of Los Angeles and employs 10 people, has always cultivated a reputation for excellence. “We define ourselves on quality, where a lot of guys sell themselves on price,” Joe explains. “When I took over nine years ago the goal was to maintain or exceed my dad’s standard of quality. It’s something we were known for – if you wanted to have it done right you came to DeLorenzo. We don’t cut any corners in our work.

Embracing Technology

Maintaining that reputation for Old World excellence while staying competitive in the crowded L.A. market requires the folks at De Lorenzo Marble & Tile to adopt new technologies as they become available.

“We are fully digital from start to finish, and that includes Moraware,” Joe explains. “We integrate all of our digital processes. It’s what helps differentiate us from the guy with the skilsaw fabricating granite in the driveway. We brought in the CNC, the saw jet, the slab polisher and templating technology. We have SlabSmith as part of the digital package. People can see what they are getting ahead of time, which is an important part of the overall package.”

Not surprisingly, with such a heavy emphasis on custom work in a mostly residential market, DeLorenzo’s marketing approach is built heavily on creating and maintaining ongoing relationships. “We spend almost nothing on advertising and marketing,” Joe says. “We get our work primarily through relationships. Contractor clients and designers seem to keep us busy. That said, we’re still waiting to see if things are coming back. One week it seems that everything has recovered, and another week, not at all. Overall, however, things seem to be getting better.”

Want to know more? At Moraware, we make software for countertop fabricators. CounterGo is countertop drawing, layout, and estimating software. JobTracker is scheduling software that helps you eliminate the time you waste looking for job folders. RemnantSwap is a free place to buy and sell granite remnants with fabricators near you.

Profile at a Glance:

Southern Stone Surfaces of Nashville, TN has been in business for seven years, and specializes in natural stone and quartz surfacing countertops. The core of the business is servicing builders and cabinet companies. The company also deals with homeowners at the retail level.

Last year was Southern Stone Surfaces’ best year ever, largely due to a very healthy new home construction market in Nashville. Retail sales are normally brisk going into the holiday season leading up to Christmas. This year, the company’s regular clients kept busy right through the holidays. The company is looking forward to more growth during 2013.

The Old System:

Southern Stone used a combination of excel spreadsheets and hand-drawn layouts for generating a quotation. The spreadsheet worked for calculating square footage, but it was hard to find critical information since it was stored in different places, which meant valuable time was spent getting back to customers.

“The spreadsheet lacked integration with the rest of our processes,” Grimm explains. “We needed a better way to generate a quote.”

The Solution:

With CounterGo, Southern Stone is able to concentrate on customer relations because all the important information associated with that customer – and their project – is stored together in the same place and is easily accessible.

“CounterGo is good at capturing all the customer data that is outside normal parameters,” Grimm says. “We try to get all of the details of the job early on, so it’s easier to plan production and not overload the shop. If for some reason we run into a problem in the field and cannot complete a job, for example, you can follow up in CounterGo. Once we make a note in the system it automatically shows up in the calendar. That is very useful.”

“Little details can be the easiest things to overlook, and it always seems the little things are what stick out in the customer’s mind,” Grimm says. CounterGo helps the staff stay on top of those all important little details. “If we need to make a callback, we can review the notes and tasks for the next day. That way we make sure that the office staff is aware of what needs to be done and there are no surprises for us and, more importantly, for the customer.”

“It really helps to streamline the customer service experience,” he says. “Instead of putting customers on hold or calling them back, we can instantly search CounterGo for a customer’s information without running around the office looking for files – even if has been weeks since we talked to the client. It is a very helpful feature.”

Want to know more?

Call us today to schedule a 10-minute CounterGo demo. 866-312-9273

Profile at a Glance:

Established in 1991, Mario and Son fabricates and installs natural stone, quartz, tile and specialty products. The company operates out of 44,000 sq ft facility located in Liberty Lake, Washington, which is a suburb of Spokane. Mario and Son is one of the largest fabricators in the Pacific Northwest.

The company’s clientele includes a heavy concentration of builders as well as retail customers, some commercial, and flooring shops. Since it is located so close to the Canadian border, Mario and Son also sells fabricated product (no installation) to companies across the border.

The Old System:

“We were doing the takeoffs by hand and then entering them into JobTracker,” says Sierra Sacco, General Manger. “There was too much human error. We have several sales people and no matter how much you train them to do takeoffs, there will always be human error. We experienced a lot of that, which is what attracted us to CounterGo in the first place.”

The Solution:

Switching to CounterGo immediately helped Mario and Son generate more accurate quotes. “I would say CounterGo has reduced our errors by 80-90%,” explains Sacco. “It’s phenomenal.”

Sacco also likes how much time is saved by generating a bid in CounterGo. “We are doing 6-10 quotes a day and so if we can get them back to the customer within 24 hours we are doing well,” she says. “Oftentimes, now, when the customer is here in the showroom we can just generate a quote and give it to them on the spot. For a basic quick quote it now takes us 10 minutes or less. Usually about 5 minutes. There is no comparison to the old system.”

Mario and Son uses the new system as an additional check to make sure all pertinent information for a job is collected and entered correctly. “We train our templaters to use the CounterGo program so that when they go out to do the digital templates they can come back and enter in the exact numbers,” Sacco explains. “That way we know that what we are charging the customer is accurate and we are not losing money.”

“We also send the CounterGo drawings to the autocad department so that they can compare them to what the templater has given them. It is another double check to be sure that all the information is accurate.”

Sacco says they have completely integrated CounterGo into their system workflow. “Our material manager uses CounterGo to figure out how many slabs to order. It also integrates very well with JobTracker, which is important because we use all the features of that program, including customer management, scheduling, project management, inventory, purchasing, internal communications and reporting.”

“We are big fans of Moraware.”

Want to know more?

Call us today to schedule a 10-minute CounterGo demo. 866-312-9273