CHC Hydronics is a leading Manufacturers Representative and Package Systems Manufacturer of HVAC, Hydronics, Steam, Heat Transfer, and Plumbing Equipment. Headquartered in Hayward CA, CHC has operations across the Pacific Coast in Washington,Oregon, Montana, Idaho and Alaska. The company provides cutting edge products to reduce energy costs and protect environmental resources.
CHC not only sells appropriate products and parts, but works with customers to build extremely customized solutions that fit both within the building’s needs and the limited floor space available.
Challenges
With their fast growth, CHC had spread across multiple warehouses and workcenters across the Pacific Coast. They also worked as Manufacturer’s Representatives for multiple leading equipment manufacturers.In addition, CHC’s FlowTherm Division provides a pre-engineered, packaged product that overcomes partners’ unique financial, dimensional, and timeline constraints.
CHC Hydronics installed FInancialForce ERP to streamline their financial and operational processes, improve visibility into their data and make better decisions across the organization.
Since manufacturing and fabrication was spread across multiple locations, CHC needed an easy way to track the time that their employees spent on specific jobs. They also needed to track the time that their service engineers spent on the field on repair and maintenance jobs.
This prompted CHC to look for a solution that could meet its evolving needs for time tracking. One that would easily integrate with its FinancialForce ERP system.
Solution
In 2019, CHC implemented PK4’s Time Tracker for Salesforce. Since the TimeTracker data was all in Salesforce, it was very easy to integrate the system with FInancialForce.
TimeTracker Project Creation
CHC customized the FinancialForce Production Order screens to allow for the creation of a TimeTracker Project. When a specific Production Order was ready for manufacturing and fabrication, users could simply push a Create Project button on the Production Order. This would create a Project within the TimeTracker that would carry the details of the Warehouse where it would be manufactured and the WorkCenter that needed to work on the job.
Time Capture based on Location
Each Warehouse and Workcenter used the TimeTracker in a Kiosk mode on iPads. The TimeTracker was configured to filter data such that only employees in that Warehouse and WorkCenter would be able to log time into Projects for that location. This was based on the Warehouse and WorkCenter details from the Production Order.
Easy Time Tracking
Employees on the fabrication floors used the TimeTracker’s easy-to-use interface on Apple iPads to track their time. Since the employees were tracking time on the TImeTracker Kiosk, they did not need to have Salesforce or FinancialForce licenses. So not only was time tracking easy, it was highly cost-effective too.
Labor Costs Capture on the Production Orders
When the employees completed work on a specific Project, they would mark that Project as Complete on the TimeTracker Kiosk. This would fire up a Salesforce Workflow in the backend that would take the Labor Hours and Cost from the Project and update them on the Labor lines in the Production Order.
Results
Efficient time tracking for fabrication team
Since the time tracking was so easy to use and was right on the factory floor, CHC was able to get a much more accurate summary of the time spent on each Production Order. In addition, when needed, they were able to get the detailed hours spent on each project by multiple employees.
Detailed time data for analysis
Based on the detailed time tracking data that they now had, CHC was able to roll up the hours spent on fabrication and implementation to each of their manufacturer’s representatives. So labor costs on each product line was very accurate and clear.
Accurate billing for Service time
CHC also implemented the TimeTracker Mobile app for their Service Engineers on the field. Service Engineers would be assigned specific Service Sales Orders within FinancialForce. These would be converted to Project Assignments to the Service Engineers, again with just the click of a button. Service Engineers would have a list of all Assigned Projects for the day, listed on the TimeTracker mobile app on their phones. They could easily Check In and Out of each Assignment, which would track the actual time spent on the Assignment. When the Assignment was completed, a back-end Salesforce workflow automatically pushed the time back to the Service Sales Order in FinancialForce.This would then generate invoices to customers based on the time and materials that the Service Engineer had spent.
Tech Components
Salesforce Sales Cloud
FinancialForce ERP
TimeTracker in Salesforce
TimeTracker Mobile App for field service engineers
TimeTracker Kiosk app for fabrication and manufacturing teams.
As a Fortune Global 500 company, Johnson Controls is a worldwide leader in providing building technology solutions. With over 105,000 employees across 2,000 locations, Johnson Controls equips buildings across the world with automation systems, HVAC equipment, security and more, to keep their occupants safe, healthy, and secure.
Behind the company’s US$31.4 billion worth of sales sits the company’s Center of Excellence on Sales Operations – a network of engineers, contractors, and program managers which supports global sales teams with drafting project blueprints and designs.
Challenges
While the Sales Operations Centre of Excellence (CoE) was previously embedded within separate business units, it was reformed into a separate business unit following a corporate reorganization in 2019. As an independent business unit servicing different regions and divisions across the company, the CoE was now an independent accounting entity. It maintains its own financial statements, accounting for (internal) revenue through billing other business units for services performed, and costs through careful tracking of employees’ time. In order to accurately charge these costs back to separate business units, time tracking was now an integral part of this accountability.
Adding to this complexity was the fact that some sub-teams within the CoE already had established legacy solutions and practices for time tracking. While some employees were new to time tracking, others were using disparate time tracking systems. For instance, while one team in Costa Rica was already using a time tracking system, another in APAC was tracking their hours manually on spreadsheets.
In their search for a time tracking solution, the Sales Operations CoE team at Johnson Controls had two key requirements. Firstly, the solution had to provide a seamless user experience. Secondly, the time tracking system had to be integrated with Salesforce.
PK4 Tech’s Time Tracker stood out as a strong contender as its deep integrations with Salesforce meant that time tracking data could easily be integrated with other sales and operations data already on the CRM platform. This helped to minimize the implementation complexity and efforts.
Solution
With the goal of unifying all teams under a standardized time tracking solution, Johnson Controls first started with a phased introduction of PK4 Tech’s Time Tracker. Within the first 2 years of implementation, 1,000 of over 4,000 employees in the global CoE organization were onboarded to the Time Tracker.
Results
Improved Time Tracking And Cost Accountability: With the Time Tracker, employees were now able to log their hours with a level of granularity that was not possible before. For instance, where previously, the CoE team only tracked hours on a general basis, they could now break these hours down into pre-sale vs post-sale support, coordination time, administrative time, etc.
This, in turn, has enabled the CoE to provide detailed statements of work and invoices when charging their services to other business units. The detailed breakdown of labor costs and services allows the CoE team to improve the accountability and accuracy of their cost chargeback.
Deepened Business Insights: With the custom Salesforce reports and dashboards, management could now get a comprehensive review of their business, and access granular data like labor and service cost breakdown by region, project type, or even task type. This provides Johnson Controls with more accurate data and information for resource planning and strategic decision-making.
Reduced Overall Administrative Burden: The integration with Salesforce also helped to reduce the administrative work required from both end-users, as well as the management and finance teams. Employees within the CoE team were already familiar with using Salesforce and introducing a time tracking system within the CRM platform greatly eased their transition towards this new time tracking process. Furthermore, having the Time Tracker integrated into Salesforce also allowed for the synchronization of data on labor costs with established invoicing and finance processes, minimizing the administrative efforts for the finance teams.
Zigler Law Group, based in Chicago IL, is a national class action and complex litigation firm committed to protecting consumers and investors from corporate misconduct. Their attorneys have successfully litigated countless complex cases across multiple industries. Their experience includes litigating consumer fraud, securities fraud, breach of contract, breach of warranty and breach of fiduciary duties, amongst others.
Depending on the case being litigated, the Zigler team includes attorneys, paralegals, employees and contractors.
Challenges
As a national class action litigation firm, Zigler Law Group is required to keep very accurate time records of all time spent on cases. All attorneys, paralegals and other staff members need to keep very accurate time records of every minute spent on a case.
Time tracking for attorneys and paralegals is extremely hard. Most attorneys work on multiple cases, often for multiple clients on a given day. So it’s time-consuming and challenging to figure out what they worked on at the end of a long day. Combine that with the fact that they work in an interrupt-driven mode, with calls, emails, discussions and the whole time tracking problem is compounded.
Zigler attorneys and paralegals were used to tracking their time on spreadsheets. This itself was a big step up from having to reconstruct time from reviewing paper notes, emails and appointments whenever time needed to be accounted for.
Time-consuming: Each attorney, paralegal and employee maintained their own spreadsheets of time spent. So any reckoning of time for a case, meant reviewing and reconciling the spreadsheets of all the attorneys and paralegals that worked on a specific case. This was a very painstaking and time-consuming process.
Variations in case names: Attorneys and paralegals would code their work times for cases using different names for the same case. There were as many variations for the same case as the number of people working on it. Identifying the various names and collating the data was a nightmare.
Loss of data: When working on a case, an attorney could end up sending 10-15 emails back and forth in an hour. And all that work needed to be entered in granularly. While working with spreadsheets, invariably there would be some loss of time worked.
All these issues prompted the Zigler Law Group to look for an alternative solution that could meet its evolving needs for time tracking. And since they had already moved to Salesforce for tracking all their cases, they were looking for a time tracking solution that would work within Salesforce too.
Solution
In 2022, the Zigler Law Group implemented PK4’s TimeTracker for Salesforce. PK4 worked with the law firm to configure the TimeTracker to their exact requirements. The firm decided to use the TimeTracker’s Multiline Time Entry screen since it was very similar to the spreadsheet mechanism that the team was already used to. Since all cases that the firm worked on were already within Salesforce as a separate object, PK4 configured the TimeTracker to track time to that specific object. So the TimeTracker users just needed to select a case from the existing list of cases.
Results.
Decreased inaccuracies on cases
Since all cases were set up in the TimeTracker, the Zigler team no longer needed to enter the names of the cases. They just needed to select the name of the case from the dropdown. This completely eliminated the endless variations in the case names.
Timely Data Entry
Since the Zigler team was already working inside Salesforce on their cases, it was easy for them to track their time in the TimeTracker on a regular basis. The team now records their time within the TimeTracker between 6-8 times a day, Since the tasks and the time spent are fresh in their minds, the time entered is much more granular and accurate, ensuring that there is no under-reporting of time spent.
Easy contractor payment
Zigler uses contractors who are paid based on the number of hours worked. Since all time data is within the TimeTracker, it’s now very simple for Zigler administrators to pull end of the month reports for the time spent by contractors.
Instant, flexible reporting
The fact that all the time spent on cases is properly tracked and in a timely manner within the TimeTracker made a big difference to the Zigler Law Group. With all time entries correctly tagged to specific cases, running reports based on cases became a cinch for the Zigler Law Group.
The time that they spent previously reviewing and collating data from multiple spreadsheets has decreased from 4-5 hours per month to less than 3 minutes per month. Time that can now be put to much more productive use.
The Zigler Law Group Management can now easily answer questions such as:
– How much time attorneys/paralegals spend on specific cases and practice areas
– Perform detailed analysis of cases to determine time spent and profitability
– Analyze what cases take disproportionate amount of time
– Quickly assess the lodestar of a case for reporting.
Overall, the Zigler Law Group has found that data collection, collation and review have all become much easier with the TimeTracker from PK4. The Zigler Law Group saved over 99% of the time spent on data collation, review and reporting. Resulting in an overall saving of $ 2500 per employee per year.
Speed up your invoicing workflow with the PK4 TimeTracker Invoicing Add-On. Our Invoicing Add-On lets you automatically create and send professional invoices (based on the time tracked by your team members) and then track payments against those invoices. You have the flexibility to add / modify the invoices before they are sent out to your customers. Our integration with QuickBooks Desktop ensures that invoices are seamlessly synced across, saving time and effort.
Features:
Using the information in the Time Details (time tracked by your users), the TimeTracker automatically creates invoices that can be sent to customers. You select the frequency that you define (by default it is set to 1 month).
All Materials (Products) included in the Time Details will also be invoiced
We create ONE invoice per Account based on the Account that is updated on the Time Details
Taxes and Surcharges are calculated based on simple percentage values set up in your configuration
You can review and modify invoices before they are sent out to the customer. All totals and taxes are re-calculated based on any modifications that you make
Your invoices are sent out by email using a template that you set up inside Salesforce. You can modify the template to include your logos, addresses and colors
You can apply payments received as Collections against the invoices
Only Users that need to work with Invoicing need to have the additional TimeTracker Invoice Add-on module.
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