Before ScopeStack
Centre prioritizes accuracy, so even before using ScopeStack, the company had processes and standards to ensure that customers get the best service possible.
Services managers from different business units handled presales, and their process primarily relied on Excel databases of task lists and Word templates to generate statements of work. It worked, but the team saw room for improvement.
Their primary goals were to maintain consistency across statements of work and increase efficiency.
Challenge
As you’d expect, the solutions architects at a large solution provider like Centre are busy. The company has a large subscription rate of account executives to solutions architects, so each SA spends a large part of each day in meetings with sales and other SAs, and talking to customers to understand their goals and provide expert recommendations.
“I’m covering the whole Houston sales team. So I was looking for anything I could do to speed up the presales process. Anything I can do to make myself more efficient means more time for customer meetings and faster delivery.”
Ariel Davenport, Solutions Architect, Centre Technologies
And, like any growing company, the Centre team wanted to futureproof the presales process by standardizing the way they wrote statements of work. The company added multiple SAs over the course of 2020, so solving both of these challenges was critical. They wanted to do it without devoting resources to developing a custom solution.
Goals
- Maintain Consistency. The team wanted to make sure there were processes in place to maintain consistency as the department expanded.
- Increase Efficiency. In addition to creating a standardized process for presales, the company was looking for ways to increase efficiency.
Solution
Centre’s team of technical experts started looking for professional services quoting and services CPQ software, but there weren’t many options that made sense for the company. But when they found ScopeStack, they were able to show leadership that by reducing the time spent by premium Centre resources (SAs, service managers, etc.), the company would come out ahead.
“The cost is very compelling. If I save one hour a month, it pays itself.”
Ariel Davenport, Solutions Architect, Centre Technologies
The team got the green light and implemented a consistent process for writing SOWs with ScopeStack.
Results
Ultimately, Centre’s presales team has achieved its goals of increasing consistency and efficiency with ScopeStack. The platform helps them quickly make accurate estimates to ensure that they’re delivering full value to their customers.
Consistency
Now that the team doesn’t rely on manual data entry and Microsoft Word templates, it’s much easier to create consistent statements of work. This has helped avoid underestimating labor costs and easily demonstrate the cost to customers.
“The consistency comes when I have my cloud architect build out an Intune task list and assign per task labor estimates. Then when I need a statement of work, it’s prebuilt and I can fill in my quantities or just copy the SOW.”
Ariel Davenport, Solutions Architect, Centre Technologies
Efficiency
Centre’s new process for writing statements of work with ScopeStack led to an efficiency increase of over 60%. In other words, for every statement of work he writes, he now has an additional forty minutes to spend with customers.
“We just hit 50 statements of work in a month. That would have taken 50 hours the old way, but with ScopeStack, it’s more like 20 minutes per SOW.”
Ariel Davenport, Solutions Architect, Centre Technologies
One feature the team credits for this improvement is task- and subtask-based quoting. It wasn’t easy to add per hour tasks previously, but since ScopeStack’s work breakdown includes quantities, hours per task, and hours per subtask, they can create accurate SOWs more quickly.
Support
In addition to maintaining consistency and increasing efficiency, the Centre team is impressed with ScopeStack’s support team.
“[Customer Success rep] Alex is a champion when it comes to responding to requests. The support has been phenomenal.”
Ariel Davenport, Solutions Architect, Centre Technologies
Each solutions architect has the confidence that there’s someone to help whenever they need a hand.