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•Case Study: UHL Company

UHL Company specializes in the temperature control portion of the HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) industry. When the HVAC systems in large buildings and campuses like hospitals and universities are installed, UHL Company provides the wiring and communication between the HVAC units to regulate temperatures in the buildings. Seventy percent of the $13 million company's business is made up of this construction component, and the other 30% is composed of servicing the equipment.

The HVAC company relied on an outdated DOS-based system to manage its business operations, including accounting, human resources, purchasing, and service management. Jeff Kier, UHL Company's CFO, was charged with finding a new solution and managing the implementation of it when he was hired three years ago. In doing so, he realized an opportunity to add productivity to UHL Company's field service business segment. "We had a dying DOS-based system with no continuing support," says Kier. "We had to change, or we couldn't manage the business effectively."

UHL Company's field service segment consists of 24 field technicians whose schedules are managed by three employees in a dispatch center. Until recently, those employees worked solely from a dispatch board, which is a large bulletin board with hand-written assignments posted for each technician's weekly appointments. Obviously, such a heavily manual system had its problems. The dynamic quality of field service -- appointments taking more or less time than anticipated, cancellations, and emergency calls --made it difficult for UHL Company to maintain accuracy. "We couldn't keep up with all of the changes. We sometimes had the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time," says Kier. UHL Company remedied this situation by implementing Data-Basics, Inc.'s SAM Pro end-to-end business software solution. The solution includes modules for accounts payable, accounts receivable, invoicing, general ledger, job costing, payroll, purchasing, and service management.

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•Case Study: UHL Company