Texas Professional Surveying Finds a Digital Savior in Kompass BMS
In surveying, each new project comes with a mountain of paperwork, including estimates, bid documents, contracts, scheduling, the surveys themselves and more, making finding a specific piece of information time-consuming and complicated – not to mention the space required to maintain proper records.
To solve these problems, many businesses like Texas Professional Surveying, located in the greater north Houston, Texas, area, are digitizing processes and documentation as a way to speed access and improve visibility into information across office, team and field personnel.
With Kompass BMS, the team at Texas Professional Surveying was able to take their slow and time-consuming processes and make them much easier and faster, providing a level of accuracy and transparency into business operations they’d never experienced or imagined.
In this real-life case study, Texas Professional Surveying Marketing Director Briana Winget details how the geospatial surveying company began to see dramatic results related to reducing costs, improving customer and employee communications, increasing overall revenue and poise the company for continued growth when they went all-in on digital with Kompass BMS.
The Path to Digital
The Kompass journey, as Briana calls it, started a little differently. Texas Professional Surveying is a growing survey company. In the last five years, they’ve expanded from approximately 40 to 200 employees – and with this growth, needed to streamline the way they were operating their business. “We’d been a stereotypical paper-based surveying company, and it was time for a change,” she said.
Prior to using Kompass BMS, Briana and team was working with an HVAC-focused software company to customize their system for surveying, but couldn’t get the team through the implementation phase. After a few months of struggling without success, Texas Professional Surveying was faced with making a difficult decision. “The entire process was painful. We reached a point where we knew the road ahead with our present provider was potentially detrimental to our business, and we needed to pivot quickly,” Briana said.
Briana and team vetted many companies throughout the selection process, to no avail. That’s when the team saw an advertisement for Kompass BMS in an industry publication and decided to call for help.
“After contacting Kompass for the first time, we were up and running within weeks,” Briana said. Other companies we spoke to were rudimentary, docile, and didn’t have a roadmap to develop their technology. None of them really seemed to understand our business or our needs. And then there was Kompass BMS – I wish we’d found them sooner because we could have saved so much time!”
For Briana and team, Kompass not only looked clean and modern, but it was an ever-developing, customizable technology that was built by surveyors for surveyors—which was a big selling point for them. The creators of Kompass BMS came from Murphy Geospatial, bringing a combined 30+ years of expertise in the industry and field.
From the very first meetings between Texas Professional Surveying and Kompass BMS, everyone was speaking the same language. “It makes such a big difference when someone can speak to you on your terms. This is something our previous provider was never able to do with us,” Briana said. “Kompass understood everything we needed and what we were looking for, and so we knew immediately that we were collaborating with a provider who gets it.”
Getting Everyone on Board with Digital
Something as transformative as moving from paper to digital comes with a certain level of skepticism. Having endured one failed attempt to implement with a previous provider, the biggest challenge in adopting Kompass was gaining buy-in from fellow employees who would be active, daily users of the software.
Successful adoption for Texas Professional Surveying meant appointing an internal point person who could align themselves with Kompass and be a champion for implementation and adoption internally. Briana stepped into this role for the company and collaborated with the Kompass team to lead training and implementation.
“Buy-in is key,” Briana said, describing initial push-back from employees who were reluctant to abandon their paper system. Moving away from stacks of paper with project details to a web-based system managed on tablets was a bit unsettling to employees at first. “When you have an industry and teams who have been so used to one way of tracking, introducing a new system often makes it difficult to let go of what you’ve always known and trusted – even when the old methods took time and didn’t always work. But we kept teams motivated by embracing the idea that ‘sometimes you have to go all-in and learn something new to move forward and grow.’”
Implementation Success
Texas Professional Surveying successfully implemented Kompass BMS in a matter of weeks. As with any new tech adoption, there is a learning curve. Teams had to re-learn how to keep track of the entirety of their daily professional lives using the Kompass BMS platform. The team implemented during the holiday season, which allowed them to get traction using Kompass ahead of one of their busiest times of year. “Timing is everything – the process was short, quick, fast and the platform is intuitive – sometimes you just have to rip the band aid off!” Briana said.
“I don’t think there’s anything that could have made implementation easier. It was a great experience and we had tons of training and support from Kompass every step of the way.”
When asked what they would do differently next time, Briana recommends conducting a test run of the program with a small group, learn from the experience and then apply that to a full company roll out. “The Kompass team made an otherwise frustrating and potentially painful process very easy,” said Briana.
As a result of implementation, Texas Professional Surveying also onboarded two new full-time IT professionals to help with technical support. The company continues to make operational changes post-implementation to manage Kompass BMS and support teams as the company grows and adopts digital systems.
Results
With Kompass BMS, Texas Professional Surveying was able to reevaluate and change how they were doing business in a way they hadn’t been able to accomplish before.
“Kompass poised us for exponential growth. It’s streamlined our processes and operations, helping us to capture more billable time, revenue insights and growth in a short amount of time,” she said.
Briana highlights the top ways Kompass BMS has helped Texas Professional Surveying solve everyday business challenges
- Time-savings: Texas Professional Surveying went from paper-based projects to streamlining them with Kompass BMS technology. Teams were spending upwards of 20 hours per week searching for missing folders and materials related to a project. Having Kompass in place immediately eliminated that issue. “We were losing projects because details would be printed on paper, kept in a folder, and lost on someone’s desk. With Kompass, we don’t have to worry about losing projects any longer.”
- Accountability: Kompass helped create full accountability for tracking crew schedules, time, quotes, project details, equipment location and more. “Because we were paper-based, we didn’t have certain documents like field notes saved from project to project. And, in some instances, our surveys were not saved on our server like they should be. Now all project details, including the surveys themselves, are accessible from one location.
- Accessibility and Customer Service: Kompass BMS provides a true snapshot of the project lifecycle in real-time. “Visibility has been a game changer. If a client asks about a survey, I can provide them details immediately, from anywhere, and without having to search multiple files for information.”
- Cost Savings: Perhaps the biggest game-changer for Texas Professional Surveying is the cost savings they’ve incurred in a short period of time. Historically, much of the time tracking, project quotes and details were estimates. “Kompass has kept us from leaving so much money on the table – with our time, evaluating employee output, but also in our quoting system.
The team is now able to account for time they previously assumed for projects and they’ve been able to revamp their entire quoting process. Today, Texas Professional Surveying are truly billing for time that they were not able to do before on all levels for drafting and research. This translates to accounting for days and weeks of research and drafting time that the team can capture because of Kompass BMS. And where the team was previously missing out on thousands of dollars in quotes because they lacked consistency in tracking the information, today this is no longer an issue. “It was kind of alarming to see at first! But having transparency into what we’re actually putting into jobs is an eye-opener.” - Reporting & Visibility: Kompass’ robust reporting dashboard gives management visibility into projects end-to-end. Now teams can quantify project quotes, hit rate, billable hours – keep tabs on approaching deadlines, team availability, and equipment location, as well as identify areas of the business that are most profitable (or not). “Kompass has flipped the switch on this area of the business, shedding light on what we previously assumed about our business and showing us where we have the best opportunities for growth.”
“Since implementation, there are so many aspects of the Kompass BMS system that have completely revolutionized the way we do business,” Briana said, reflecting on the shifts in operations and administration that have positively impacted team performance, customer service, shifted business processes and elevated the bottom line.
Briana’s Key Takeaways
- Do your research: Understand the challenges you’re trying to solve and look for a solution that addresses as many of them as possible. Make sure the new software is created for your specific business and industry, is easy to integrate and intuitive to use.
- Plan for change: Create a transition plan and appoint an internal person or team to champion the project internally. Create a timeline for implementation that provides the least amount of disruption to your business and serving customers. Conduct a test run, take time to train employees, and get rolling!
- Prioritize: Determine which systems and processes should be moved to Kompass BMS first. Collaborate with your implementation team to determine the most pressing or costly issues and tackle them first.
- Educate and inform: Ensure all team members – from office to the field – understand the value of a new system and the full potential of what they do to improve how people work together and communicate every day. Focus on training and education to get the most out of Kompass BMS – and rely on that point person and the Kompass team to lead the way.
Texas Professional Surveying offers fully integrated, state-of-the-art surveying and engineering services to both the public and private sectors, serving Montgomery County, Texas, and surrounding counties.
Request a demo and learn more about Kompass here.
