Sound Stage Reduces AV Design and Proposal Times for Company and Florida Hospital Project

Business Challenges:

• ​Saving project time with a centralized database
• ​Streamlining the proposal process
• ​Reducing design drawing time

Founded in 1983 and based in the Orlando, Florida area, Sound Stage, Inc. is a nationally recognized corporation with over 50 years of combined experience in audio, visual, and systems integration. Sound Stage is committed to delivering cutting-edge design and professional service to its clients.

Chet Neal, Vice President of Sound Stage, shared his experience: “I discovered D-Tools at InfoComm 2008 and instantly became aware of the benefits it provided my team over the use of Excel, Word, and Visio to create proposals. The centralized database houses all of our product offerings, making it far easier to edit and update items and pricing. The interface then creates the ability to simply drag-n-drop those products into proposals, line drawings, and block diagrams. This made D-Tools System Integrator (SI) software the obvious choice to immediately implement in our organization moving forward.”

A recent multi-floor Florida Hospital Executive Tower project posed a sizeable integration challenge, involving complex systems such as boardroom video conferencing, multipurpose room presentations, conference room scheduling signage, sound masking, and lobby video treatments. Pricing and budget were concerns from the start. Winning the job required the ability to quickly adjust margins, product pricing, and labor. D-Tools’ data-driven process made it easy to make changes on the fly as components or scope changed. Users could account for design and installation labor and better track all necessary parts and accessories, ensuring profitability.

Neal explained, “The only way I could imagine to organize a scope of work of this magnitude was to implement the D-Tools System Integrator software. With D-Tools, we can monitor and maintain project profitability throughout the proposal process, and the ability to define locations and systems made our proposals easy for the client to follow and understand. Once we had secured the job, the installation reports allowed our technicians to allocate equipment and tasks for each area, keeping our team on task and on time.”

Sound Stage leveraged D-Tools’ integration with Microsoft Visio, which proved invaluable. SI allows users to create detailed designs using industry-standard drawing tools like Visio and AutoCAD. Because everything in SI is data-driven, users can quickly generate detailed Line, Plan, Elevation, and Schematic drawings by dragging and dropping products from their catalog or project file to the drawing surface. These line drawings helped clients quickly understand Sound Stage’s proposed solutions. All aspects of the install were documented through SI’s reporting function and use of block diagrams and signal flow charts, providing technical staff with the documentation needed to effectively integrate and program the various systems.

“Prior to D-Tools, we were also managing the project with individual files from different software programs. D-Tools’ data-driven application ties together our entire system integration process into a highly efficient singular workflow. Now we are working with a centralized database, meaning the same updated information comes from a central hub that can be accessed by anyone on the team, any time it is needed. A vast improvement from copying and manipulating the same information many times over, and struggling with managing revisions.”

Maximizing Process Management through a Streamlined Business Process

A crucial benefit of D-Tools System Integrator for Sound Stage is that SI centralizes all aspects of a project’s progression, including the different disciplines involved during different phases. From design to engineering, sales, project management, and installation, all information for a project is contained within a single location. Reporting tools organize information in the manner most beneficial for each phase, creating a simple and efficient workflow compared to cumbersome Excel sheets, Word documents, and CAD drawings.

“Years later, we are still finding new ways to leverage the robust tools and capabilities D-Tools provides. From specifying the cost of pulling cable down to the foot to creating custom reports, it has been essential in closing deals and managing installations.”

Prior to SI, Sound Stage project information would be reentered into QuickBooks from an Excel spreadsheet, creating opportunities for errors. D-Tools eliminates this by providing seamless integration with QuickBooks, further streamlining business processes and ensuring accurate billing for products, labor, and project revision management. The D-Tools QuickBooks integration allows users to create items in QuickBooks directly from products/labor items in D-Tools SI, helping to eliminate double data entry. Sound Stage can now streamline their ordering process by downloading a proposal into QuickBooks and instantly creating an estimate, saving significant time in their purchasing process.

Utilizing D-Tools’ centralized database has helped Sound Stage reduce or eliminate errors, as sales staff are no longer reentering product information on spreadsheets, which often led to typos, wrong part numbers, and errors on product options. “In addition, the ability for our engineers to create packages or recommend all the accessories for a given product ensures consistency across jobs. This allows for more efficient and quick installation with the technicians using familiar equipment from one project to the next. D-Tools’ streamlined process and standardization have been key to the success of our projects,” adds Neal. “Along with that, the technical staff is able to spend less time onsite completing installs with the amount of documentation and system schematics that are now possible.”

Conclusion

Through the use of D-Tools SI, Sound Stage has received continued compliments from clients on the quality of their proposals and the organization of projects in ways that are easy to understand. The sales staff can spend more time with clients to generate more sales because they can generate proposals quicker. “By knowing how the client’s organization does business, we can cater reports and terms to meet their accounting and processing needs. That goes a long way with our clients. We go out of our way to make it easier and faster for them to process project paperwork, generate PO’s, and pay deposits. With its combined feature set, D-Tools provides a win for us as well as our clients.”

Benefits of Implementing D-Tools:

• ​Quote Generation time decreased by 30-40%
• ​Design Drawing time decreased by 60%
• ​Customer satisfaction increased significantly