CIM In Action -- Awaiting the Big Payoff

Again, when the company views its CIM initiatives, it is done with progress in mind as opposed to dwelling on the level of integration JohnsByrne is ultimately seeking. Fairley believes that day will come soon enough.

"Two years ago, we basically merged an estimate into a job and used none of that estimate to populate a job ticket," he says. "Today, we use that estimate to populate close to 60 percent of that job ticket with information. Just two years ago, we received all of our estimates on a hand-written form. Today, we're seeing the integration of (EFI) Printer Site Internal start to increase the efficiencies and throughput of our estimating, as well as our order entry process through the Web portal. Before, we did nothing that way.