How Store Urbain boosted their business development.

Tell us a bit about your company and its business …

Store Urbain offers services for window coverings: curtains, shades, blinds, motorized systems, awnings, etc. We have partnerships with recognized manufacturers in North America and we resell their products. Our added value lies in our tailor-made offerings and the technical nature of our installations.
 

We primarily target high-end residential customers for whom we provide exceptional installations. Our projects are generally quite complex and involve other tradespeople such as electricians, plasterers, general contractors, etc. Store Urbain manages projects from A to Z.
 
In just a few years, Store Urbain has become a key player in the Quebec market with a unique offering. Our growth and success allow us to think bigger today. That’s why we’re going to expand our business to Ontario.

Why did you choose the Praxedo solution? What were your needs?

We chose Praxedo when our team started to grow. It was becoming more and more difficult to manage our operations in the field. We started to overlook some details, we didn’t know how to track the hours we worked and we didn’t have real-time visibility. We used cloud applications like Google Sheets and MS Outlook, but they’re too static and it wasn’t sufficient.
 
Our work with Praxedo started when I joined the company. I joined my brother — the founder of Store Urbain — after working at a major Canadian telecommunications company. I experienced the transition to the digital era in this large organization and saw the indisputable benefits of the advanced technologies used to manage technicians’ assignments and movements. I was convinced we had to digitize the process at Store Urbain to revolutionize the way we work, accelerate and support our growth.

Who uses the Praxedo solution at your business and for what purposes?

In our industry, the ways of working are quite “archaic” and many companies still use paper documents for quotes, taking measurements at customers’ premises and work orders.
 
I had evaluated a scheduling management solution, but it wasn’t really what I was looking for. When I discovered Praxedo, I immediately realized it was THE solution we needed thanks to my experience in telecommunications.
 
Praxedo is the first large-scale software solution we’ve implemented at Store Urbain. We use the solution in the office, for dispatch, and to manage and monitor our operations. Our installation technicians use the mobile application on their phones to get their instructions and route for the day, but above all, the app allows us to have a complete report of the work completed and to closely monitor our operations.

What are the main benefits of the Praxedo solution?

In general, Praxedo allows us to have an overview of our operations, to better plan our work and to optimize our teams’ movements.
More precisely,

• We’ve more than doubled our productivity in terms of dispatch because we moved from 2 employees to 1 while managing increasingly large volumes of work.

• The precise time tracking, detailed reports, and access to data in Praxedo allowed us to analyze the effectiveness of our service:
  – For example, we found that 1 in 3 jobs exceeded the expected duration by 25%. Imagine how these overruns accumulate when you complete 15 to 20 jobs per day! Ultimately, we adjusted our fixed prices and improved our profitability thanks to Praxedo.
  
  – Another example: the ability to analyze work orders by type showed us that our teams spent 50 to 60% of their time on service calls and monitoring installations rather than on new installations, which is our main source of income. Once again, this visibility allowed us to see the direction we were going and to make the changes that were needed.
• A year and a half after starting to use Praxedo, we’ve tripled our workforce from 8 to 24 employees (including 9 technicians and 8 salespeople)
• Without Praxedo, this rapid expansion would not have been possible: the solution has been a growth engine.

How do you see the future of your relationship with Praxedo?

We know that Praxedo is a very scalable and robust application that will help us in our new endeavors:

• The opening of an independent branch in Toronto with its own team of salespeople and installers at the end of 2020.
• In 2021: digitizing the sales process (Praxedo mobile application for salespeople)
• The tripling of our company’s size in the medium term.

If you had to summarize the Praxedo solution in 2 keywords, what would they be?

We are very satisfied with Praxedo but I will focus on the following keywords:

• “Autonomy”: although we had assistance at the start, we were able to completely set up the solution on our own thanks to responsive and efficient support from Praxedo and the online help, which allows us to manage many of the configuration aspects ourselves.

• “Application performance”: operation is excellent, stability and synchronization are very good, and we’ve never had any service interruptions.