An existing process that wasn’t going to cut it

Managing equipment repairs involves tracking parts and labor, warranty details, prior work orders, service performance and much more. Despite the heavy amount of customizations their team had made to the system, it was still unable to follow their unique workflow, resulting in wasted time, redundant tasks and a poor user experience. Weingartz first looked into off-the-shelf solutions but found that, just like their existing system, whatever they chose they’d have to sacrifice what they wanted for their team and customers.

Since their existing ERP software was so integral to the rest of their business, we needed to build a solution that not only effectively handled the hundreds of repair orders coming into their multiple locations every day, but also integrated directly with their other business software systems. This required real-time syncing between customer records, equipment history, warranty status, customer invoicing and more.

Identifying redundancies to streamline business processes

As with all of our large projects, we needed to develop an in-depth understanding of their business processes to build the right solution. We went through an investigative phase with Weingartz by interviewing people at all levels within the organization who work with service repairs. As we began to understand the functionality needed and the reasoning behind why certain workflows existed, we were able to start creating the system’s wireframes. Throughout this process, we helped identify redundancies, critical features and unique user types needed, as well as streamline steps in the repair process that were previously overlooked.

With the system’s user interface and workflows established, our team started on the interactive prototype—a phase that is integral for design feedback and user testing. It was through this particular phase that Weingartz discovered the need for additional features such as an employee database, effective reporting and data not previously collected.