In 2007, The Barricade Company was formed by a sister company to provide traffic control. Today, the sister company makes up less than 10% of its business as the Las Vegas-based Barricade Company has grown. It now serves clients throughout the west coast – Nevada, California, Arizona, and Utah.
In those early days, The Barricade Company employed just one tech in the morning and one tech at night. Today, the company takes on 40 jobs each day and night, employing 10 field workers, and is looking to double its crew while expanding its geographical reach.
What’s been the secret sauce to fostering the growth of The Barricade Company? “We brought in a customer service side that hadn’t been in our industry,” says John Avendano Business Manager for The Barricade Company. “Because we come from a construction background, we can read all their civils. We understand what they’re installing. Customer service is the difference between us and our competitors.”
Help Us Grow
A growing company typically faces the challenges of scalability. Such has been the case for The Barricade Company. And that’s where Assignar came in.
Prior to Assignar, The Barricade Company was using another program that provided forms. However, they were not satisfied because customizing the forms, even changing a single question was costly, costing them up to $1,500. On top of that, the provider would not back them up from a liability standpoint.
These issues led The Barricade Company to consider developing its own software — at that point, setting aside a massive lump sum seemed worth it. That’s when The Barricade Company Coordinator/Supervisor, Faith Agnew received a pitch from Assignar.
“I checked out the website, saw all the capabilities Assignar had, such as equipment tracking, labor tracking, and other things our current system wasn’t doing,” says Agnew. “And it seemed like it was going to be able to do all of the things that we were already talking about that we needed.”
After seeing Assignar in action, Avendano started thinking about how far they could take the software in their business. With pre-built, customizable forms and a platform that was already built out, he felt it was a no-brainer. Building their own software was no longer on the table.
And then there’s the scalability. Although The Barricade Company is expecting to double its crew, they will not be doing corresponding additions to office staff. And that’s due to Assignar. By the end of the year, Avendano expects that Assignar will have enabled Barricade to have saved $90,000 in wages.
Adjusting to the New Software
The transition to Assignar has been a smooth one for The Barricade Company. Being supported by their Customer Success Manager from Assignar has been key in helping The Barricade Company gain comfort with the system. The transition was also eased because they had already moved away from paperwork with their previous system.
While Assignar offers extensive training, The Barricade Company team needed very little of it. After the live demo, the tech-savvy team at Barricade was able to figure out how to use the software on their own. And when they need something from the software but can’t find it they can turn to the massive resource library available to them online for answers.
The key to the seamless transition, according to Avendano, was buy-in. “The main thing was getting the leadership in the field comfortable and confident with Assignar prior to rolling it out to all the techs.” These first steps made the rollout easy for Barricade.
Making the Most of Assignar
Time is money, and The Barricade Company has achieved more efficiency with Assignar.
Timesheets
Having timesheets online has been a boon for Barricade both in the field and in the office. In the past, company staff had to manually file paperwork and timecards. With Assignar Timesheets, the Barricade Company is skipping that step entirely. In addition, the timecard function integrated with the company’s accounting software is simplifying the process.
“At our current level, we would have another admin literally filing paperwork and going through paper timecards,” Avendano says. “As we move forward, I expect Assignar to take the assumption of three additional administrative assistants.” Assignar Timesheets have also reduced the downtime for crews in the field.
Avendano notes that the traffic control business is a high liability space and that the customizable forms function of Assignar will be “crucial” in winning lawsuits.
Insights
The insights section of Assignar, which provides real-time reporting and analytics, has impressed The Barricade Company due to its wide-ranging capabilities. “It streamlines many things and makes them easier,” Avendano says. “It’s robust, and you can make it do almost anything.”
Scheduling
Then, there’s scheduling. With this feature, Barricade can produce, sign and assign orders or forms in the same tab. It’s easy to assign and share. This is particularly important in the traffic control space because things change quickly. High-level communication ensures everyone is informed. “We use the app to communicate about scheduling and for other notifications,” Agnew says.
As The Barricade Company strives to meet its goals for growth, they’ve turned to Assignar to be its workforce management platform. Barricade can feel confident they are able to scale while continuing to provide their superior customer service.
