In an era where technology is making many jobs redundant, it’s little wonder that many would fear a new tool with the power to eliminate part of their workload. For the sales team at audiovisual and unified communication solutions integrator, Kinly, this fear turned to affection for a technology that makes their job more satisfying. Through Jetbuilt’s cloud-based platform for proposal generation and 360-degree project management, the sales team at Kinly says they have entered a new era of operations. Kinly says it can better allocate resources and manage lead-in times, ultimately providing an improved client experience with a workflow that saves time and money and adapts quickly to client needs while the team can focus on building customer relationships.

Like many businesses, Kinly relied on manual and outdated processes for creating system quotes and proposals, often leading to delays in their sales cycle.

“We put designs together using an Excel-based solution that was very manual and time-consuming,” said Mark Kempson, head of consulting at Kinly UK. “Our proposals had to go through two departments before finally reaching clients.”

This disjointed approach made it difficult to streamline operations and provide accurate quotes in a timely manner. At the same time, changes in a project specification often required the whole process to be restarted again.

Kinly’s journey to Jetbuilt began a few years ago when Kempson was introduced to the platform.

“My manager had suggested looking into Jetbuilt, and I first spoke to members of the Jetbuilt team at ISE in 2019,” said Kempson. “I visited the stand and saw demos of their product and thought it looked interesting.”

The motivation to look closer at inefficiencies in the proposal process stemmed from a broader initiative to examine internal operations at Kinly, a project in collaboration with a business consultancy firm. A pain point exercise revealed that one of Kinly’s top priorities was to find a quicker and easier-to-use quoting process, which would align with Kinly’s ongoing efforts to become more efficient overall.

The decision to move Kinly’s quote-building process to Jetbuilt was the direct response to a trial exercise initiated by Kempson to demonstrate the potential benefits of making the switch. What began as an exercise to show the time-saving abilities of a dedicated quoting tool soon revealed other unexpected benefits. Kempson and his team assessed how many jobs they handled annually across a variety of price ranges before focusing on their average quotation cost and calculating how long it took and how many resources were required to produce a quote for this average-size project.

“The results were eye-opening,” said Kempson. “Not only were proposals taking a fraction of the time to generate, but the efficiencies mainly achieved from utilizing the inbuilt pricing led to incredible workforce savings, allowing the pre-sales team to spend more time building client relationships rather than dealing with infinite Excel sheets. Jetbuilt also significantly reduced the cost of creating quotes.”

Aside from the subscription, Jetbuilt says it costs nothing to use. While using the traditional system, Kinly spent money while producing a proposal and sourcing the necessary product information and pricing. Product information and live dealer pricing are readily available on the Jetbuilt platform.

“The switch was a no-brainer,” said Kempson. “We came up with a report that was presented to our leadership team to get a trial phase off the ground.”

“We designed Jetbuilt as a 100% return-on-investment tool that provides a substantial net gain for companies of all sizes,” said Paul Dexter, CEO at Jetbuilt. “Learning about this exercise to test Jetbuilt and measure real savings across Kinly’s most commonly quoted projects was interesting and, ultimately, gratifying.”

The team at Kinly estimates that they have saved at least one person’s salary worth of manual pricing-related work. While some were apprehensive of this tool taking away their day-to-day work, this newfound efficiency has instead allowed them to focus on projects they sell, rather than dealing with prospective quotes all day. As a result, Jetbuilt says it has led to improved job satisfaction and productivity. Additionally, Jetbuilt’s live pricing and data accuracy have made Kinly more reactive and agile in its quoting processes, according to Kinly.

Since implementing Jetbuilt, Kinly says it has realized several significant benefits aside from time and cost savings.

“The fact that I can control the database of manufacturers and products we specify, and the possibility of forecasting incoming jobs improves our planning processes,” said Kempson. “We can manage product lines efficiently, aligning them with our overall business strategies.”

Moreover, Jetbuilt’s forecasting capabilities empower Kinly with valuable data they can provide to their engineering teams and manufacturers, streamlining procurement and enhancing supply chain management.

Another major value that Kinly has implemented is Jetbuilt’s latest innovation: Integrated Project Registration.

“Product Registration is a very important feature for us,” said Kempson. “Now, when we land a project, we can automate the process of registering products with manufacturers rather than reaching out to each one individually; the sales support team loves it!”

Following the success of the trial phase, Kinly says it first rolled out the Jetbuilt platform to the entire UK pre-sales and sales support teams, with the sales team set to join the platform before the end of the year. This has been followed by the decision to proceed with wider adoption of Jetbuilt across its global services operations in the US and on European projects managed from the UK, demonstrating the integration of the platform into everyday operations at the company.

Kempson would recommend Jetbuilt to other companies.

“The power of Jetbuilt is only going to be good for your business. It also has a user-friendly interface that is accessible even to those who aren’t AV experts. It’s a game-changer.”