Some of our customers prefer to remain anonymous. We’ll call this customer Upsilon Scaffolding and the salesperson Bill Carlson.
Case study:
UPSILON SCAFFOLDING
How a sales rep uses Avontus Designer®, Avontus Viewer®, and a drone to save hours and win jobs.
All I have to do is build a scaffold in this virtual world, and I know the measurements are going to be dead-on perfect. It’s such a game-changer.
Bill Carlson, Sales Representative, Upsilon Scaffolding
The Company
Upsilon Scaffolding launched twenty years ago with a single office in Florida and has grown to over 10 locations. In addition to rentals and sales, it offers services including design, erecting and dismantling, training, and maintenance. Upsilon prioritizes quality and safety in its projects, which include everything from hotels to churches to residential buildings.
The Challenge
When Bill Carlson joined Upsilon as a sales representative, he’d spend at least an hour at the job site taking measurements by hand. Then, he’d draw a scaffold design on graph paper, manually count the parts, note the price of each part, and add the figures up with a calculator. If he missed a measurement, he’d have to head back to the project location.
“It was super time-consuming,” Carlson said. “You could do half a day of work and not even get the job.”
The antiquated process also made it tough to craft a proposal that stood out. Carlson could only send potential customers a hand-drawn sketch, a final quote, and a few sentences about the project. “It didn’t show so well, and it was difficult for the customer to conceptualize,” he said. “It made it harder to close deals, and we had to compete on price and relationships alone more than on the quality of the product.”
When Upsilon did win a job, the bare-bones proposal sometimes led to confusion down the line. Misunderstandings about details could often result in change orders and unforeseen costs.
The Solution
Several weeks after joining Upsilon, Carlson discovered that some colleagues in other branches were using Avontus Designer® to create professional designs and estimates. He immediately realized the software had the potential to transform his job and boost sales. After viewing video tutorials, he quickly learned how to use the software to create drag-and-drop layouts and 3D models of scaffolds, then instantly generate a bill of materials that he turned into a customer quote.
Carlson found that crafting proposals with Avontus Designer was a massive time-saver. “Now I can usually put something together in half an hour to an hour instead of half a day to a full day,” he said.
The polished designs — viewable in 3D and using augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) — along with detailed quotes help customers fully understand his proposal and set Upsilon apart from competitors. “It’s night and day the difference between a quote with a drawing on graph paper versus a 3D rendering,” Carlson said. “I’ve won projects where I actually bid higher than my competitors because I show customers exactly what they are going to get.”
Not long after getting started with Avontus Designer, Carlson discovered a way to make designs even more accurate. He uses an app on his phone to take a 3D scan of the project location in less than 10 minutes, then uploads it to Avontus Designer and adds a scaffold. Now, he never has to return to the site for a missing detail or deal with confusion about project scope once a job is underway. And, the design and bill of materials serve as an efficient roadmap for teams implementing the project. “All I have to do is build a scaffold in this virtual world, and I know the measurements are going to be dead-on perfect,” Carlson said. “It’s such a game-changer.”
In the spring of 2024, Carlson took his 3D models to the next level. Upsilon was working on a proposal to supply scaffolding for a factory renovation. The building’s water tower was too far off the ground for his usual scanning app, and Google Earth images lacked the needed level of detail. So Carlson, a former U.S. Navy pilot, used a drone to capture footage of the tower, which he converted to a 3D model that he uploaded into Avontus Designer. When he added a virtual scaffold, the result was a lifelike model. The project has not yet been awarded, but Carlson is confident.
The customer was very impressed that we had the technology to do that. With someone else, they have to take them at their word, whereas I have the actual plan and rendering of how it’s going to look.
Bill Carlson
Carlson believes that the impressive designs he showcases are a decisive factor in at least half of the deals he closes. One recent customer generated over $750,000 in rental revenue in less than five months. “I attribute all of that revenue to the scanning — they just love knowing exactly what they’re going to get,” Carlson said. “Without it, I’d just be like everyone else out there, and it would be tough!”
Now, Carlson can’t imagine going back to life before Avontus Designer. “You’d be crazy not to use it,” he said. “It just gives you a huge leg up on your competition.”
