General Discussion

I've been developing ProntoForms forms for our Field Service team since early last year.  I am also a Field Service Engineer.  We are new to this whole concept presented by Pronto.  I've had great support from my management in the past, but the entire management team changed over the summer/fall.  And I can't get them to understand how to use ProntoForms or leverage it towards success.  They've seen it as just a glorified PDF form builder.  For example, I was asked if I could create a Fillable PDF form that we could just send to a customer for completion.  Confusing Pronto with Acrobat I think.  And one of our associate companies wanted me to send them "blank" forms that they could use.  I think they're all trying to get something for free here.  I've worked to bring to their attention features such as Feedback Forms, among others, and Pronto has been good enough to provide quotes for additional services.  But any additionall cost is anathema right now as they try to justify their new jobs financially to the executive team.  They complained quite loudly about having to increase our user licenses by 5, for a total of 30.  This is the atmosphere I'm up against.

I've been relegated in the last few months to more field work than strategic efforts and I believe they've tried to keep me away from this work I've enjoyed so much.  As they see the complexity of the forms I've created and with their time restraints preventing them from learning about Pronto, they've slowly let me back into working with Pronto.  Frankly, I'm prying the door open with my bare hands!

I guess the question I'm asking is simply:  How can I generate support from management to justify the additional expense of developing and maintaining our recent efforts?  How can I get them to understand exactly what the effort would be worth for the future?

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Scott Gilleland
Senior Field Service Engineer
Messer Cutting Systems
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Hi Scott. You pose a tough question and there is no easy answer, but I would focus on a few things here:

1. Hard savings. Can you provide the new management team with concrete examples of hours saved or additional hires that haven't had to be made because of your current ProntoForms processes? If you can show directly how dollars spent on ProntoForms have translated to 5x or more in dollars saved, then that would be huge. We were most successful in focusing on how the same clerk or back office staff could support 2x the crews/field workers using ProntoForms instead of paper. One annual salary plus benefits saved each year from that alone. Just be prepared with your math on the counter-argument, which will be "well, how much of your time/cost did we spent getting the forms built?". I have found the best answer there is to be honest about the math and then point out that the development cost is finite. The savings compound over the years since the process doesn't take much effort at all to maintain once it is in place.
2. Two areas of "soft" savings:
   1. Job satisfaction. Interviews/statements from both the field users and the back office staff who benefit from the platform are helpful. Especially when management hears that ProntoForms is making jobs less stressful for your employees. 
   2. Recruiting and retention. In our industry ProntoForms makes us look like we are forward-thinking and tech savvy. This goes a long way in bringing people into the company when they can be confident that they will be given the tools necessary to succeed. It also helps to retain people who know that our competitors are still using paper and they would have to go back to a harder way of doing things if they left.
3. Let ProntoForms help you. I would highly recommend setting up a meeting between your ProntoForms account team and your management team. Especially if the new management group was not involved in the original RFP process or decision. Our executive team has been exposed to things like the CAB, the documentation portal and the other resources PF spends money/time to maintain for their customers. That went a long way in assuring our execs that we are using a mature platform and working with a team who is constantly taking feedback and looking to improve. 

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Matt Lambert
Vice President of Operations
PrimeLine Utility Services
mlambert@primelineus.com
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Original Message:
Sent: 04-21-2022 20:24
From: Scott Gilleland
Subject: How to create buy-in support from management?

I've been developing ProntoForms forms for our Field Service team since early last year.  I am also a Field Service Engineer.  We are new to this whole concept presented by Pronto.  I've had great support from my management in the past, but the entire management team changed over the summer/fall.  And I can't get them to understand how to use ProntoForms or leverage it towards success.  They've seen it as just a glorified PDF form builder.  For example, I was asked if I could create a Fillable PDF form that we could just send to a customer for completion.  Confusing Pronto with Acrobat I think.  And one of our associate companies wanted me to send them "blank" forms that they could use.  I think they're all trying to get something for free here.  I've worked to bring to their attention features such as Feedback Forms, among others, and Pronto has been good enough to provide quotes for additional services.  But any additionall cost is anathema right now as they try to justify their new jobs financially to the executive team.  They complained quite loudly about having to increase our user licenses by 5, for a total of 30.  This is the atmosphere I'm up against.

I've been relegated in the last few months to more field work than strategic efforts and I believe they've tried to keep me away from this work I've enjoyed so much.  As they see the complexity of the forms I've created and with their time restraints preventing them from learning about Pronto, they've slowly let me back into working with Pronto.  Frankly, I'm prying the door open with my bare hands!

I guess the question I'm asking is simply:  How can I generate support from management to justify the additional expense of developing and maintaining our recent efforts?  How can I get them to understand exactly what the effort would be worth for the future?

------------------------------
Scott Gilleland
Senior Field Service Engineer
Messer Cutting Systems
------------------------------

Hi Scott, thanks for being a customer and as always Matt Lambert has some great suggestions.

We have done many ROI calculations and in addition to the back-office workers, the productivity of the Field Service Engineers is also significant.  I attached a study done by Nucleus Research on one of our Elevator customers that has some good areas of benefits that you may be able to use and some compelling numbers.  They were very conservative and did their calculations after-tax and even after applying a 50% efficiency factor - so only half the time saved is considered productivity gains, as the other 50% may be used for longer breaks etc. - and still found a 41X or 4100% ROI.  We routinely see 500% - 1,000% ROIs for our customers and we would be happy to invest some of our expert's time to help you get specific numbers for Messer.

Many of these gains are due to integrations that eliminate data entry time and errors, as well as conditional logic that only makes them fill out the appropriate information based on assets and previous answers.   These productivity gains would not be realized if Fillable PDFs were used.

Hiring and retaining talent can't be overemphasized.  In addition to Matt's points, we have several customers with more advanced work orders that can't typically be done by recent hires. This type of business is critical to either their end customers or compliance.  By using our conditional logic and embedded help, they can guide recent hires to complete these critical work orders successfully.  Also, with 10-15% productivity improvements, they can potentially reduce the number of new hires needed!

Additionally, changes (and version control) are challenging, but if your business is static and relatively simple, maybe Fillable PDFs will meet your needs.  Changes require time and attention and this is where ProntoForms shines, as Matt mentioned.  Do your new executives understand the complexity of the Field Service Engineers' activities?   Clarification on the challenges of their job might help in their understanding of why a more sophisticated tool than Fillable PDFs makes sense for Messer.

Let us know what we can do to help.

Best,
Mike

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Mike Kramer
Chief Revenue Officer
ProntoForms
mkramer@ProntoForms.com
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Michael Kramer
Chief Revenue Officer
ProntoForms
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Original Message:
Sent: 04-21-2022 20:24
From: Scott Gilleland
Subject: How to create buy-in support from management?

I've been developing ProntoForms forms for our Field Service team since early last year.  I am also a Field Service Engineer.  We are new to this whole concept presented by Pronto.  I've had great support from my management in the past, but the entire management team changed over the summer/fall.  And I can't get them to understand how to use ProntoForms or leverage it towards success.  They've seen it as just a glorified PDF form builder.  For example, I was asked if I could create a Fillable PDF form that we could just send to a customer for completion.  Confusing Pronto with Acrobat I think.  And one of our associate companies wanted me to send them "blank" forms that they could use.  I think they're all trying to get something for free here.  I've worked to bring to their attention features such as Feedback Forms, among others, and Pronto has been good enough to provide quotes for additional services.  But any additionall cost is anathema right now as they try to justify their new jobs financially to the executive team.  They complained quite loudly about having to increase our user licenses by 5, for a total of 30.  This is the atmosphere I'm up against.

I've been relegated in the last few months to more field work than strategic efforts and I believe they've tried to keep me away from this work I've enjoyed so much.  As they see the complexity of the forms I've created and with their time restraints preventing them from learning about Pronto, they've slowly let me back into working with Pronto.  Frankly, I'm prying the door open with my bare hands!

I guess the question I'm asking is simply:  How can I generate support from management to justify the additional expense of developing and maintaining our recent efforts?  How can I get them to understand exactly what the effort would be worth for the future?

------------------------------
Scott Gilleland
Senior Field Service Engineer
Messer Cutting Systems
------------------------------