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DOORS&WINDOWS
From aspirational to essential
Greg Beachim of First Degree Systems looks back at his
first PC, the early beginnings of the internet (for him), and
how software is helping shape the future of fenestration.
» » GOING BACK LONGER THAN I WISH
to admit, a computer in a window factory was
practically unheard of. It was, for the better
part, something that was for the aspiring
college campus; not something that could be
found littering the desk of a fabricator. Then,
with the advent of Microsoft Windows 95 all
things changed, and the SoHo style of PCs
started to come into play.
Having started in fabrication in my late
teens, getting my hands on a PC for the first
time to process windows was a revelation.
Going from a manual calculation on a
paper-driven system that was fraught with
the risk of errors to an almost magical white
box that took seconds to process what would
normally take hours of hard drudge really was
a complete 360. This however is where to this
day a large proportion of both retailers and
fabricators are…
Let’s follow a typical sale to manufacture
process – the sales person fills in a form
manually sometimes in triplicate that is based
on an out-of-date price matrix that is offering
the wrong products. This is then sent to the
customer to agree and await the forms return.
Once agreed it gets passed to a surveyor to
re-draw, and sent into the administration
office to be written up again to send to order.
At this point the fabricator has to manually
process those products again before printing
another ream of paper to pass the products
to manufacture where the paper gets lost
discarded.
The world has moved on, and so has
fenestration software and the First Degree
Group leads the market in this sector.
Sales teams can now be live with up to date
prices and product information delivering an
unrivalled customer experience. Capturing
customer agreements live and being able
to pass these electronic documents back to
the administration team. Imagine a world
where going from sale to survey to being
able to order product for manufacture took
moments rather than days. Imagine the
ability to electronically order products for
fabrication without reprocessing by yourself or
the fabricator. The saving in mistakes alone is
considerable for most businesses.
www.first-degree-systems.com
C L E A RV I E W-U K . C O M » M AY 2019 » 43