Many companies concern themselves with the "next big thing" in technology. There's always something new around the next corner it seems, and many find the ongoing temptation to remain on the cutting edge hard to resist.

But for most companies, it isn't falling in love with the "next big thing" they worry about, but rather, realizing that they've stayed too long with an outdated system. "We've always done it this way" may be human nature, but can often lead to chaos.

Two companies—Air Technologies (a division of Ohio Transmission Corp.) and Dillon Supply—found themselves in the latter situation. But realizing their technology needed to be upgraded dramatically was just the first step.

Air Technologies is the industrial compressor and compressed air system division of Ohio Transmission Corp., headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. It services compressors, pumps and speed reducers, says OTC president Phil Derrow.

A couple of years ago, Derrow realized that they had a nice sort of "problem." The service group had been growing at the rate of "about 25 percent a year for its first 10 years," Derrow says, with "the compressor field service area being the dominant part of our repair business."

The company's repair work represents "about 20 percent" of OTC's overall revenue, Derrow explains. Their 61 technicians were performing about 11,000 field service and repair jobs per year. However, while the technology that goes into compressors had become more sophisticated, the methods by which the technicians were being assigned were not. Air Technologies' technicians were still working in a paper environment.

"Paperwork orders, job folders, literally paper folders, invoices," Derrow cites as examples. "Everything was on paper. We just got bigger, ran out of space to house personnel and were tired of paying the costs of inefficiencies" that resulted from all that paperwork.

The biggest issue, Derrow adds, was that "even though we were providing a better service to our customers by our training resources and technical support, it just got progressively more and more expensive to manage the back office function of the service department. We simply outgrew the paper system, and it was killing us."

As an example, he says, invoicing was very slow. "The average time from job completion to invoice generation was about two weeks," he recalls.

Clearly, some type of automated and wireless system (not to mention paperless) was needed. A few years prior to this, Derrow and parent company Ohio Transmission had a learning experience, he recalls, when they implemented their ERP system—with less than adequate results at first.

"We learned what mistakes not to repeat," Derrow laughs. "One mistake was that we left a lot of functionality and power of that [ERP] system on the table because we didn't change our business practices and processes to take full advantage of it."

That was among the lessons that Derrow and Air Technologies took with them as they looked for solutions to their paperwork problems.

"Be willing to change your business processes and practices to take advantage of the software. Don't try to make the software fit your business," he says. "And find a provider that has demonstrated capability to make and keep their commitments. In other words, their software has been tested, field-proven and they have the personnel to back it up."

Derrow's willingness to change his company's business processes and practices was music to the ears of Field Centrix, with whom Air Technologies came in contact during their second round of RFPs. Based in Irvine, Calif., Field Centrix specializes in field service automation software. Air Technologies decided on Field Centrix's Mobile Field Service Automation System.

An important part of a Field Centrix implementation includes a business needs analysis, explains Craig Burbidge, director of marketing. The analysis identifies the elements of a business process that should be—or shouldn't be—changed to take advantage of their software. A business that realizes it will need to change its process can be half the battle, as far as completing a successful implementation.

"A system like this has such an impact on the way a service system operates," says Burbidge. "We specifically built this for service technicians who don't sit at a computer all day. They need to use it like a tool, like a meter or electronic device to do their job. This is another tool in their tool kit."

The Field Centrix system has enabled Air Technologies and its technicians to put more time into actual service work and less on paperwork. Air Technologies saw a 50 percent increase in the number of service quotes their technicians were able to generate in the field. In addition, Air Technologies improved the time it took to take and schedule a service call—from 15 minutes to less than one minute. The average amount of paperwork each order generated decreased by 95 percent.

"We're taking the whole burden of paperwork out of the equation," Burbidge says. "Technicians aren't sitting at their dining room table Sunday evening trying to remember what they did last week."

Field Centrix has implemented this system in companies ranging from Fortune 500 to small service organizations, Burbidge explains. But there is one common denominator that all must have, he says, for the implementation and use of the software to succeed.

"What we've found is that you need to have an 'executive level champion' that will drive this through their organization," he says. "Employees need to understand why this is being done. For a lot of them, they've been doing their jobs the same way for years, both at the office and out in the field."

An extension of this was found when Derrow and Air Technologies set a target date—and met it.

"From signing the deal to going live took 120 days," Derrow says. " 'Pick a target and hit a target,' we said. And we hit that target—something you can do only if you have the right technology vendor and great people on your staff."

In addition, Derrow explains that he was also looking to the more mainstream Web sites as examples of what Air Technologies could achieve.

"We wanted to take our service delivery from being more than just better than those in the air compressor distribution and repair business, to being close to what customers are used to getting from FedEx, UPS or Amazon," Derrow sums up. "They were what we felt customers were comparing us to—not to other compressor companies. If I log onto Amazon and check the status of my order, online, without talking to anybody, and get accurate information, is there any reason why a customer [here] who's got a compressor being repaired can't find that the same way? Now they can."

At one time, Dillon Supply was viewed as being at the forefront in its use of technology. It was using computers before many of its competitors. In fact, it designed its original software some 20 years ago.

Dillon is based in Raleigh, N.C. with 22 branches in Virginia, Tennessee, South and North Carolina, Kentucky and Georgia. It handles an array of industrial, steel and safety-related products.

Dillon's current president is Dean Wagoner. Back then, he recalls, "Dillon Supply was really cutting edge with the software they had. I was with a competitor at the time, and I recall hearing about Dillon being on a computer system while the company I was with was not."

Over the years, though, little effort was made to maintain that technological edge. In addition, Dillon's software was still being used in virtually every phase of its operation—covering accounting, receivables, payables, inventory and purchasing. So when Wagoner took over Dillon in mid-2001, he knew going in that upgrading the technology would have to be among the first tasks he would tackle.

"We were running software developed in-house by a gentleman who was about to retire," Wagoner says, in setting the scene. "It had been enhanced somewhat over the years, but had not been upgraded as much as it should have."

Wagoner consulted with Sylvain Fournier, Dillon's IT manager, "and we felt that for us to grow and improve as a business," Wagoner says, "we had to have more cutting-edge software in house that would give us the tools we needed to be a more profitable, more efficient company."

"There are so many things that require knowledge and new technology," Fournier says, referring to working with their customers using EDI and XML, among others, "and we didn't have that in house."

Beginning in mid-2002, Wagoner and Fournier looked at several packages, gradually narrowing the list down to a few parties before hearing serious proposals. The change was necessary and both knew that this would require far more than a minimal investment.

However, from an IT perspective, Fournier says that pricewise "the timing was pretty good. While the price is always 'too high,' there were not many people investing [in IT] at the time. So it may have been a little bit easier to negotiate the price down."

As president, Wagoner experienced a modest amount of initial sticker shock, he admits.

"To be honest, it was a shocker at what the price tag was for putting together something like this," he says today. "But it was a complete overhaul. We didn't put a limit on what the cost would be because it was something we realized we had to do. We had to make the commitment regardless of the cost. It was a must-change situation we were in."

They eventually settled on Prophet 21, whose executive vice-president, Doug Levin, oversaw the installation and implementation—a process that Wagoner now describes as going "from a Volkswagen to a Porsche."

Levin was pleased to find that the change, radical and extensive as it would be for Dillon Supply, was driven from the top down.

It was vital, Levin says, to have "Wagoner drive through to the entire company why this was important to do. He also explained to the employees how it would benefit them and got many of them involved in the front end of our presentations."

Dillon employees overall were happy to see the changes.

"Salespeople, branch managers included, were very excited," Fournier says.

Some were a bit concerned, though, as it did mean that Dillon would be eliminating some jobs, especially in what had been the clerical end of things. However, Dillon was able to retrain several of them.

"We discussed with branch management that a lot of these jobs would be eliminated," Wagoner says. "If they had people who could be retrained and put into other areas of the business, it would be in sales or sales support. So we did as much as we could to relocate and retrain people, to put them in a position where they could stay. For others—and we were honest with them up front—there would not be a job available."

Are some companies pleased at new software packages until they realize it may well eliminate jobs?

"That was awkward about 10 years ago," Levin says, "but now everybody's looking for that. It's what they want. They want to do more with less."

The process, from signing on with Prophet 21 to going live, took just less than a year, Fournier says. Dillon and its more than 300 users are pleased at the results so far.

"We got to a point, five or six months after going live, where we were pushing new things," Fournier says. "And that is why we made the move—to be able to go forward and reach the goals we have."