Alterman Electric Saves Time, Increases Revenue with Spectrum Electronic Substantiated Billing
Customer invoices aren’t normally considered a marketing tool or a method for growth. But for Alterman Electric of San Antonio TX they’re both of those and an efficiency enhancer as well. Alterman prepares cost-plus customer invoices and back-up on CD’s instead of paper, thanks to the combination of Spectrum™ Document Imaging and the electronic substantiated billing feature in Spectrum’s Time & Material Billing module.
The result: Alterman saves time and money on the monthly billing process and demonstrates that it’s a savvy company that customers can trust and grow with. Alterman can be certain that it has billed for everything that’s legitimate, without double-billing.
An Alterman customer (typically a general contractor) receives an invoice and accompanying backup in a manner that it can easily peruse—rather than searching through hundreds of employee time cards, vendor invoices, inventory charges and other backup items. A customer can confirm within moments that it’s paying for legitimate items only—and paying for them only once.
Substantiated billing in an electronic format is a simple and painless process, according to controller Vickey Geffert, thanks to Spectrum Document Imaging and the detailed billing capability in Time & Material Billing. “Anyone who does substantiated billing is missing the boat if they’re not billing this way,” she said.
One reason it’s painless: it doesn’t require any extra effort. “The beauty of providing the substantiated billing on CD for our customers is that it fits right in with our normal processes, which is all Accounts Payable and payroll time cards with the job set up as cost-plus,” Vickey explained. “Spectrum automatically captures all the images—time cards, invoices and the rest—that I bill through the T&M module.
"When I get ready to do my customer’s bill, everything is sitting there waiting for me. It doesn’t make me do anything outside our normal process, other than setting up the job as a cost-plus bill in the Time & Materials module.”
Growth
Of Alterman’s $68 million in annual revenues, almost half is cost-plus, requiring substantiated billings. Vickey credits Spectrum’s electronic substantiated billing capability as a factor in Alterman’s growth from approximately $40 million to $68 million in annual revenues over the last several years.
“It’s helped us increase our revenues because it allows us to work with sophisticated general contractors and owners,” Vickey explained. “We can give them the information that they need at the simplest or most complex level—whatever they prefer. Of course, if you’re working with a sophisticated owner, they have a very sophisticated auditing staff—and auditors love getting the invoices on CD’s.”
Indeed, Alterman uses the capability as a marketing tool, since it enhances the firm’s reputation for innovation and customer-friendliness. “When our people go to interviews with client prospects, they often take a sample CD invoice to demonstrate our sophistication,” she explained. “When we started working as a subcontractor for one large company, for example, the owner looked at the general contractor and asked, ‘Why can’t you guys do this?’”
Cost Savings
Electronic substantiated billing offers considerable cost savings for Alterman. Vickey estimates that the company saves about 16 hours per month of clerical time on a single large bill. “That translates to savings of $400 to $500 per bill between clerical staff time and the copying and forwarding and the whole process,” Vickey said. “Multiply that by the number of monthly bills and then multiply that times 12 months.”
Vickey added that the integration of Spectrum’s modules is critical. “Document Imaging is not simply a stand-alone piece that’s been added to the software,” she explained. “Instead, when you scan a document into Spectrum, it’s totally integrated throughout the software and available anywhere you might want to see it. If, for example, you scan a time card in Payroll, you can see it in both Job Cost and Time & Material Billing. That’s much preferable to an add-on document imaging product.”
Compare the Alterman customer-billing experience with a scenario that will sound familiar to many cost-plus contractors that don’t use document imaging and electronic substantiated billing. After a vendor invoice arrives at the office, for example, it’s photocopied and routed to the appropriate parties (via fax, overnight or courier) for approval.
When the company prepares month-end billings, they run a report that identifies items that should be on the bill and manually marks them up. Office staff retrieves original A/P invoices, time cards and other billing documentation from the files (assuming they’ve been re-filed correctly) and photocopies them. The customer invoice and back-up consists of hundreds of sheets of paper in a three-ring binder (or, in extreme cases, a banker’s box).
A Better Way
Alterman Electric has a better way. When invoices, employee time cards and other documents are entered into Spectrum, they’re immediately available in Time & Material Billing. At the touch of a computer key, those images are burned onto a CD that puts the bill in electronic form.
Line items that are tied to an underlying transaction—an invoice or payroll time card, for example—are hyper-linked in blue. When a customer clicks on the hyper-link, the image of the document appears on screen. The images burned to CD are in a software-executable format so that an individual customer can easily view or print the substantiation. (Along with the CD, customers also receive paper copies of the top sheet or summary, lien waiver and the detail T&M bill. These are also provided on the CD.)
Technology As A Growth Tool
Alterman Electric has served commercial and industrial clients in San Antonio and surrounding areas since the company’s founding in 1923, when 24-year-old Nathan Alterman purchased an existing construction business. The growing company, owned by its non-union personnel since 1984, has a staff of approximately 375 people, including 320 field personnel. Services include electrical construction and pre-construction management, design and installation of voice and data communications systems, video cabling, access controls, security and surveillance systems, electrical service, preventive maintenance and 24-hour emergency service.
One reason for the company’s growth—in good and bad economic times—is its employment of technology to meet specific needs. In fact, Dexter + Chaney points to Alterman’s use of Spectrum’s electronic substantiated billing process as a case-study example that technology should be viewed as much more than simply a cost. Instead, it can be regarded as a tool to help a construction company become more productive, grow revenue and be a competitive force in the marketplace.
Alterman installed Spectrum in 1996. “When we were researching software packages in the mid-1990s, our cost-plus billing need was a driving factor behind the choice of Spectrum,” said Vickey, who’s been with the company since 1987. “Every software package had an A/P program and a receivables program, but we needed something that could handle our cost-plus work. That prompted us to choose Dexter + Chaney.”
Early Days
In the early days—before Dexter + Chaney introduced Spectrum Document Imaging—Vickey and her staff photocopied invoices as they keyed costs into the system. “When it was time for billing, we’d run a report that identified the invoices that we needed, and then we collected them from the files and photocopied them,” Vickey said. “It was a time-consuming process, and I’m sure we used up a lot of trees.”
When Dexter + Chaney launched its Document Imaging module in 1999—the first construction software firm to offer the capability—life got easier for Alterman; the company was among the first and most enthusiastic customers to adopt the product. (Dexter + Chaney today is the industry leader, as well as pioneer, in construction document imaging. More than 7,500 total users—including multiple users at individual companies—employ Spectrum Document Imaging.)
“By enhancing Spectrum with Document Imaging and the electronic substantiated billing capability, that just really pulled things together for us,” Vickey said. “It’s been a perfect fit. The ability to prepare customer invoices on CDs will continue to help us grow, both on an operational level and as a marketing tool. The fact that it’s a very simple process—there’s nothing technical about it—is an added benefit. All in all, it’s a wonderful tool.”
Vickey added: “It’s another example of how Dexter + Chaney listens to their customers. You’re not just some number in a big corporate world where they don’t care what you think or what you do. I really like the way that Dexter + Chaney’s users drive their business.”
Founded in 1923, Alterman Electric Co., Ltd. has provided electrical construction on many of San Antonio’s most impressive landmarks and contemporary structures. By integrating cutting-edge technologies with core values and disciplines, Alterman has successfully met the expanding needs of commercial and industrial clients and has earned the confidence of Owners, Construction Managers, General Contractors, Architects, and Engineers. Alterman has been a Dexter + Chaney client and Spectrum user since 1996.
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