Water Depot came to us needing a complete business management application to streamline their multi-location franchise operation. Water Depot is a retailer and service provider of water treatment systems, water softeners, water purifiers, water filtration, and more.
Their business relies on a unique blend of retail point-of-sale, service appointments, and recurring product/service plans. Out-of-the-box software was not able to sufficiently handle all of these processes and was obstructing their view of the business.
Developing a single source of truth
Software has the power to streamline a business. However, too much software can create a disjointed view of a business that is ineffective and often misleading. Water Depot was suffering from having data in too many places. To solve this, we developed a custom software application to bring all aspects of their business together including POS, inventory management, work scheduling, technician dispatching, estimates, invoicing, and a holistic customer view tailored to the water business.
Digitization
The first phase of the Water Depot software build was to digitize their product database, location information, point of sale, and inventory into a single web-based application. We aggregated data from across the organization, normalized the data, and pulled it into an easy-to-use admin interface. The admin interface allowed for custom settings for each location and granular permission controls for the various types of users including admins, staff, and technicians.
Business process automation
Once all of the company data was in the app, we were able to work closely with Water Depot to automate repetitive tasks throughout the organization. We created process flows for all sorts of operational tasks and identified areas that the application could fully or partially automate a business process to greatly increase efficiency and transparency.
Some of the automation includes auto-generated call lists based on recurring service schedules, automated action items based on workflow triggers, and intelligent inventory depreciation based on job order statuses. These strategic automation points provide Water Depot admins with more insight from less input.
Power to the customer
We also created a customer-facing version of the app with modern self-serve tools for their wide customer base. Through the app, customers are able to manage their own profiles including service addresses and billing information. They can also purchase water refills on the go through a one-click checkout.