Window installation / Trades with field crews
Measurement, price and contract in one visit
Telephony inside the CRM · Dispatch by territory · Tablet at the customer · Factory integration
A company selling and installing plastic windows. Before: measure, carry the figures back to the office, have sales calculate, call back, and get the customer to come in to sign. After: the surveyor measures, the tablet calculates, the customer decides — and the contract and the deposit happen at the same appointment.
Starting point
The company sold and installed plastic windows and carried out construction and installation work. Enquiries arrived mostly by phone.
The workflow was the one standard in that market: measure at the customer's home, bring the figures back to the office, have a salesperson calculate, call back, negotiate — and if the customer agreed, a second trip for them into the office to sign. Days and at least two more contacts sat between measurement and contract, and in that gap the decision could soften again.
So the task was not to make the existing workflow faster. It was to delete two of its steps outright: the calculation in the office and the customer's second visit.
Project scope
- CRM with staff management: tasks, sales targets, target tracking, time recording, payroll and bonus calculation, performance analysis
- Telephony integration: calls answered inside the CRM and logged against the customer record
- Dispatching of measurement appointments by territory, calendar and surveyor workload
- Mobile application for the surveyor with pricing, contract and deposit
- Two-way integration with the manufacturing plant: order handover and production stage feedback
- Automatic creation of the installation order and assignment of the installation crew
System architecture
The platform follows the customer from the first call to installation. There is no office step left between them.
- Call and customer record — The phone system is wired into the CRM. Sales answer the call inside the system and the conversation is logged against the customer record.
- Measurement dispatch — Once the site address is entered, the system proposes suitable surveyors: fixed territory, personal calendar, current workload. Sales only agree the time.
- Mobile application — The surveyor receives the job as a notification and confirms receipt. On the tablet: measurements, construction parameters, calculation, contract, deposit.
- Pricing engine — The calculator works from the manufacturing parameters of the plant, so the price quoted on site is the one that is actually produced later.
- Factory integration — The closed order goes straight into production in the plant's own format; the plant reports the stages back: accepted, in production, ready, delivery scheduled.
- Installation — From the delivery date the system creates the installation order and assigns the crew — with address, time, customer data, number of units and the technical details.
Core functions
The contract is signed where the measuring happens
The surveyor measures, enters the construction parameters and gets the calculation immediately. If the customer agrees, contract and order are signed on the spot and the deposit is taken; the paperwork comes out of a mobile printer. Measurement, calculation, call-back and a second office visit collapse into one appointment.
The calculation knows the factory
The pricing engine is built on the plant's parameters, not on a price list. That is why the surveyor can state a binding price instead of estimating one and having it corrected later.
The call becomes a record
Telephony is integrated into the CRM: the call is answered in the system and logged against the customer. What was discussed sits where the order will sit — not on a sticky note on a monitor.
Dispatch by territory and calendar
Sales enter the address; the system knows territories, calendars and workload and shows who can go when. Assignment becomes a rule instead of a dispatcher's memory.
The factory reports back
The integration runs both ways: the order goes to the plant without being re-entered, and the production stages come back into the system. Nobody has to phone to ask when the customer gets their windows.
The delivery date becomes the installation order
Once the delivery date is fixed, the system creates the installation order and assigns the crew. The crew receives address, time, customer data, unit count and technical details electronically — not in a call the evening before.
Bonus and target tracking keep up
Closing the deal updates the sale, the salesperson's bonus and target attainment in the same transaction. Performance analysis becomes a by-product of the work rather than a monthly exercise.
Technical implementation
Backend
- Laravel (PHP)
- REST API to the mobile application and to the plant
- MySQL data model for customers, orders, appointments and crews
- Role model for sales, surveying and installation
Mobile
- Tablet application for the surveyor
- Job notification with confirmation of receipt
- Pricing, contract and deposit on site
- Output through a mobile printer
Integrations
- Phone system inside the CRM
- Order handover in the plant's own format
- Production stage feedback
Result
The path from the first call to a signed contract went from several days and three contacts down to one appointment. Sales, surveying, production, delivery and installation hang off one record.
The client is not named. What is described is the mechanics of the delivered platform; the statement about effect comes from the client and is not independently measured.
- Measurement, a binding price, contract and deposit in a single customer appointment
- Surveyor assignment as a rule derived from territory, calendar and workload
- Order handover to the plant without re-entry, production stages back into the system
- Installation order and crew assignment created automatically from the delivery date
- Reported by the client: the number of orders closed after measurement roughly doubled — the reason is in the workflow: the customer decides while the surveyor is still there
- Around ten further projects in construction, manufacturing and installation were built on the same architecture up to 2023