Black Diamond Plumbing saved time and scaled

Black Diamond Plumbing has been servicing homes and small businesses throughout Salt Lake, Utah, Davis, Weber, Tooele and Summit Counties in the USA since 2009. They’ve got technicians with over 20 years of experience in their field, and offices scattered across Utah, including Salt Lake City, Ogden, Orem and St. George. We caught up with owner, Dan James, and heard all about how they’ve taken their reporting to the next level using Wink Reports, and saved their business time and a lot of hassle.

A growing company needs scalable business solutions - that’s exactly what Black Diamond experienced as they began to expand. First they outgrew their original inventory software - switching to ServiceTitan solved that problem. It wasn’t long before significant gaps in their reporting started ripping through their operational efficiency and causing headaches.

Part of the frustration was knowing they had to take drastic action, but having looked at some of the reporting tools on the market, they found the available options were mostly too expensive and/or unable to fill those gaps.

This is the story of how Black Diamond Plumbing went from leaving crucial data in the rough to polishing all their reporting needs, using the Wink three-step.

Growing pains before Wink

They knew that switching to ServiceTitan for their inventory management meant they’d have to start from scratch with their reporting. Every report in ServiceTitan comes from a specific data set - they could report on each set but not merge multiple sets. And certainly not blend all the necessary data into one report. Their only option was to use Excel to pull CSV files from each data set, then blend them (manually - ouch!) in Excel.

At that rate, they could only manage about 80% of their reporting needs. And that missing 20% had a huge impact! They had to repeat all the manual data entry and effort and time each and every single time things changed and the data needed updating. Dan James realized he’d have to make some operational changes and adjust their compensation plan if he couldn’t find a way to rebuild the reports he needed to manage commissions and bonuses.

Finding a solution that fits 

We asked Dan how he arrived at the solution that fit Black Diamond’s reporting needs. After consulting with ServiceTitan, which seemed expensive to implement and would battle to build the custom reports they’d need, they tried Zapier for a while for some of the “simpler stuff”. But then the API changed and ServiceTitan 2.0 lacked the necessary depth of integration with Zapier. The likes of Domo and other options were also costly, and it wasn’t certain they’d be able to do the job.

With Wink Reports, Dan found an affordable reporting solution that allowed Black Diamond to do complex reporting as standard, covering 100% of their business intelligence needs.

Was he comfortable looking outside the US for answers? Dan wasn’t too concerned about using an Aussie company, given that Australia is known as a big-player tech hub outside of the United States. If he ever worried about time zones becoming an issue, on-demand service from Wink's team during US office hours kept the wheels turning smoothly. Dan, he’s quite tech savvy and had tried a few different field businesses - before ServiceTitan, he used ServiceM8  and that’s when he first came across Wink.

What Dan knew for certain was that he had to solve his ServiceTitan reporting challenges or lose out on critical business intelligence, while wasting manpower on manually collating data from different tools, across multiple spreadsheets, to produce good, not great, reports.

The power of live data

Knowing that Wink Reports integrates with ServiceTitan software, Black Diamond Plumbing decided to go with Wink. For one thing, they realized that Wink Reports could automate accounts receivables data sets from ServiceTitan - they were constantly live. 

Very impressed with everything they have done for my company. They have amazing custom software with highly skilled programmers that can and will make running your business much more efficient and profitable. - Dan James, Owner of Black Diamond Plumbing

Asked what the setup process was like for them, Dan mentioned an occasional issue arising with live feed reporting after the API with ServiceTitan. Some adjustments were required after ServiceM8 - Wink had to help them do a reset but it wasn’t much of a head-scratcher for someone with Dan’s knack for tech. Actually, he reckons that Wink’s ease of use has improved over the last two years. And if a user gets stuck, he’s confident that Wink will have their back.

Scoring business goals

Time has once again become an asset when it comes to accounts receivables. Using Wink has relieved so much tension for Black Diamond by automating data retrieval. Dan says they “don’t need (their) AR guy to spend all his time manually pulling data from ServiceTitan.” It’s also a relief knowing that the reporting is getting done, lots of small systems and processes have been improved, and they can add all the datasets they want.

Another helpful element is the way Wink service evolves. Let’s say your big pain point is paying income tax, payroll or working out whether to pay commissions by the hour… Wink Reports either already has a report that can do those tricky things or will develop the template solutions and process automation that will help you. If you wanted Wink to create something as a pre-built solution like for clocking in and out of jobs, there’s flexibility to look at those things. It’s a huge support to business owners knowing there are potential innovations and improvements available for their future planning.

Switching to ServiceTitan with their Wink Reports integration has absolutely empowered Black Diamond Plumbing to build complex reports as standard, which support their short- and long-term business goals. To begin with, they’re getting great outcomes with their data blending capability and merging their reports in Wink, including accurate labour productivity tracking and reduced materials wastage. They’re able to manage commissions and bonuses better too. As for future planning, they can look forward to continually improving their reporting with additional data sets, welcoming all the complex and complicated data! And as the business grows, they can comfortably scale up operations.

If you’re keen to streamline your daily operations, take advantage of our 30-day free trial and put Wink Reports to work for your business.

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