Plains Energy is a rapidly growing energy company with 3 branches: Solar Installation, Electrical Storage (Battery), and Energy Conservation. They specialize in sustainable and reliable business solar solutions, and are dedicated to helping businesses save energy, produce their own electricity, and store electricity in a cost-effective manner so there is little financial risk and fast ROI.
The Technology Need
Plains Energy came to LuminFire because they were struggling with the number of various technology tools they were using to support their business, including: JobNimbus, Excel, and QuickBooks, and their inability to talk to each other. They desired to have a custom solution developed to act as a hub. Their goals were to share consistent job data, improve workflows, track solar production and energy usage, and create meaningful reports.
Plains had come to realize that JobNimbus wasn’t the right fit for their needs, as JobNimbus is geared toward one-time residential roofing and solar installations and Plains Energy works primarily with commercial clients with ongoing job management needs that can cover the lifespan of an installation. Because of this, they found themselves using Excel to fill in the gaps for JobNimbus’ missing functionality.
Plains Energy searched for solutions to their software needs for 5 years. They found many packages that did some of what they needed, but not everything, and most wouldn’t talk to each other.
The Solution
It was clear that Plains Energy needed a custom application to take their business to the next level. With the laws in the energy industry constantly changing, a custom solution would allow them to adapt immediately.
To get a jump start on the process and save money on implementation, LuminFire based Plains’ new solution on BrilliantHub, a fully customizable business application that already had the essential building blocks in place, including CRM Contacts and Organizations, that could track Utility Companies, Clients, Employees, Investors, etc.
With customizations, their solution became a competitive advantage due to how it tracks job progress, payments, people involved, documents, photos, etc., and shows the job locations on a map.
The greatest customization came in how Plains Energy tracks Solar Panel Jobs. Plains Energy has unique accounting note-tracking requirements that directly relate to monthly payments based on the production of a solar array. Quickbooks couldn’t calculate these items, and calculating them in Excel required management of individual files for each client and painful double-entry. We were able to move most of these solar calculations into their BrilliantHub app. Having these in their new app has made it easy to manage the data and update calculations for everyone in one place even if requirements change.
With all the important data stored in one consistent place, they can now produce accurate summary reports and deliver them as PDFs for clients, taxes, etc.
Another Happy Client
Automating Plains Energy’s processes with a custom solution made it possible to scale their business and expand nationwide. With the customizations made to BrilliantHub, they’ve now got a clear competitive advantage.
And with BrilliantHub, we can continue to build out any additional functionality or integration that Plains Energy needs.
“We’re very happy about working with LuminFire. They are there consistently to help us build a brilliant solution. In one situation, a 15 minute phone call with LuminFire helped to solve a 10 hour issue with one of our vendors. We can’t imagine working with anyone else. We look forward to continuing our partnership to always keep our technology on the cutting edge.” – Keith Pieper, Principal, Plains Energy
If you are looking to create a custom CRM/ERP solution that fits your exact business needs, LuminFire can help. Let’s connect!
Tim Cimbura – CEO, CFO and Software Engineer
Tim is an expert in creating custom business solutions that make businesses more effective, productive, and profitable. He specializes in rapid application development with Claris FileMaker, Laravel, and WordPress. He also knows Apple macOS technology inside and out.