Although new to McCormick Systems, already I find it very helpful, easy to use and resourceful - Yet, what impress me the most about your company is the customer service! I haven’t seen such a great service in years.
I’m stunned by the kindness, availability and helpfulness of everybody that I’ve dealt with.
For example: my salesman took hours from his time off at home to help me solve an issue and I always had the feeling that it was a pleasure for him to help me.
McCormick’s support team answered additional questions I had in a timely manner, all with the same kindness and dedication.
I just have one word to say for the experiences I’ve had with your company: “Wow”.
I would like to give a big thank you to my salesman as well as the support team that went above and beyond to solve my issues.
Great job!
- Daniel Daoust Owner
D&B Electrical, Edmonton, AB
Shortly introducing the Windows version into the operation, Kent said, K & N started growing faster. “We had the ability to bid more jobs, and to be secure in that our bids were now more accurate than they had been,” he remembered.
“And with the huge data base – which you can customize, and which we in fact did and do customize – you can have it any way you want.”
As of 2013, K & N has one estimator working in the office along with Kent, who also uses the system. Additionally, the company has added a Security & Surveillance division – work that Kent said is also estimated using the McCormick software.
“It’s not a dramatic change, to use the system to estimate security,” he explained. “You use the same estimating process – you’ll just have a different database.”
- Kent Nunamaker, owner,
K & N Electric, Sunbury, PA
How the heck does one estimate a cotton gin installation? It helps to be very familiar with the products, an attribute Bearden can claim. What’s more, there’s plenty of expertise inside LECO on which he can draw.
“Of course, you don’t get an off-the-shelf McCormick System product with a number of cotton-gin system assemblies inside,” he noted. Bearden, who began working with the McCormick software in 2004, has added the needed items and assemblies to LECO’s database over time.
“You have to understand, these are basically design/build jobs,” he said. “At this point, I can usually do a new installation estimate in two or three days.”
- Jack Bearden, Estimator/Project manager,
Lubbock Electric Co., Lubbock, TX
Despite seeing some perhaps-insane prices submitted to win bids, Conduit Electric stays out there, taking its swings. As a result, Parker said, the company’s Win 6000 software from McCormick Systems is working harder than ever.
“We use the heck out of it, at this point,” he said. “The McCormick product is great. It’s been relatively easy for us to create assemblies, add products where we need to, and work with Tra-Ser SX to get materials prices."
“We get all of the facts out of the system. After, I guess, more than 15 years of using it here at Conduit Electric, we have confidence in our estimates.”
Parker was even more enthusiastic about the support his company has obtained from McCormick over the years. “I honestly do not know of any company, in any line of computer software, that provides the kind of support that McCormick does. For one thing, they call you back when they say they will. Their people are very knowledgeable – and it goes beyond their software, to the PC technology world as a whole."
“For a company likes ours, not large enough to have an IT department, it is just exactly what we have to have.”
- Chuck Parker, Owner,
Conduit Electric, Portland OR
“What I really like about the software is the ease of use,” said Mike Kilian, one of two people who do estimating for the company. “We estimate every job. We turn our estimates over to the foremen in the field, so they can see the basis of our estimates, and use it as a guideline for how to run the job.
“Basically, the McCormick estimating system is very fast. We are often asked by our regular customers for a quick number on a project. With the assemblies we have in the system, we can produce what they want when they want it.”
A “full service contractor” can be asked to do work outside of its experience. That’s how Kilian got into the line construction business (four) years ago.
“Line construction certainly is different from ‘inside’ work, in many ways,” explained Kilian. “I was very enthusiastic when McCormick introduced its T&D estimating software. It came just as we were learning what this was all about. I was thrilled to death!"
“Some people might think the line construction business isn’t very complicated, but it is. The amount of different connectors and materials involved is amazing. The only hitch we had with the McCormick software was the terminology: In our part of the country, some product types have different slang names than we found in the database.”
Mike Kilian
Kilian Electrical Service, Wichita, KS
Tri-Nar has been a McCormick Systems customer since the late 1990s – and Ihler is a regular visitor to the annual User’s Conference. “I look for the new functions of the software, things that we can use in our work,” Jeff Ihler noted. “I want to be there to hear about the changes in the system. In what we do now, we make tremendous use of temporary assemblies – both in the jobs, and of course in the estimating system."
Ihler’s approach at the U.C. differs from that of many contractors and estimators, he said. “The sessions run Thursday and Friday, and a lot of people are out of there first thing Saturday morning. I always stay for Saturday’s morning computer lab."
“For one thing, in the lab – you can try out the things you’ve heard about in the sessions. I also get to work with existing capabilities that I wasn’t aware of before the conference. There are always plenty of McCormick staffers around on Saturday mornings . . . I’ve been sitting there and had two or three of them helping me."
- Jeff Ihler, Owner,
Tri-Nar, Inc., Redmond, WA
“McCormick’s software seemed to the people at D Suehiro Electric, when they evaluated the competing systems, to be the most flexible and comprehensive estimating system out there,” Darren Imada explained.
“I think I’ve learned to estimate better thanks to the system. I do like the flexibility it provides us – it can easily be tailored to our needs. As we do a specific job, especially involving a renovation, it really helps to be able to build assemblies on the fly.
“Working in existing buildings, we have to have a template to save time in doing the estimate. With something like light fixture types, it’s easy to take what we’ve done in the past in a specific building and make a change for a new renovation.”
- Darren Imada, Estimator
D. Suehiro Electric, Honolulu, HI
“After almost 10 years with the other estimating system, I got to a point where I realized that we needed a different – better – system to help us grow. We have an estimator working 32 hours a week plus myself, but I was ending up doing a lot of estimating,” said Mike Wallis.
I felt I had ended up doing too much working in the business, rather than what I wanted to do – which is to work on the business. We couldn’t keep up with the bid requests that we were pursuing. We had to think about hiring another estimator – and maybe even a third. That clearly wasn’t going to be possible.”
While seeking alternatives, he encountered McCormick Systems at a trade show. He, his estimator, and the company’s project manager auditioned the company’s software. Their eyes were opened, Wallis recalls, by the ease of use and speed of the different software.
“I had imagined – from our experience with the other software – that McCormick’s estimating package was hard to work with. And I thought it was very expensive, to boot,” he remembered. “But it turned out that it wasn’t any of that – far from it. In fact, when we put it all together, moving to the McCormick software turned out to be a no-brainer.”
-Mike Wallis, owner
In-West Electric, Goodyear, AZ
