Location/Region: Shingle Springs, CA
Industry: Roadway construction
Apps implemented: Sales, Purchase, Accounting, Website, Email Marketing, Fleet, Manufacturing, Maintenance, Sign, Documents
Software Replaced: Quickbooks, Microsoft Word/Excel
Number of users: 8
Company size: 30 part-time, 8 full-time
Hosting type: Odoo online
Across the country, construction and maintenance are constantly being done to improve our roadways. Construction workers commit long hours to their jobs, often working during heavy traffic hours and even through the late hours of the night. With low visibility and not much protection from oncoming vehicles, many construction workers are put right in the face of physical danger. Companies such as Road-Tech want to protect construction workers while they work to make roadways safer for us all.
“Our job is to get people home safe and get everyone back to their families.”
Road-Tech, based in Shingle Springs, California, was founded in 2001 by Joe Jeffrey and Anthony Espinosa. Joe, having worked for a changeable message board manufacturer previously, had a passion for the road technology industry. The two ran a successful business until, unfortunately, Anthony’s health began to slowly deteriorate. He was forced to take a step back from the company with Matt Jeffrey, Joe’s son, taking over the operations that Anthony was previously in charge of. Ben Jeffrey, Joe’s other son and Matt’s brother, joined Road-Tech in 2016. What started off as a part-time job for brothers Ben and Matt became a passion, and in 2021, the two purchased the company from their dad. Today, Ben Jeffrey serves as President and CEO of Road-Tech, keeping the business in the family and continuing the success that Joe built.
Road-Tech is in the business of “everything orange” on the side of the road, as Ben likes to put it, helping to provide roadside signs, changeable message boards, and arrow boards for road construction projects. As the company continues to serve its customers loyally and protect construction workers on the job, it needed more reliable software. Odoo, it turns out, was the perfect fit.
Roadblocks ahead: Navigating the potholes of outdated systems
Prior to using Odoo, Road-Tech was using Quickbooks for CRM, a small quotation template platform, and Microsoft Word and Excel. Ben Jeffrey explains that when he first started with his father’s company, he worked out in the field doing construction before eventually moving to sales. His time in sales working with Road-Tech’s old combination of various software showed him firsthand the challenges that this system presented. The quotation template platform that the company was using at the time was not easy or efficient to use, slowing down the process and wasting time.
“It was extraordinarily hard to make a quote.”
Ben explains that product pricing was kept in various Microsoft Word and Excel documents, with no intuitive or master location where these numbers could be easily accessed. He describes the time-consuming process of finding prices and giving customers accurate quotes with the company’s previous system:
“Whenever someone wanted the price on something, I'd have to go and find that old saved file and pull it up, and then look up the serial number, find the price, and then mark it up, and go back to the person. All of that took a really long time, especially if you’re trying to do multiple items.”
In general, the sales process was a huge pain point for Road-Tech. After working on the sales team using these processes for about two to three years, Ben realized that something had to change. He began looking primarily for a good sales platform and narrowed down his search to Salesforce and Odoo. Conveniently, Odoo was having an event in Sacramento around this time, so Ben decided to attend in the hopes that it would help him make a decision about what new software to choose. At the event, Ben explains that there was a demonstration of Odoo and a Q&A, allowing him to get an immersive experience of what using Odoo could really be like. After the event, Ben decided - Odoo was the right choice for Road-Tech.
Fast lane to efficiency
Road-Tech officially went live with Odoo in 2019. Ben says that the company’s implementation process was difficult, but they got through it. He attributes the challenges of the experience to the “ancient version” of Quickbooks they were using at the time, which made it hard to transfer data into Odoo. Eventually, they were able to migrate everything over and fully set it up with Odoo, and Ben says it's been a positive experience ever since.
"[Odoo] really streamlined all of our processes."
Ben says that sales is still at the core of his work at the company, but he also utilizes Odoo’s Email Marketing, Accounting, and Purchase applications frequently. Additionally, Road-Tech opened up a roadside sign shop with products that the company manufactures itself, using the Odoo Manufacturing app to spearhead these operations.
One of Road-Tech’s main pain points with its previous system was the amount of time it took to pull prices for products. Ben explains that it took up to half an hour to find the relevant Word document or Excel spreadsheet with the right information and relay that price back to the customer. Now, with Odoo, it takes five to six seconds.
“I just pull up the quotation or the item. Maybe call it 30 seconds because I want to look over the language and make sure everything is precise and clean, but its extremely fast.”
Odoo’s software has made business operations much more efficient and seamless overall with its integrated nature. Rather than manually inputting information across multiple different platforms that don’t communicate with each other, Odoo automatically ties together relevant information along the sales process. This is one of Ben’s favorite aspects of Odoo:
“I like that everything’s connected. Going from purchasing something to receiving it to quoting it to delivering it, having Sign for them to sign for it, invoicing them for it– it's all in the environment, and so it all translates really quickly and easily.”
With an important mission, it is critical that Road-Tech has the right business software to support its operations. With Odoo, Road-Tech can continue to provide invaluable safety equipment and explore additional ways to protect the well-being of construction workers on roadways across the West Coast.
Paving the Way: How Road-Tech Streamlined Safety with Odoo