the time it takes to complete most service calls, leading to
happier customers. In fact, the company received the highest
score in J.D. Power and Associates 2007 Gas Utility
Residential Customer Satisfaction Survey.
The technology, however, is no longer the exclusive purview
of large companies with significant IT budgets, at least
not anymore. Lloyd’s Construction in Eagan, Minnesota,
might not seem as though it needs flashy phone software.
The $9-million-a-year demolition and carting company has
been run by the same family for the past 24 years. Lloyd’s
takes down commercial and residential buildings, then hauls
them away. What could be more simple?
That is, if wrangling 100 employees, 30 trucks, and more
than 400 dumpsters can be called simple. Coordinating those
moving parts is crucial to growing the business—and to saving
the sanity of Stephanie Lloyd, 41, who has run the company
for the past four years. Until recently, Lloyd’s used a hodgepodge
of spreadsheets, paper ledgers, and accounting software
on company PCs to keep track of its workers and equipment.
To make matters worse, the company used radios to coordinate
with its workers on the job, and the more cell phone towers
that came online in Minnesota, the worse Lloyd’s radio
reception got. It was time, the Lloyds decided, to drag their
company into the 21st-century world of smartphones.
Lloyd’s considered a half-dozen mobile-productivity
software suites before settling on eTrace, which happened to
come from a company called GearWorks based just across
town. Not only was GearWorks local, but its software worked
on Sprint Nextel’s i560 and i850 phones, which are aimed at
the construction industry. Lloyd’s had already started buying
these push-to-talk phones to wean workers from their dying
radios. Immediately, there were troubles with technophobic
staff. Employees had to be guided up a steep learning curve in
order to master even basic features on their new phones. For
18 months the two systems ran side by side: eTrace as it was
phased in, and the old paper-and-pencil system as it was