We’re talking tech in this month’s “Coffey’s Corner.” End-to-end makeovers are coming for every company inside the CoolSys universe! These changes will not only impact the back office – but also touch every employee, including those of you driving our trucks and in the field.

Our tech transformation began almost a year ago — you just may not have known it then. We began with a several months-long projects to look at how our companies use technology and to create a five-year strategic plan for how to proceed. In this plan, we laid out more than $17 million dollars in technology investment, more than 30 projects, when combined, will transform our entire organization.  

Once we had a strategic plan, the next step was to have a team of about 40 employees representing each of the CoolSys divisions evaluate all of the various software platforms in existence that were logical fits for a company like ours that does engineering, construction, and field service.  That project led to us to the selection of the following “best-in-breed” solutions:

Oracle Cloud – Oracle Cloud will serve as our company’s financial underpinnings. The accounting teams involved in selection were hands down most impressed with the financial back-office features of Oracle, long known as the “king” of financials!

Oracle Human Capital Management (HCM)  – Oracle HCM will serve as our global tool to manage the companies most important resource – you! Our HR team was blown away by the capabilities of Oracle HCM back when we selected Sage as our partner a few years ago. Back then, it didn’t make fiscal sense; but today, when used in conjunction with Oracle Cloud, it represents our next-gen approach to managing all things relating to our people!

IFS Field Service Management (IFS) – IFS was the absolute walk-away winner selected by our operations team member representatives as  the best field service tool to manage the workload of our folks out there in the trenches who are taking calls and working on construction sites.

Salesforce – Salesforce.com was selected as “king of the hill” for all things related to managing customer opportunities by our sales team partners.

Of course, selecting all these great products is for naught if we can’t get them integrated, implemented and to eventually see all companies one day on their specific flavor of technology platforms! To do this work, we selected AST Corporation as our systems integrator.

Starting this month, we will begin the actual design and build phase that will see our first company move to the cloud before the end of 2019 and the entire enterprise by late 2020.   Buckle up your chin straps, boys and girls – it’s going to be a fun ride!  Our goal and objective will be to transform how our employees work and to change the way we interact with customers, moving from trusted contractor to integrated data-driven thought partner. 

Much more detail to come on this front. For now, let the design games begin…