Alfredo Franza literally worked his way up to become the Vice President of Operations of United Steel Products in the New York City area.
“I did installs, I worked on a truck, I did repairs, I did a lot of electric work,” Franza said of the business owned by his father. “And then slowly just moved into the office and took over service at one point.
“I've really done every single job that there is in this business.”
The business is about garage doors. And in New York City, that means a near 100% commercial operation. Think rolling steel fire doors. Rolling doors that front New York City’s street-front retail shops. Insulated doors at businesses. Doors at parking garages that hold at least 10 cars. Work on bridges and tunnels that requires going to the office at one end of the structure and working where needed before returning – in New York traffic – to verify work is completed. And even rolling doors at the concession stands at Yankee Stadium.
Franza said most of United Steel’s business involves remodeling, service work, government contracts and government service contracts. New construction accounts for 20-30% of the work, although in New York new construction has its own meaning, with many buildings being repurposed. Franza gave the example of turning a warehouse into a school.
There is the very occasional need for a residential garage door installation, which in Manhattan is not your typical garage door job. Franza called it “a high-speed door in (an) apartment.”
Yes, “in” an apartment.
“They go up the elevator with the car,” Franza said. “The car fits in the elevator. They bring the car up the elevator. They drive it through the high-speed door into their apartment.”
That brings a totally different meaning to the term “attached” garage.
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Applying what he had learned
Franza first started working for his father during holidays and summers in middle school and high school. He went to Hofstra, graduating in 1991 with an accounting degree. Then he walked into a recession.
“The year before, people were graduating and they were getting 20 interviews and multiple job offers,” Franza said. “The year I graduated, crickets.”
He compared the offers he did receive to what he was making at United Steel with his father, and had a self-described “screw it” moment – Franza decided to apply what he learned in college and help his father.
At the time, United Steel had two dedicated service trucks and three or four installation trucks. A team member would drive to a site to do a job, drive back to the office for a new ticket, then drive to a new job.
“All day long,” Franza said. “Pagers were the biggest innovation.”
The next step forward was using a pager to send a message. When Nextel added a walkie-talkie feature, United Steel felt it was approaching technology heaven.
“We rolled with all that,” Franza said.
But even in 2021, the business worked on paper. Services, contracts, all data first put on paper before it was transferred into a computer system.
When we switched to ServiceTitan (in early 2021), it was like going from writing with a quill pen and inkwell to the 21st century."
‘Best one out there’
Franza realized that United Steel wasn’t using the best software when a ServiceTitan customer suggested he check out the cloud-based software for the trades. He still remembers the customer’s exact words.
“‘That’s the Mercedes Benz. That’s the top of the line. The best one out there,’” Franza said.
The price was more than United Steel had been paying, but Franza said he learned quickly it was worth it.
“When we switched to ServiceTitan (in early 2021), it was like going from writing with a quill pen and inkwell to the 21st century,” Franza said.
Among the benefits he noticed quickly: increased ability to track work and workers. In the first year with ServiceTitan, United Steel increased sales 30%. The year 2022 was a slower one due to the overall economy, but expectations are still for a 10-15% increase in sales. And United Steel Products signed up for an add-on to keep potential customers from falling through the cracks.
“We've added a couple of more service trucks and there's still not enough time in the day to just chase everything,” Franza said. “We signed up for Marketing Pro so we have automatic reminders going out to customers that we sent them an estimate.”
The addition of Phones Pro also helped with after-hours calls.
“All the messages get routed to different people,” he said. “They all get recorded. We even use integration with Phones Pro and Slack so people get notified that there was a message left in the mailbox.”
Immediate payoff
ServiceTitan’s projects functionality helped handle complex commercial jobs.
“You could have a job where it could be as simple as an estimate and an invoice, but you could have all the calls scheduled in there for all the different appointments and for different tasks all scheduled in there,” Franza said. “And then when you have to look something up, everything is right there.”
The bottom line on efficiency?
“We're able to do a lot more work with our service guys and our installers, but keep the same amount of office staff to do all the paperwork,” Franza said.
That meant that the investment with ServiceTitan paid off in the first year United Steel used the software.
“We made up that money that we were spending (on ServiceTitan), and then some,” he said.
