Gearing up for this next entry in our blog series here, I was reminded of that old adage of back to basics sometimes being your best bet to move forward in the right way. What better way than to feature (and reemphasize) the mechanisms in SI that can help you most without reinventing the wheel.
Be it, Project Templates, Packages (including Solutions), Accessories, cloning (both of Projects and items), or leveraging your prior design drawings, SI can help you save time thus ensuring you make the most of your effort and subsequently your profits. Moreover, these features are some of the most basic uses of SI that even longtime users often overlook. So, without further delay, let’s review these in order to secure your team’s maximum utilization when considering security bids.
First off – How can Project Templates help?
Simply put, a Project Template in SI allows our users to save any prior Project as a built-out starting point for any new project complete with a bill of materials (BOM), design drawings, tax application, Payment Terms, as well as any other details that are possible for an SI Project.
This mechanism is a huge time saver and will serve your team very well. Let’s say, for instance, you recently completed a fully populated multi-zone security project replete with all the accessories, control elements, back-up batteries, fob’s, etc., and you realize that this needs to be a company standard for the future. Well, now all you need do is right-click on the Project and select Create Template in order for that to become an available option for your estimators to use going forward in SI.
For more on this process, click this link here.
Utilize Packages for repeated success.
If an overall Project Template is not to your liking, then let’s consider the use of SI’s Packages. A package in SI can also be thought of as a custom assembly of items from your Product and Labor Catalogs that enable a unique presentation for the naming convention along with specific details about pricing for both the Products and Labor within any such grouping.
Now, whether this assembly of items be unique and custom to your team, or if it merely replicates a manufacturer’s pre-assembled kit, is entirely at your disposal. Many teams utilize SI Packages for both such examples. But, in the area of security, this can be critical to repeated success and here’s why.
For both sales and purchasing, this specific assembly of items in an SI Package can save loads of time when bidding and procuring a job. For bids, quotes, proposals, and the like, your team need only search for the name of any Package in the Package Explorer and immediately add numerous items complete with margin, labor, cabling, hardware, etc.
For the procurement team, their task is made even simpler in that they need now not waste time consulting online guides, spec sheets, and other means of assistance as all necessary parts in order to complete the PO for the items in the Package are pre-loaded into the Project BOM and thus negate any further exercise to this end.
This is especially true if your Packages are pre-engineered in a Project Template via system design drawings. An additional user tip, this also enables your design engineering team to select which items in any Package receive shapes and blocks for their Visio and Auto-CAD drawings.
For more on this specific utilization of Packages for the design environment, click here.
Another useful package to consider utilizing in SI are Solutions.
This type of Package is helpful towards repeated use success as it allows users to, not only combine Products and Labor, but also allows for the combination of other Packages in the same assembly. This very convenient and reliable utilization can lead to great success for your team especially if multi-zone or MDU’s are a part of your market sector. For more on type of Package known as a Solution, click here.
Creating Accessories in your SI Catalog for wash, rinse, repeat success.
Now what is great about Accessories (the relationships between Products in your SI Catalog) is that you – the user – designates the relationship entirely. That’s right. No prepackaged or recommended values are assumed in your Product Catalog. Those decisions belong to you and your team exclusively.
Once these product relationships are known (such as a security control board and a back-up battery), your team can easily configure these accessory relationships with the execution of a Mass Update of Accessories.
This means that multiple Products can be accessorized at the same time and further, those items can have multiple accessories applied during this same process. This makes life easy and that’s what SI endeavors to deliver to our users – ease of configuration.
Upon completion of these accessorized values, your team is ready for the wash, rinse, repeat motto where your team then leverages these items for use in Projects, Project Templates, Packages (including Solutions), and your design engineer drawings. To read up more on this Accessory mechanism, click here.
Cloning in the 21st century (in SI that is).
While the term cloning in and of itself can elicit varied thoughts in today’s world, here we’ll discuss the benefits of such activity to ensure your team’s success when quoting security jobs. Namely, in terms of cloning an existing SI Project to make your next one.
If you have recently completed a multi-zone security and surveillance bid that would serve as a great starting point for your next one, then cloning this source project is your first step to success via repetition. For those not familiar with this process, a simple right-click will yield the desired option to clone the Project.
The real magic here with this process is that every single aspect of the prior project will be present in your cloned version. This can even include the client if you’re issuing a redundant bid for a prospect with multiple but similar open project bids. As a bonus here, if the design engineer drawing was previously completed on your source project, that’s right, it also comes along for the ride. As a prior longtime user of SI, this was by far my single most successful aspect of ensuring a quick, thorough, and secure new bid would be quickly generated or replicated as necessary.
Another friendly user tip, this cloning mechanism, is also available for items within a Project as well as within a Package. Usage here would be for any Project Template that needs to increase the quantities of the default items already present within the BOM. One need only to right-click on any item and select clone.
You will then see this screen that will let you adjust your quantities, locations, systems, etc., accordingly.
This applies inside of any Package as well as the default values for some items could be as low as 1 and thus, increasing the quantity of any item within that Package could be in order to account for multiple zones or even multiple items within certain zones. If you’ve not worked with this aspect of the cloning mechanism before, then be sure to explore it’s functionality for your upcoming security bids.
Well-leveraged design drawings will secure your team’s continued success.
Now for many of you, the use of design-engineered drawings is probably a bit of a no-brainer as they say in today’s parlance. While this is perfectly true of course, for many teams, all SI Projects start with the design and the engineering team. For those of you where this applies and that use Visio, you may already be aware of the aforementioned Project cloning technique that can replicate any prior design effort for your latest bid request. But, from my continued consulting with many design teams over the last few years, not all are aware that you can include prior design drawing pages from within any prior SI/Visio file for any new bid.
The mechanism here is relatively straight forward but, another user tip here, be sure to have identified the source project and specific drawing page(s) within your prior bid before your get started on your new one.
Once the prior design page(s) is known, simply right-click on any blank page in your Visio drawing to select Insert Drawing Pages and use the file directory to navigate to your SI Project of choice.
Upon selection, the names of the actual prior design drawing pages will appear and you can then add, not only the Products (with all relationships such as Accessories and Packages), but also the design drawing itself.
This mechanism can also include such designations as Systems and Locations from the prior source project.
Now, most of you will immediately recognize the benefit of this but just to state one example; let’s say you have two prior projects – one with a surveillance design bid and the other with a complete multi-zone surveillance system design. With this in mind, you could now open a brand new, blank, Visio associated SI Project and then add full design drawings with just a few clicks that would be replete with all related data values and designations.
Seems too good to be true? Well it’s not and you would do wise to explore and exploit this option if you are not already doing so.
Now we know each team will leverage and utilize these aforementioned feature sets in their own unique method. Therefore, we want to make sure that all of our users have the exposure and training necessary to maximize this endeavor. To achieve this, please see the information below here for how your team can get assistance with SI’s latest release v21.
And there you have it! SI’s features function in such a fashion that will ease the burden of bid submissions and allow your team to build on existing values in order to secure a profitable future.
A Perspective
Our team is continually evaluating ways to improve and enhance your team’s usage of and experience with our SI platform. Therefore, it behooves you and your team to explore these (and other features) as well by securing time with our Professional Services Group of SI/industry veterans in order to maximize your team’s ability to succeed with the software.
In Summation…
-Update to v21 if you have not already.
-Review, utilize, and deploy the features listed above here to improve and solidify your security offerings.
-Sign-up for webinars, training, or visit our online documentation wiki for tutorial assistance.
And, as always…
-Get focused, get serious, and make money.
Enjoy!
With all of that said, there’s still plenty more in store for you with SI and forthcoming product releases so keep an eye out for future updates.
We are always reviewing your Feature Requests to determine our best step forward and next course of action with future SI product releases so…“keep’em coming”!
In closing…
For more information on these and other features of SI, please see this link: D-Tools v21. You can also review our other videos and our usual support documentation.
You can also get more detailed information about v21 via our upcoming webinars and by enrolling in SI training with our PSG team. Please review our “What’s new in v21” webinar that is now available.
And don’t forget, that’s why we are here…to ensure your success with our product! Be sure to check back here next time for more on v21!!!