Moving off a homegrown system
Somebody in your shop built the system you run on
It started as one workbook and grew from there. It is not broken. It has just stopped keeping up, and these are the five places you feel it.
1. Estimating
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE NOW
The pricing workbook one estimator built and fully understands. Labor rates on a tab somebody remembers to update.
WHAT CHANGES
Scope, quantities, pricing, and labor rates entered once, somewhere the next person inherits.
2. Project management and engineering
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE NOW
Cut lists rebuilt from scratch per job. The RFI log is a folder of saved emails in one person's inbox.
WHAT CHANGES
Cut lists and shop drawings generated off the estimate. RFIs and submittals visible to the whole team.
3. Production
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE NOW
The whiteboard is the real schedule. Work orders get assigned out loud. Next month's capacity is a gut feel.
WHAT CHANGES
Work orders carry status and hours, so next month's capacity is a number instead of a feeling.
4. Installation
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE NOW
Percent complete written on paper, or a shared sheet updated when somebody gets a signal. The PM reacts tomorrow.
WHAT CHANGES
Progress and impediments captured as they happen, while there is still time to move the schedule.
5. Close out
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE NOW
Job costing arrives weeks later as a post mortem in a spreadsheet, after the next bid already went out.
WHAT CHANGES
Job costing while the job is still open, so "was this good work for us" has an answer before you bid the next one.
What the gaps cost
Time, money, and visibility
Time
Double entry, re-keying, and hunting down a number somebody already found once.
Money
Hours spent holding it together instead of growing the shop, and the jobs you never got to bid.
Visibility
You cannot price, schedule, or protect what you cannot see. Feelings are not facts.
Two shops that made the move
Schlaegle Design Build Associates
Started in a Pittsburgh basement in 2011 on $30,000 of revenue. Moved to INNERGY in 2021. Roughly 45 employees and about $10 million today.
BEFORE
Excel and QuickBooks, with purchasing still on paper. Casey saw how bad it was when he took over buying himself during COVID.
AFTER
Workload meetings went from hours to 45 minutes. Now managed by contribution margin per hour, which made it a high-profit performer.
And one that started half a century earlier
Mission Bell
Founded 1959. Roughly 250 people in the Bay Area.
BEFORE
Lotus 1-2-3, then Excel, then an internal database that stayed disconnected from the organization. Finishing it would have taken two years or more.
AFTER
Signed two months after the first conversation, live four months after that. Forecaster and the Bottleneck Report show what is coming.
Sources: INNERGY webinar, "Why your homegrown solution isn't scalable," July 22, 2026. Schlaegle Design Build Associates case study, innergy.com.