As the owner and Operations Manager of the communications division of 2-Way Communications, Bill Bartlett uses D3M nearly every day to design and manage their two-way radio projects. See what he has to say about the web app.
How long have you been working with two-way radios?
20-22 years.
Prior to D3M, what tools were you using to design and document your two-way radio networks?
A combination of our in-house CRM and Microsoft Visio.
How does D3M compare to Visio?
I find D3M a litter harder to use and not quite a sophisticated as Visio. But, Visio doesn’t do a lot of what D3M does, so it is a bit of a tradeoff.
How often are you using D3M?
I am generally in there at least once a day. We have been using the tool for 8 months now.
At what stage in the sales cycle are you using D3M?
We are trying to use D3M more at the sales level. What we are finding is that we are using it more for documentation currently. I am using it for customer presentations as a sale tool, but we are not using it company-wide. We’re not at the point where a member from the sales team would sit down and create the system on their own.
With the last couple of systems that we have created, we have started with a drawing. Even if you already know all the parts required for a 3-repeater site connect system, we should start with a drawing because later on the importance of that drawing is going to be the documentation.
Have there been any WOW moments using D3M, where you have said, “That's really cool, I didn't know D3M could do that.”
I think it is tying drawing items to the fleetmap. When you click on an item in the drawing and it displays all of your serial numbers and specific information from your drawing. When I spend hours creating a very detailed system and then I can click on the drawing and see the quantities - it breaks out how many devices I have for equipment counts - it is pretty cool!
We’ve started documenting systems in D3M. We will store serial numbers after we’ve deployed the system, unit ID’s and more. It’s very specific information about each radio which is huge. It is a great depository and it is visual. You can find the radios on the drawing, click on them and find more information on the fleetmap.
How much time has D3M saved you?
I think we had a pretty good system before with Visio, but instead of putting the information into multiple databases and places, we are now putting everything into one software application. The biggest benefit to me is that all that information is now in one location. My techs can see the information on their smart devises when they are not in the office.
Who within your organization is using D3M?
Right now myself, managers, sales reps and 2 technicians have accounts. Soon all of our technicians will have access to D3M to get information about the systems. We have a 25-user package.
At what stage has D3M helped you and your dealership the most during the sales cycle?
Right now, probably support. Only because we have a couple of larger systems that were sold prior to D3M. In the future, it will be throughout the entire sales cycle.
What do you like best about D3M?
The ability to centralize data. Having everything in one location.
What do you find most frustrating about D3M?
When you define an item in your library, a specific piece of equipment, and when you create it, you miss one of the connections. You’ve designed a system and have a dozen of these components on the drawing and you realized it’s missing one of the connectors. You update the library item, but the item is not pushed into your drawing. You now need to go back into your drawing and replace the item. When I have a library item and I update it, I want to push it through existing drawings.
D3M Edit: When an item is updated in the library, you must go back in and replace the piece of equipment in your drawings. This is done because you are changing the template of the icon. We do this to protect past projects as a user may update equipment, but older versions may not have had those ports or connections.
Do you have comments, suggestions or additional features that would help us improve D3M?
Continue the great work. You have excellent tech support and you [D3M] have been really open to hearing suggestions. That’s part of why I’m really into Teldio and what you guys do.
If you were to review D3M what score would you give it out of 10?
A strong 8.
Would you recommend D3M to a friend in the industry?
Absolutely!
Please finish this sentence,“D3M has been beneficial to 2-Way because…”
it allows us to centrally locate all of our system data.