Operations CRM for a Commercial & Industrial Fence Contractor
More than six decades in business, and every quote, install and invoice still ran through 38 linked spreadsheet tabs and more than 13,400 formulas. Only the owner knew how they fit together.
Spreadsheet tabs replaced by one system
Formulas traced and rebuilt
Steps from first contact to install
Owner-only decisions built into the workflow
Customer location
Greater Toronto Area, Canada
Domain
Commercial and industrial fencing
Product
Operations CRM
Discovery
Process mapping and validation of the legacy spreadsheet logic
Quad-Core layers
Scope of work
- Process mapping
- Spreadsheet logic validation
- Back-end development
- Front-end development
- Document automation
- Quality assurance
- Security audit
- Documentation and training
Project overview
A commercial and industrial fence contractor in the Greater Toronto Area, in business for more than six decades. ErgoServ rebuilt the owner's 38-tab master spreadsheet as a role-based operations CRM: one workflow from first contact to installation, with the owner's pricing logic and decision rules built into the system the team uses every day.
The situation
The company installs commercial and industrial fencing, and every job runs as a chain: take-off, material pricing, labour estimates, quote, signed agreement, installation and invoicing. All of it lived in one master spreadsheet the owner had built himself, down to purchase orders and payroll sheets.
The spreadsheet worked, but only through him. How a material price became a sell price existed nowhere outside the formulas. New clients needed his credit check, jobs under a man-day waited for his estimate, and crews were told to refuse any dig without a cable locate and call his personal number. Onboarding a new hire meant the owner's time, and so did any plan for a handover.
When a crew hit a question, the paper work order said the same thing every time: stop and call him.
Main challenges
Pricing logic only one person could read
Only the owner could explain how 13,400 formulas turned a material list into a quote. Staff could fill in cells but not check them, so a broken reference could sit in live quotes unnoticed.
Every critical decision ended in a phone call
Credit for new clients, pricing for short jobs and digging without a cable locate were all the owner's call. The rules held only as long as someone remembered them and reached him. On site, a missed call meant a stalled crew or a damaged underground line.
No roles, no access control, no history
Anyone with the file could change any figure, including costs and markup, with no accounts and no record of who changed what. Nothing could be delegated safely.
Agreements rebuilt from a template every time
Each installation agreement started as a copied template, edited by hand for the client. Every copy risked a wrong name, date or amount reaching a customer.
How ErgoServ approached it
Before rebuilding a single calculation, we treated the spreadsheet as an undocumented specification of how the business prices and runs its work. Every pricing path, from material cost through labour and markup to the final quote, was traced to its source and validated against real historical quotes before go-live. Logic locked in one person's head became logic the team can see and trust.
Adoption shaped the rest. The team had lived in spreadsheets for years, so copy-paste, drag-fill and inline editing stayed. The owner's rules went where each decision is made: credit check on the client step, short-job rule on labour, cable-locate protocol on the install sheet.
What was built
Thirteen workstreams across four Quad-Core layers.
Management systems
Owner's rules in the workflow
Three owner-only decision rules shown in the workflow at the step where each decision is made.
Estimating know-how on screen
Estimating know-how, like crew output norms, built into each step as on-screen guidance.
Owner's Manual
Documentation of the whole system, handed over to the client as project documentation.
Roles and Help Center
Admin, manager and sales rep roles, plus an in-app Help Center with SOPs, FAQ and video training.
Business processes
One 11-step workflow
From client contact through estimating, costing and agreement to installation.
Pre-handover checklist
Signed authorization or PO, signed contract and agreed payment terms before a job goes to the crew.
Digital install sheet
Replaces the paper work order, with post setting, hole sizes, layout and sign-offs.
Digital platforms
Spreadsheet-grade grids
An operations CRM with grids for wood, materials, misc and labour that keep the way the team works.
Single price list
Retail, cost and tender prices in one list, with bulk import of items and materials.
Costing view
Markup breakdown, PST/HST and tender price per foot.
AI & automation
Generated installation agreements
A numbered agreement built from the quote data, with around 13 standard clauses.
Quotes and install sheets from one source
The client quote and the install sheet are produced from the same data, as PDF or print.
Concrete volume calculation
Concrete volumes calculated from hole count, diameter and depth.
Outcomes
Business outcomes
- The cycle from first contact to installation runs in one 11-step system instead of 38 tabs.
- Pricing logic only the owner could read is now visible, validated and checkable by the team.
- The three decisions that required a call to the owner are answered on screen, where they come up.
- New staff learn the system from built-in guidance, and work is delegated by role.
Technical outcomes
- 13,400+ formulas re-implemented as application logic and validated against historical quotes.
- Handsontable.js grids keep spreadsheet behaviour behind role-based access and secure authentication.
- Automated tests integrated into the codebase, a QA testing checklist, and a security audit at rollout.
Technologies
We use the most effective stack of technologies tailored to every individual project.
Backend
- Ruby on Rails
Frontend
- JavaScript
- Handsontable.js (spreadsheet-grade grids)
Documents
- PDF generation: quotes, installation agreements, install sheets
Security
- Role-based access (admin / manager / sales rep)
- Secure authentication
- Security audit
Quality
- Automated test suite
- QA testing checklist
The rules used to live in one person's head and on a phone number printed on a work order. Now they live in the system the whole team works in.
We don't just build software — we organize how your business works.
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