How Paperless Parts “Power Users” Are Driving the Job Shop Quoting Software in 5th Gear
Are you making the most out of your partnership with Paperless Parts? It’s one thing to understand how to use the platform, but it’s another to know how to streamline and speed up your entire quoting process from the moment you receive an RFQ to the moment you receive a PO.
Taking full advantage of all the features Paperless Parts has to offer—big and small—is what makes a difference when it’s time to compare this year’s financials to 2022. It’s what drives synchronization across your business, leading to happier employees who stick around longer. It’s what helps you hold on to customers.
Paperless Parts doesn’t just make product updates for the sake of making product updates; every design change, upgraded functionality, or new tool gets made in response to real job shops expressing real pain points.
Our users who take advantage of all that Paperless Parts has to offer are what we call “power users.” They’re driving the platform in 5th gear, harnessing all of its horsepower to ensure that every dollar they put down to use it is getting multiplied into ROI. So what are our power users doing on a daily basis that other users can learn from?
They use the search functionality as Google for their shop.
Are you taking advantage of Paperless Parts’ global search functionality as much as you can be? Rather than manually navigating to the Quotes tab and searching for a specific part number, try typing the part number directly into the search bar and clicking on the quote you need from there.
As it scans every document, note, contact, or other input ever entered into the system, the powerful search engine helps you dramatically reduce clicks and time spent preparing a quote. This also means you should store every file associated with a job (3D/2D, Quotes, Routers, Setup Sheets) in the supporting files of the viewer for easy access and searchability.
They strategically prioritize their quote backlog.
Working through your quote backlog using a first-in-first-out method leads to missed hot jobs and wasted resources. The best shops start every day in their Paperless Parts’ dashboard, checking the status of each quote and strategically prioritizing an order of operations. Paperless Parts allows you to quickly triage RFQs so you can prioritize who you get back to first based on factors like historical win rate, process, complexity, and more.
Our strongest power users leverage their Quotes dashboard and add filters to prioritize and understand the status of quotes in their backlog, looking at which ones are overdue, completed and not yet sent out, in progress, or not started and they prioritize their day accordingly. You can also save filters to your dashboard to only see quotes that are assigned to you, reducing noise and making it easier to focus on tasks where you’re a bottleneck.
Learn how to drive your business in 5th gear by joining us at POWER 2023: our first-ever user conference.
They’re making their quote follow-ups as efficient as possible.
It’s critical to follow up on every quote you send out, but it can take time and brainpower to type out emails. Power users of Paperless Parts follow up on their quotes by leveraging their pre-written email templates and saved filters, and check when customers viewed their quote to determine the best timing for re-sending quotes. From there, they set workflows that guide them through appropriate follow-up timelines so there’s one less thing to think about. These simple yet effective communication tools help significantly streamline their customer interactions.
They collaborate with team members in Paperless Parts.
Walking across the shop floor to get answers takes time, but other communication channels like Microsoft Teams or email just cause answers to get lost in someone’s inbox. Power users of Paperless Parts give everyone in their shop a seat and control the access they have to information using our permissions.
With Paperless Parts’ secure chat tool, all communication is lightning fast and tagged directly on the quote so it’s referenceable throughout the quote to order the production process. This drives accountability and collaboration across the team. And remember that global search functionality we mentioned? All chats and notes submitted via the chat become searchable, too.
The one thing all power users have in common? They view Paperless Parts as their centralized hub for all of the technical data in their shop. By centralizing all of your technical data within Paperless Parts, you can easily access everything you need in one place, whether you’re at your desk or on the go. By adopting the mindset that Paperless Parts is an all-in-one solution, leveraging its search and filtering functionality, communicating with your team, and consistently following up and communicating with clients, you can drive Paperless Parts into its highest gear and see real ROI.
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Want to learn how to become a real “power user?” Paperless Parts’ product experts published a library of “power lunch” demos where we show you exactly how various features of our platform were designed to make your life easier and your shop more successful. Click here to view upcoming episodes and stream any previous episode on demand.