Video Transcript: Mills Machine Works Customer Testimonial

About this testimonial:
This is a first-person customer testimonial from Ashley Parent, President of Mills Machine Works, a Paperless Parts customer. In this video, Parent describes taking over the business after her father’s death, how Paperless Parts helped solve the company’s quoting challenges, and the impact the platform has had on its customers and sales. The transcript below reflects her spoken comments from the video.

Source type: First-person customer testimonial video

Product discussed: Paperless Parts manufacturing quoting software

Paperless Parts is more than just a software company. They’ve become a strategic partner in helping me grow my business. And for a woman running a machine shop, that kind of partnership means everything.

 

I am Ashley Parent, and I inherited Mills Machine Works with my two siblings in 2022 after my father passed away from cancer kind of unexpectedly and abruptly.

 

In 2019, I was trying to get him to sign on with Paperless Parts. Had he done that when I brought this to him, I would have had a much, much easier transition into the role that I ended up taking on.

 

The access to historical data that it creates makes it just so easy for anyone to take over a business. And if I had that data consolidated into one place when my dad passed away, it would have made our transition so much easier, especially for smaller companies that maybe don’t run on a full ERP system.

 

This is a really good way of having access to all of that data. Plus, you’re able to hold on to data that maybe you didn’t win that job, so it never goes into your ERP system, but you still have the quoting data that goes along with that part.

 

It took me about six weeks to get onboarded with Paperless Parts. I almost felt like my back was against the wall.

 

If I could not solve my quoting problem, I was not going to have a business come 2025.

 

And everybody was very on board because, at the end of the day, they knew their jobs were about to get a lot easier once we had the whole onboarding process complete.

 

Our customers have responded so positively. They love the new format that we’re sending because we’re giving them so many different options.

 

We have a standard lead time that we like to use, but we’re also giving them expedite options that we weren’t necessarily able to even calculate before. So now they know what the price is for our standard lead time, but they also know that we have the capacity to get it done earlier, but it might cost a little bit more.

 

And most of the time, they’re willing to pay the difference if it gets it in house two or three weeks faster.

 

So since onboarding and fully implementing Paperless Parts, our sales have increased 22 percent, which is huge. That’s probably one of my favorite parts about this whole experience, is I’m actually seeing it work.

 

Some of my biggest problems I was having before was I’m relatively new to quoting. I didn’t have the experience my siblings had, but I needed them to stay on the floor producing parts.

 

Paperless Parts makes it so easy for someone who doesn’t have Mastercam on their computer to be able to interpret files. And that, I know that seems so basic, that goes such a long way in my shop because we are a small team.

 

I feel like everyone’s trying to help me solve problems.

 

And that is more of an attribute than any sales process to me, because I could learn how to quote. I just needed the right tools for it.

Transcript attribution:
Ashley Parent, Mills Machine Works