How NEC Solar Simplifies Installs & Stands Out in a Saturated Market

Remington: Could you give us a quick introduction to who is NEC Solar?

Mike: Yes, thank you, Remington, for the awesome intro. And like you said, Mike Sullivan, I’m the director of operations over here at NEC Electric and Solar. Our company, the umbrella company, if you will, is Newport Electric Construction.

We’re based out of Bristol, Rhode Island. If anyone’s familiar with the area, I’m sure you’ve seen Newport, Rhode Island and the famous bridge, which is in our logo. So it really speaks to where we come from and in the area that we work in.

And as a company, we do specialize in solar nowadays. And at our core, when we first started out 16 years ago now, we’re an electrical contractor. We were a small two, three-person shop working out of a van pickup truck and quickly grew to what today is still a large enough company, but still small enough for we’re a small business and we have that family mentality.

But at a core, we are an electrical contractor. That’s where it all started. And then as everybody knows, solar picked up and we jumped on the bandwagon.

And here we are today. And the scoop has really made our lives a lot easier over the past year now that we’ve been using the platform. Love that.

Remington: So as we jump in, can you tell us a bit about your own journey with the company? How did you end up there? What do you see your role as being?

Mike: So I’ve been with NEC for a little over seven years now, which flew right by. So I am a master electrician. I went to vocational high school and started learning trade there.

Once I got out, went through my apprenticeship and got licensed, kind of worked my way up the ladder, working for a local electrical contractor, working in houses, rewiring houses, additions, commercial jobs, and that led to solar. And quickly fell in love with it. It’s been a great addition to the industry, the electrical industry, and, you know, have grown quite a bit.

I left that small business, came over here to NEC. And once again, started in the field, working on the roof side. I’ve pretty much done it all, working up on the roof, installing the panels, wiring batteries, had an opportunity to start taking on a management role and started managing projects.

And now I manage the residential and small commercial solar department here. So, you know, it’s been a very rewarding career thus far, you know, and I truly love it. And yeah, it’s been awesome.

Remington: What are some of the challenges you’ve encountered as you started scaling and diversifying your project types?

Mike: You know, as, you know, where we came from when we started doing the solar side of things was the age old spreadsheets, you know, Google Drive, a bunch of sticky notes all over the place, just trying to kind of get by with what you got and quickly as you grow, you outgrow those tools.

And, you know, like I said, reducing the amount of times that you have to enter a customer’s name, customer’s address, all that redundant info all across the board, whether it’s from our sales side, our project managers, eliminating that or reducing it, I should say, was definitely, I think the biggest initial reason to start looking at alternative options, you know, and also just accountability with keeping track of what the rest of the team is doing, you know, making sure tasks are being closed out on a timely manner, making sure we’re following up with customers and just having a higher level view of what’s actually going on.

And that’s what really, you know, triggered the need for us to grow out of the antiquated spreadsheets and whatnot.

Remington: How did you go about choosing software to solve your issues? And any advice for people going down the same journey?

Mike: So, you know, there’s a wide range of businesses out there. You know, speaking to us on the small business side, one thing that any small business owner or, you know, manager can relate to is he tends to wear a lot of hats.

That’s typically how it goes. And one of those things as we were sourcing a platform to bring everybody into one home base was just access to build and adjust. Things constantly change.

You know, what I need on a project management platform today might not be what I need two weeks out, six months out a year and being able to quickly go in and make adjustments, small tweaks on the fly is key. Like I said, I’m an electrician. I’ve become pretty savvy with computers and technology through trial and error, but I’m not a software engineer.

I’m not going to be one to go in and you know, start writing code and all sorts of scripts. It’s just not going to happen. So, that was definitely one thing is just being able to go in and find a tool that we can use that we have control over and that we can build as we build as a business.

And just accessibility, you know, having something where our guys out in the field who, you know, they don’t have a laptop set up, they have a cell phone, having access to plan sets and photos, as well as having quick access to what we need here in the office.

Remington: Can you walk us through that transition of implementing Scoop at NEC Solar?

Mike: Yeah, so it definitely took a while. It took several months to actually get it up and running.

You know, it’s a blank canvas when you first come into it, trying to figure out exactly what you have, you know, a bunch of ideas and you know, the process. You know, one thing that, you know, I kind of did when we first started out was was really just write down the overall process of how we do these projects. Yeah.

Kind of putting myself in the shoes of a project manager here and what they’re going to experience, the questions they’re going to be asked, the documents that they’re going to have to source and upload and try to kind of put that on one sheet, if you will, and start breaking that out into sections. You know, what what phase of the job should these different tasks fall into and where does this document come into play? And just started building it out from the bottom up as to how we’re normally going to manage the process. My biggest thing, you know, from having experience, whether it was in the field or managing these projects, is just trying to relate.

You know, I’m I may be the one managing the department and, you know, working on this this platform, but I have other people that have to use this on a daily basis and I need to try to make it as simple and efficient for them. I can’t necessarily do what makes sense to me in the moment or potentially necessarily what makes sense as a business, but, you know, put myself in their shoes. What are they going to be experiencing and how can I make it as straightforward as possible? So, you know, it was a lot of, you know, internal discussion over time, you know, asking questions, getting feedback and just getting information from the team and just trying to make it as simple as possible, but not over-engineering it.

Yeah, you know, because there’s definitely a lot that you can do with Scoop. And once we got it live, it’s never stopped with the adjusting. I think I would say probably daily I’m in there tweaking something, adding a field, removing a field.

So it it’s been super valuable to be able to, you know, have that access to build it the way we want it and just, you know, starting off with the basics and not trying to, you know, overengineer this product from the start, because we have a lot of ability to add on down the road.

Remington: As you’ve streamlined these operations, what’s the biggest impact you’ve noticed with the rest of your teams and your day-to-day performance? 

Mike: So I think the biggest thing was just being able to provide more information and updates to the whole team.

You know, previously, when we didn’t have Scoop, it was just all through emails and just, you know, texting and phone calls. And, you know, what we found was there was, you know, two people on the team might be having a conversation about an issue, but it’s not being relayed over to the other side that can assist in that situation. Bringing everything back in to one spot and just trying to improve on the communications between people was very important to the growth of this.