We wanted to let folks in the industry know-how Kinetix Air is helping custom AHU manufacturers compete in a crowded and competitive marketplace. Here is the first in an ongoing series of Case Studies to give you some insights into the impacts that Kinetix Air can have on your custom AHU design and sales process.
Flutec Profile
Flutec is an HVAC design-build company headquartered in Juarez, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas, and has sales offices in San Diego, California, and Orlando, Florida, with more than 400 employees across all locations.
Flutec focuses on custom air and liquid cooling projects for large data centers and healthcare manufacturing facilities (cleanrooms) as well as custom work for a wide range of commercial and industrial applications.
The Challenge
Flutec was looking to enter a new, highly competitive segment in the custom AHU market. They refer to this segment internally as semi-custom because of their background in high-complexity bespoke system design for data centers and life sciences facilities, but most in the industry would simply think of it as custom. They needed a tool to help their sales engineers respond to RFDs quickly and accurately, supporting this move into semi-custom.
Their team took the time to look at the main custom AHU design solutions on the market, but they ultimately settled on Kinetix Air because of its flexibility, collaborative nature, and powerful validation features.
The key for Flutec was the ability to iterate its Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), allowing the platform to evolve in real-time with its needs as it continues to move into the semi-custom market. With other platforms, this kind of iteration meant going back to the software provider and asking for updates to the database, which was usually slow and frequently expensive. Kinetix Air let Flutec establish its standards and then update and change them at will and in real time.
The Solution
“Kinetix Air has allowed me to create AHU designs and submittal packages in under an hour, which used to take me the better part of a day, if not more, for complicated jobs. Once we completed the training Kinetix provided, it was a pretty smooth transition to actually using the tool to produce our designs. And I’m very happy with the validation features that make it almost impossible to include something that doesn’t work as part of my design.”
Abraham Flores
Sales Application Engineer, Flutec
In addition to empowering Flutec to iterate its design SOPs when quickly and simply, the platform has also boosted SAE productivity even more than was hoped for. The custom AHU market rewards speed and accuracy. In some cases, Flutec’s most experienced SAEs can produce a complete, fully validated submittal package in under a half hour. This output is a 10X improvement over the old way of selecting and submitting a custom AHU design.
The Impact
“Kinetix Air has helped us accelerate our sales process and provided an additional layer of quality control, allowing our SAEs to quote on more work confidently. The platform’s flexibility and collaboration features also allow us to continuously improve and evolve our work in real-time.”
Daniel Dominguez,
CEO, Flutec
Since rolling out the Kinetix Air platform and getting their SAEs trained (which only took 6 hours for SAEs and 12 hours for Admins), their SAE team can now quote on at least double the amount of work they could previously quote on, and efficiency is continuously improving. The bottom line is that since adopting the platform six months ago, the increase in the speed and volume of quotes has improved their close rate by more than 25%.
Another benefit is its validation capabilities. Kinetix Air acts as a kind of Poka Yoke tool, ensuring that all our designs will be constructible and functional when they hit the manufacturing shop and the final user respectively.
And Flutec identified one other unexpected side benefit. The extensive database of manufacturers and components included in Kinetix Air has proven to be a rich resource for building new relationships with component manufacturers.
Check back for more Case Studies soon.
Kinetix Can Help You Accelerate AHU Design
Kinetix Air’s next-generation custom AHU selection tool helps you jump-start the design process and accelerate selection. It also automates costing and validating, allowing you to respond to RFPs 90% faster and iterate designs on the fly. To speak with one of our experts about how Kinetix Air can help your business, click here to set up a call.
If you want the whole story on exactly how Kinetix Air can help give your SAEs superpowers, help you get selected as Basis of Design and raise your win rate, just click here. There’s also a version of Kinetix Air called PreSelect that’s designed expressly for rep firms which you can check out here.
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