Lighting Distributor IES Delivers Submittals 50% Faster with Parspec

• Challenge: IES’s team needed to streamline a time-consuming submittal process and eliminate costly errors and delays.
• Outcome: With Parspec, IES achieved a 50% faster turnaround for submittals, reducing workload and delighting customers.

Challenges

As one of the top electrical and lighting distributors on the West Coast of the U.S., IES’s team frequently juggles multiple submittals at once. They needed a new solution to reduce manual effort, speed up response time, and improve overall submittal quality.

Prior to Parspec, submittal creation at IES was no easy task. “We got our Bill of Materials from the project manager or the quotes team,” explains Emily Quinones, Project Coordinator at IES. “We’d turn that quote into an Excel list, and based on the part number we’d pull the cut sheets from many different manufacturer websites, use Adobe to mark them up, and combine from there. It was really time-consuming.”

This process was time-consuming and complicated. And, adding to their workload, the team would need to manually add dozens of links to outgoing documents. “Once, I had to recreate a set of O&M manuals more than 25 times,” says Tammy Casey, Project Department Manager at IES.

Seeing huge opportunities for improvement, they started looking for a solution that would improve efficiency and reduce the burden on the team.

Solution

After a successful trial period, IES quickly signed on with Parspec to streamline submittals and improve accessibility and collaboration among team members.

“To be honest, the first call I jumped on, when I saw how easy it was to find datasheets and compile submittals together with the links to the cut sheets, I was sold right then and there,” says Casey.

Onboarding with Parspec went smoothly, with fast adoption from users across office locations. Parspec customer service supported the implementation, responding promptly to questions, and sending video explainers as a way to educate new users.

The team utilizes key Parspec’s features on a daily basis, including:

• Comprehensive product database providing access to over one million cut sheets sourced daily from over 1,800 manufacturer websites.
• Automated part number entry and annotations, reducing the number of manual tasks and risk of error.
• Universal login and ease of use for all team members, allowing for rapid training, tighter collaboration and faster turnaround

“Parspec has really streamlined everything for us,” says Casey. “We can trust what we’re pulling is accurate. It’s updated. It’s current. We’re not submitting something that we can’t supply later.”

Results

Sonepar is now implementing Parspec’s solution across 13 different operating companies. As a result, it has accelerated their submittal process, leading to a 50% faster turnaround for clients.

Overall the team says they’ve dramatically reduced time spent on submittals, and report feeling less stressed and more efficient. “It has nearly cut my time in half,” says Quinones, Project Coordinator.

Even better, they’ve been able to maintain quality while introducing value-adds and improving relationships with stakeholders. “It’s so efficient, we’re able to actually provide a good product, a good set of submittals, in a better time frame,” says Casey.

“I’ve gotten a handful of emails from customers and outside sales, saying ‘Wow, you got that back to us fast,’” adds Quinones.

IES believes the partnership with Parspec gives them a competitive edge.

“This is going to take us one more notch ahead of everybody else,” says Casey. “Parspec listens to us. We feel supported. We want to see you guys grow and grow with you.”