College Pro CPOWER Knowledge Management Solution
"I Envision... having an all-encompassing website that gives our franchisees everything they need to manage their business while providing exceptional reporting and control capabilities for us.”
The Client
College Pro Painters was founded by a college student in Thunder Bay, Ontario in 1971. It is North America’s original and most successful student-run painting and window-cleaning company. Nearly 25,000 homes in communities across North America are treated annually with their interior and exterior house painting and window-cleaning services. All managers – who are franchisees – are full time college students.
Today College Pro Painters is the largest residential painting company in North America. College Pro is a highly focused, tightly measured franchise program that uses over 80 full-time staff to recruit, train and operate hundreds of student run franchises annually. They operate in 28 U.S. states and in 7 Canadian provinces, and every year they recruit, select, and extensively train hundreds of franchise managers to deliver quality house-painting and window-cleaning services, run their own businesses, and uphold the promise of the College Pro Painters brand.
The Solution
Envision IT developed an internet-based enterprise system that has revolutionized communication within the organization. It provides:
- Instant entry of sales leads and customer service issues into a shared database by both call centres and line staff
- Access over the internet for 800 franchisees to their individual sales leads for follow up and to record customer project details and revenue
- Full reporting for all levels of the organization
- Corporate-wide user database for reporting structure, security and HR
- Integration with back-end accounting and payroll system
- On-line budget, goal setting, weekly input and end of season close-down workflows
- On-line interactive training and testing for franchises and painters
The Results
- Easy access to up-to-the-minute information for everyone in the organization
- Significant labour savings in the collection of information
- Updated, leading edge image with potential franchises
- Consistent business processes across the organization
Award-Winning Solution
Envision IT was awarded the 2002 Microsoft e-Business Solution Award for work on this project.