About the Project

This project began as a digital readiness check for a well-established field service provider entering a new phase of business. With incorporation pending and QuickBooks Desktop support ending, the client knew they needed change—but weren’t sure where to start.

I led an in-depth discovery with their admin lead, uncovering tightly interwoven workflows spanning Outlook, OneNote, Excel, and memory. Inventory wasn’t tracked formally. Kits were split, reused, and forgotten. Communication lived in sticky notes and verbal updates. Despite the chaos, everything ran on trust and heroic effort.

Instead of pushing a prebuilt system, we explored multiple tool types: field service schedulers, light CRMs, cloud inventory apps, and modern accounting platforms. Prototypes included a PowerApps quoting tool, a SharePoint record layer, and a garage door visualizer in Replit. Each prototype helped the team see what's possible and shape their comfort zone.

Midway, QuickBooks Online released an AI document parser. It turned out to be the missing piece—offloading the quote-to-invoice grind and allowing us to simplify the tech stack further. The team dropped their third-party scheduler, leaned into QBO, and began tracking jobs using structured templates and Outlook logic.

The emotional side of this transition mattered. The admin lead had built her own systems for decades. I coached her through each new model—showing how what she once did manually was now embedded in modern tools. With micro-trainings, backups, and gradual handoffs, we turned resistance into confidence.