Heroes Restoration is a full-service disaster restoration company that offers 24/7 emergency services throughout central Virginia. Their team of expert, certified technicians provide urgent disaster clean up for both residential and commercial properties. This includes anything from water and fire damage, floods, mold, and biohazards (including COVID-19) to crime scenes, suicides, unattended death, trauma, hoarding, sewage, and animal waste.

Heroes Restoration’s co-owner Avi Gunzburg, is an entrepreneur who has started and sold multiple businesses over the last 20 years in industries such as construction and flooring. When Heroes Restoration started, Avi was ready to take his skill set and apply it to a meaningful cause. He finds helping people in a time of distress and restoring their homes and businesses very gratifying.

You can visit their website for a complete portfolio of offered restoration services from here.

Moving towards improved inventory control with EZOfficeInventory

The restoration business requires a quick and efficient mobile team that is fully stocked with equipment, ranging from heavy and expensive machinery to disposable items. Keeping track of these assets as the team moves around is crucial to the company’s success. This is where fully automated, streamlined inventory control via EZOfficeInventory has been of great value to Heroes Restoration.

Their assets can cost anything from a couple hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars. These include machinery such as dehumidifiers, foggers, and air movers as well as tools and consumables including Tyvek suits, gloves, and tape etc.

“We were looking for a system that provides us the best value for our needs,” says Avi. “We are tracking just about everything on [EZOfficeInventory].”

Before they incorporated a dedicated asset management software, Heroes Restoration was dealing with incidents of lost or misplaced equipment which for a growing business was particularly damaging. Avi always recognized the need for an automated system and this was just another reason to follow through.

“You can’t run an efficient operation that is going to grow without tracking your assets,” says Avi.

After extensive online research and testing a lot of software solutions, Avi decided that EZOfficeInventory’s powerful functionality and competitive pricing offered them the best value for their asset tracking needs.

Fewer lost and misplaced items have led to efficient cost control

Prior to implementing EZOfficeInventory, the company was using spreadsheets to track equipment which led to some expensive equipment loss, according to Avi.

“When processes are manual, lots of things get lost and for us, when things get lost, it’s very expensive,” he explains. “One piece of equipment could cost $2,000.”

For instance, while cleaning a property after a disaster, a team member could store a piece of equipment in a back closet and forget it there. They would have no way of tracking that lost piece of equipment. EZOfficeInventory eliminates this problem by enabling real-time tracking of each piece of equipment as it is checked in and out so it is always easy to know who has a piece of equipment, and where it is.

While Avi feels this is having a positive impact on their costs, he sees an even bigger impact on cost control in the long run.

“It [EZOfficeInventory] will definitely have an impact on the bottom line of our business,” he says.

Enhanced equipment visibility via seamless check-ins and checkouts

As part of Heroes’ requirement for rapid response times, the seamless check-in and checkout capability offered by EZOfficeInventory has been extremely beneficial to the business. EZOfficeInventory enables the company to determine at a glance which asset has been checked out, to whom, and for how long. Likewise, it also offers the capability to determine if the asset has been checked back in or is overdue, and even send custody verification requests to the relevant staff member(s).

For the Heroes Restoration team that is often on the road, or in the field, the ability to quickly and efficiently scan equipment in and out via EZOfficeInventory’s powerful mobile app is a particularly useful feature. It enables them to remain agile and service a job site efficiently while keeping an accurate account of who has what equipment and where it is being used.

Furthermore, the fact that EZOfficeInventory supports SKU labels which enables Heroes Restoration to make up their own SKUs and print their own labels is extremely valuable to them. It enables them to further streamline their tracking processes and improve business efficiency.

Using the Locations module to track company trucks

Heroes Restoration has four mobile crews on the road. Their trucks are fully stocked with equipment and consumables so they can get straight to a disaster site without any delays or detours to the main warehouse. Heroes Restoration uses the Locations module to track their trucks — the trucks act as Locations.

Within EZOfficeInventory, Locations are conveniently pinned on a map that shows exactly how many assets are actually at that location. This helps Heroes Restoration locate at a quick glance if a specific tool or piece of equipment is available on a truck, accelerating their response times whilst giving them complete visibility into the whereabouts of their equipment.

Enhanced employee accountability with custom roles

Heroes Restoration has a small and dedicated team that uses the system. Since installing EZOfficeInventory, Avi has noticed that the team is much more attentive to how they interact with the assets.

“It has certainly made them more aware about where tools and equipment are and care for them more,” he says.

The ability to create custom roles and grant specific permissions to team members has also been extremely useful to the company. User-defined roles enable the team to check items in and out with ease and transparency.

The future with EZOfficeInventory

One of the key advantages of the system for Avi is the great onboarding and continuous support experience. The highly responsive support team is knowledgeable and always quick to help and resolve issues for him.

As the team ramps up the use of the product, Avi looks forward to using additional features which he thinks would be very beneficial to the business. One of these is reporting which he feels will enable the business to draw valuable business insights and make informed business decisions. Avi also anticipates utilizing the automated service and maintenance capabilities more to keep their equipment in top shape as they expand and grow their operations.