Successes - Southwest Homes
Westbrook Fortis SE™ Creates a Document Management Foundation for a Custom Home Builder

Background
Southwest Homes was established more than 25 years ago in Dallas Texas. Today, the company is the South’s fastest growing “On Your Lot” custom homebuilder with five offices in Texas and one in Springdale, Arkansas.

After building more than 1,000 houses, Southwest Homes had amassed 20 file cabinets filled to the brim with related documents. The company also maintains proposal files with plans, bids and estimates. Owner Roger Williams wanted to eliminate manila folders of plans, maps, pictures and CAD drawings and replace paper records with an organized system for storing and retrieving documents of all types.

He also wanted his staff to have easy access to all customer records. “Customers come in with questions long after their projects are completed. We wanted to bring up all their documentation on the spot without having to pore through piles of paper,” Williams says. “For example, a customer came back years after construction was finished and wanted to know the color of the original paint used in their kitchen.”

The Business Solution
With Fortis SE™, the records for a completed project are available at the click of a mouse. “We type the name or customer number into Fortis to pull up all of their information – from the time they first came in to see us until their house is completed,” Williams says. “We’ve archived plans, maps, invoices, and records of paint colors, and floor and cabinet selections. We also capture e-mails pertaining to the project. Everything is in one place which is incredibly convenient.”

In addition to archiving past records, Southwest Homes is scanning in bills and invoices from ongoing projects and archiving all documents once each construction project is completed. Williams estimates that Southwest Homes has archived 10,000 documents, and is adding about 375 documents a week to the Fortis repository.

Fortis is also used to track sales leads. When a potential customer requests a brochure, the information is scanned into Fortis, and a date is added to the notes field. Then a report is generated with all the prospects who need to get a follow-up postcard.

Williams anticipates that Southwest Homes will expand its use of Fortis for accounts receivable and accounts payable and for sharing sales leads and improving communication between Southwest’s office locations.

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