When you became a Lowe’s provider, you knew it would change your installation business for the better. Working with such a high-volume partner makes it possible to grow your company without the costs and headaches that come with having to advertise your services. But while it’s been easier to obtain work partnering with Lowe’s, you’re likely finding it’s a little more difficult to manage it.
Any jobs you take on outside of the Lowe’s network can’t be tracked through the Lowe’s IMS, meaning you’re managing work in multiple systems. Not only can this be stressful on your internal team, it makes it hard to keep your clients happy and informed throughout the process.
Every job requires several pieces of information that can be separated into different applications, methods of collection or people. Gathering all the history, paperwork, notes, emails, text messages, etc. is pretty time-consuming, slowing you down and ultimately costing you money. That’s why it’s so critical to invest in high-quality field management software like Cilio’s CiO that seamlessly integrates with Lowe’s IMS.
This integration makes it possible to manage everything from one platform – saving time, alleviating frustration and increasing efficiencies. All the information is quickly visible to everyone involved in the project whenever and wherever it’s needed. Cilio software also integrates with other payment, billing and quoting software, bringing everything together in one place.
Cilio has invested thousands of hours in its industry-leading field management platform to ensure you have easy access to all the information you need. Our goal is to help you win. Here’s how our platform does exactly that.
How to Unlock Lowe's IMS Potential
Update for 2023
Seeing IMS notes
Unlike other software, Cilio is proactive. Every day, it looks at each job in the system for new IMS notes from Lowe’s IST or store personnel and pulls them into your system for easy viewing. Other platforms only pull job notes if you have the customer record open and hit the button that allows you to view saved notes. You have to manually do this for every job; there’s no way to proactively see a new note ahead of time like with Cilio.
Cilio also offers better visibility for IMS notes. The platform features a convenient counter that reflects all new Lowe’s notes added to a project, for example. You can easily browse through new notes for any job all right there on one page, without having to push buttons or open every job record, saving time.
If no action is required, you simply close the note and move on. You can also reply to Lowe’s in the same view. Your note is sent to the IMS job record as well as saved to your customer record.
Job notes from all your projects are pulled into this platform, giving you a centralized view so you can stay on top of all your work, not just what’s coming in from Lowe’s. You’ll find everything you need for all your projects, including customer information, job details, notes, attachments and line-item data of what’s sold.
It’s also important to see where every job stands, and Cilio makes that easy by updating IMS activities and statuses in real time. Then there’s the mobile forms. With Cilio, you can complete forms from your mobile device with pre-populated templates. If you’d like to automate the process, Cilio allows you to do that, too. It only takes one click to close jobs and upload the paperwork, a simple process anyone can complete.
Cilio makes job notes and other information easier to access and track, for both Lowe’s projects and projects outside the network.
Lowe’s survey scores: offering critical feedback
Understanding the customer experience and how you can improve it will help you grow in Lowe’s programs, making Lowe’s Likelihood to Recommend (LTR) rating system and survey score results critical insights. With Cilio, it’s easy to access both so you know where your company stands as well as which team members are helping you grow your business and which ones are holding you back.
And, gaining these insights is simple. Once you receive your scores, export them from IMS and upload the doc to Cilio. Every job record will be automatically updated with each score, survey date and customer comment. Our survey report will not only show your scores, but WHO on your team is accountable for those scores, giving you outstanding insight to their performances that either helped or hurt you. From here, you can make improvements to enhance your efficiencies as well as the customer experience—both key to growing your business.
Working in areas with poor cell phone reception? No problem.
Cilio gives you offline access to every job detail for the day, and the ability to work in the system at any time.
Installers who invest in this platform can work anywhere, regardless of mobile or Wi-Fi availability. For example, it’s typical to experience cell service interruption when performing installs in rural areas. Cilio allows you to access all project information, such as maps and job notes, in offline mode and to continuously update projects, add new photos and job notes—whether you’re working a job that’s inside or outside the Lowe’s network. Once you’re back in a service area, the system can auto sync, so there are no worries about losing critical information.
Cilio offers an intuitive and user-friendly mobile experience to manage jobs in offline mode. Other software options come as downloadable mobile apps that only work on Apple phones, leaving Android users out in the cold. The other downside is these apps don’t let users truly work offline to save photos and other relevant project information. Cilio does.
The support you need
Whether you’re working a Lowe’s job or your own project, the experienced Cilio Support team and Customer Success Managers offer the guidance you need to be successful. You’ll receive an immediate response to any questions you have, with team members available via phone, email or live chat.
Other software providers might take days to respond to a support question and will only send a response via email. That’s unacceptable and won’t happen when you work with Cilio. The team is here for you whenever you need us and however you prefer to communicate.
The Cilio team is dedicated to meeting clients’ evolving needs and is continually developing advanced software features to do just that. For example, clients have asked Cilio to provide better routing capabilities to minimize drive time. Based on that need, Cilio met with Google project managers and added new optimization and routing capabilities. This includes automating the insertion of store stops for product pickup, along with other efficiencies, and is just one example of Cilio’s commitment to helping installers like you succeed.
Less stress, a better customer experience
There’s a lot that goes into project management, with several pieces of information required to keep everyone up to date. This can be stressful and time-consuming, especially when you have to work on multiple platforms to track jobs, but it doesn’t have to be. Cilio streamlines the process, integrating with the Lowe’s IMS so you can view all project information in one place, improving efficiencies and allowing you to better serve your customers.
