Every project, every phase, on one screen. Quote-to-drawing mismatches caught before they ship. Mike's Friday list, lifted into a system the whole team sees. Same Page replaced before it sunsets. One system. Built around how DEC already works.
These came straight from the kickoff call on May 6. Not generalizations — the gap between where DEC is today and where Michelle, Mike, and Tiffany each said you want it to be.
"Nothing tells you 56 quoted, 45 in install. We don't have visibility across phases — every one of us holds a piece of it."
"Mike has built the way DEC runs. The playbook is in his head — and the team relies on that. The question is how to get it on paper while he's here to shape how it's written."
"When a quote doesn't match a drawing, it's five, six grand. I should have caught it. That's the one I think about."
Built around the cadence the team already runs. Quotes feed drawings. Drawings feed orders. Orders feed install. Mike's Sunday review becomes a phone tap instead of a Word doc. Everyone — drafters, purchasing, installers, accounting — sees the same project record.
Every quote, every drawing, every install, every dollar — feeds back into one view. Below is what a typical Tuesday morning looks like for Mike. Not a screenshot of someone else's product — what gets built for DEC.
Anyone telling you the dashboard goes live next week is selling vapor. Database work first, because nothing else stands without it. Same Page exports first, mismatch detection second, forecast last — in that order, on purpose.
You could rent Monday.com, ClickUp, or Salesforce and configure them for DEC's workflow. Or you could own a system built around your exact quote-to-install flow. Both are real paths. Here is what each one actually does for the gaps the team named on the kickoff call.
Cheap to start, live in weeks, and someone else maintains it. You configure it as far as it will bend, then you live inside the boundaries the vendor drew.
You pay per seat, every month, forever. Revenue dashboards are possible with manual data entry. None of them check a walk-in spec against a drawing, so the quote-to-drawing mismatch stays a manual catch.
Higher to start and a few weeks longer to stand up. In exchange you get the one thing no subscription sells: software that knows DEC's four-phase flow and checks every drawing against its quote automatically.
You own the code, the data, and the accounts. Revenue dashboard wired to Inform. Mike's daily sales meeting gets auto-summarized and routed to the team. His Friday list becomes the system's defaults.
| What DEC needs | Monday.com | ClickUp | Salesforce | DEC Engine |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Replaces Same Page (calendar, docs, chat) | ✓ | ✓ | ~ | ✓ |
| Pipeline visibility ("56 quoted, 45 in install") | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Revenue dashboard (pipeline value by phase) | ✓manual data | ✓manual data | ✓ | ✓auto from Inform |
| Mobile / field-installer capture | ✓ | ~ | ~ | ✓ |
| Simple enough for the whole team | ✓ | ✗feature overload | ✗steep curve | ✓ |
| Forecasting for Tiffany (cash 30/60/90) | ~basic charts | ~basic charts | ✓ | ✓wired to Inform |
| Quote ↔ drawing ↔ order mismatch detection | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓the $5-6K save |
| Mike's daily sales meeting recap | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Inform / Advantage integration | ~DIY | ~DIY | ~custom dev | ✓ |
| Mike's playbook as system defaults | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| You own it, no per-seat creep | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
If the build is the direction, here are three engagement levels. Option A covers the Same Page gap with tools DEC already owns. Option B builds the full Engine. Option C brings Jason inside the building for six months. Each one stands on its own.
Microsoft Teams + a shared calendar on top of your existing M365 licenses. Gets the team off Same Page before it sunsets. This is the floor — not the Engine. No custom dashboard, no integrations, no mismatch detection. A simpler tool, simply.
Best if: you only need Same Page replaced and you're willing to keep doing the project-visibility work the same way you do it today.
A built-for-DEC dashboard that connects to Inform/Advantage, runs three-way mismatch detection on every drawing save, and captures the operational playbook Mike has built — encoded as pipeline rules the whole team can run from. Infrastructure runs on DEC-owned Azure/Supabase accounts — passthrough cost, not marked up. Adoption is on me; you focus on the work.
Best if: you want the $5–6K mismatch ROI baked in, you want the operational playbook Mike built captured in a form the next generation can run from, and you want one system that beats Same Page from day one. Year 1 total: ~$50,600. Year 2 run-rate: ~$21,600.
Jason inside your building for six months — averaging 2–3 days per week on-site at Charlotte, scheduled weekly with Michelle to match what's actually happening that week. Remote the rest of the week. Building the system alongside the team, not handing over software from outside. The build is priced separately and discounted 15% because regular on-site presence cuts communication overhead. The $15K/mo covers operational leadership: running the meetings, documenting the Mike Poole playbook on Mike's terms, and developing Troy and Greg into the next generation of project managers. Adoption fee is waived; adoption IS the COO role.
See the full six-month plan →Best if: You want Mike's runway handled, operational discipline installed, and every tool actually adopted — with one person accountable for all of it, not a handoff document. Year 1 total: $122,500. Year 2 run-rate: $21,600.
My dad worked at DEC for 25 years. His drawings are still in your files — Al mentioned still pulling them. I'm not coming back to DEC because of that. I'm coming back because Michelle's "nothing tells you 56 quoted, 45 in install" is exactly the kind of problem this product was built for. The family piece is the part that means something to me — it isn't supposed to mean anything to the proposal. The work has to earn the trust on its own.
Pick an option, send a text or email, and we'll set the kickoff for the first week of June. Same Page sunset isn't going to wait, and the savings start the first time we catch a mismatch.
Call Jason · 704.533.1763 →