Modus is a leading Telecom Services company operating in the Western U.S., specializing in network deployment, construction, and maintenance. The company collaborates with leading mobile network operators on the design, validation, and implementation process of 5G services as a fully integrated, turnkey wireless connectivity solution.
What drives Modus’ success is not only their people, but also the way the company assembles their teams and crews to optimize for expertise, cooperation, and learning. Modus attracts and employs the most experienced industry “veterans” and teams them up with energetic, bright professionals just starting out in their careers.
Modus teams work together with the utmost spirit of collaboration and innovation, enabling their crews to deploy assets with efficiency and excellence in even the most challenging jurisdictions. This has allowed Modus to succeed in fostering relationships with municipalities, creating partnerships that both speed up and reduce the costs of bringing 5G infrastructure to various cities, local transport authorities, and public utilities.
Today, Modus is one of Sitetracker’s most valued partners and advanced users, leveraging the platform to manage the end-to-end phases of projects and assets: plan, build, maintain, and grow.
Challenge
After being awarded key contracts off the back of successful execution, Modus soon found itself outgrowing the Excel and Google spreadsheets that they had previously relied on. Project data started to fragment; generating reports became arduous and time-consuming; and visibility into progress waned.
In an effort to prevent the inevitable negative business consequences of scaling the business without a scalable solution, Modus realized that a centralized, real-time repository and a robust project management tool was imperative to successful expansion. Modus needed a consistent and single source of truth in order to successfully transition from a boutique shop to a mid-market leader.
At first, Modus tried working with a consultant to develop and implement a custom-built database. However, challenges with the consultant’s lack of understanding of the telecom industry and Modus’ day-to-day needs led the company to change strategy. Instead, they began looking and evaluating for a purpose-built solution that came with proven best-practice workflows — right out of the box.
Solution
Having already experienced working in Sitetracker as a contractor to one of the big four carriers, Modus employees enjoyed the solution’s user-friendly UI and collaborative functionality and suggested that the company investigate Sitetracker’s full offerings.
Rowena Okialda, Modus’ Director of Development, recalls that “Everyone could appreciate how user-friendly Sitetracker is – not only for sharing files, but also for managing milestones and generating trackers and reports.” She continues, “We decided to explore this out-of-the-box solution as an alternative to building our own from scratch.”
Following a thorough evaluation, Modus selected Sitetracker based on the solution’s intuitive, proven workflows, its ability to integrate with external systems, and the organization’s expertise in managing high-volume and distributed 5G projects.
“We wanted to have the capability to scale rapidly while maintaining both holistic and granular visibility to monitor progress, and we wanted it out of the box,” recounts Chris Maguire, Modus’ CEO. He continues, “You just can’t get that from anyone that isn’t already an industry expert, developing purpose-built solutions.”
Following the speedy and successful implementation of Sitetracker Project Management into the company’s tech stack, Modus went live in July of 2018.
“The Sitetracker Solution Delivery team was attentive to our needs and worked quickly to understand and build out our specific needs,” states Okialda. “Not only that — they were accountable to deadlines and realistic in setting expectations.”
In addition to the implementation of its org, Modus engaged Sitetracker to build integrations with a number of external solutions, including its ERP, Netsuite, and clients’ project management systems.
“We were impressed with the ability to easily report to our clients on assigned projects using Sitetracker’s integrations,” remarked Maguire. “Previously, one of the more significant challenges to scaling had to do with the manual and redundant data entry between ours and our customers’ systems.”
To manage the full lifecycle of its assets from site acquisition and planning to construction and maintenance, Modus leverages all of Sitetracker’s core functionality: projects and sites, reports and dashboards, trackers, intelligent project templates, maps, and more. The company also makes use of the Purchase Order Module, bringing the project and finance teams even closer together and further streamlining the flow of critical information.
More recently, Modus implemented Sitetracker Artificial Intelligence (AI), a predictive analytics and advanced dashboarding tool that enables Modus to instantaneously gain recommended actions based on their user data. Users of Sitetracker AI gain access to the “What Happened” and “Why It Happened” views, which offer descriptive insights into past and current projects. Perhaps most excitingly, Modus can also leverage the “What Could Happen” view to find the optimal combination of teams and match them with projects and jurisdictions via predictive, what-if analyses.
Results
Today, Modus manages its entire portfolio of small cell, DAS, and other projects in Sitetracker, representing 7,500+ active sites and ~6,000 active projects. With an adoption rate of over 90% and each employee making an average of 425 updates every week, the company has indeed succeeded in establishing a single source of truth.
Modus has eliminated the necessity of double data entry into their own internal trackers and their clients’ databases. These integrations with their clients’ external systems have granted the ability to almost instantaneously generate reliable and accurate reports — providing visibility for Modus’ leadership and clientele alike. The result is not only savings in human hours and its associated labor costs, but also further streamlining of internal processes for optimal efficiency.
Another key indicator of the company’s success in improving its efficiency is the increased capacity of individual project managers. Before adopting Sitetracker, the company employed a third of the number of project managers the company has today, with each handling an average of 150 active projects. Today, the firm boasts triple that number, each capable of handling around 3x the average number of active projects than before adopting Sitetracker.
“We had high expectations for Sitetracker as a reliable tool to enable us to get to that next level of growth,” explains Maguire. Continuing, he validates that, “Sitetracker has indeed delivered and become the solution that continues to enable us to grow and scale our business in numerous ways, connecting our multiple markets and teams.”
As a testament to the company’s maturation and its willingness to leverage innovative solutions and processes, Modus’ average project turnaround times have improved by 28% since going live with Sitetracker.
The company also recently adopted Sitetracker Artificial Intelligence (AI), an AI-driven predictive analytics and advanced dashboarding tool. Okialda, who also heads up Modus’ data science initiatives, states modestly, “Modus is still finding and will always seek out new ways to become even more efficient. Adopting Sitetracker AI empowers us to get to and explore answers faster.” With the power of AI-driven analytics, Modus can now efficiently and regularly discover the opportunities for gains hidden in its data, whether it is to prevent bottlenecks or to repeat successes.
Since implementing Sitetracker, Modus has grown its project portfolio by 140%, largely owing to repeat business with major wireless carriers. The company has also grown its full-time employee count by 125%, while efficiently scaling the capacity of its project managers with its ever-increasing contract volume.
The company’s goal for the next five years is to continue growing into new geographies while also diversifying its services. With all the new doors opening for Modus on the back of its dedication to excellence, employee development, and insatiable drive for efficiency, the company’s vision of becoming the go-to provider for wireless installations west of the Mississippi seems a mere stone’s throw away.
“Sitetracker has been integral in growing our company geographically and in diversifying our services,” describes Chris Maguire. “We now have a solution that provides high-level visibility, allows us to communicate between different functional groups, evaluates data for making crucial business decisions, plans for resource allocation, and improves processes and cycle times.” He concludes, “All of this translates to better, faster execution on projects for our customers and operational efficiencies that lead to cost savings for Modus.”
If you would like to learn how you can achieve faster project completion and enhanced visibility and control over your project portfolio, schedule a demo with us!
