CE Pro December 2021 - 53

Bernath, Burkhardt Lead
Industry Group Heading
Rebranded VITAL
VITAL MANAGEMENT, an industry consulting and coaching
company founded by industry icons Paul Starkey and Steve
Firszt, was recently sold to a group of industry colleagues led
by Matt Bernath and Jeremy Burkhardt. The consulting company
has been rebranded simply as VITAL.
Bernath, a two-year veteran with VITAL and former CI business
owner, is leading the charge. The extent of Burkhardt's
role is still in development, but as a former integrator and
founder of Origin Acoustics who interacts with dealers daily,
he has a pulse on the market and will aim to bring that knowledge
to bear to assist dealers.
The company took the first step with the hiring of industry
veteran, Lawrence Davis, as VP Business Development.
VITAL supports custom installation businesses, enabling
them to " Profit.Grow.Prosper " (the company's tagline) with
standards, metrics, coaching, collaboration, performance, and
value-creation. The VITAL Method, its business-critical foundation
practices and resources will remain intact.
" Steve and I couldn't be happier with this announcement and
sale. We will work with proven industry leaders to assist and
grow VITAL to the next level, and beyond, " says Starkey. " These
are good people who we have known for decades and trust. "
The consulting company has several levels of engagement,
including its Toolbox program that includes a minimum of
quarterly consulting reviews, and its Accelerator program in
which the team meets with the integrator twice per month.
Bernath says integrators usually seek out VITAL's assistance
to " reduce chaos, " maximize profit, or develop an exit strategy.
Starkey and Firszt were instrumental in help guide a group
of integrators to become Bravas, No. 7 in the CE Pro 100, for
instance. VITAL is no longer directly affiliated with Bravas.
D-Tools' New
System Integrator
v17 Enhances
Functionalities
D-TOOLS ANNOUNCES the availability of System Integrator
(SI), version 17, which adds functionality and reporting
capabilities across the end-to-end solution. Enhancements
are said to help businesses better track employee utilization,
project performance and key financial metrics.
" Expanding SI's project time tracking capability to a
comprehensive timekeeping
module enables detailed
and accurate job costing.
With precise job costing,
SI can auto-generate labor
utilization reports, calculate
revenue earned, and displays
overall backlog, " says Randy
Stearns, CEO of D-Tools. " At
the request of customers,
we've also made key imTime
tracking, job costing,
catalog management
and other key tools have
been updated by D-Tools.
provements to catalog management, component ID naming
conventions, and the Gantt chart, enhancements that will
put a smile on the face of power users and new users alike. "
Beyond tracking time associated with a given task, SI now
Matt Bernath and Jeremy Burkhardt took over in late summer
and will be assisted by Vital Management founders Paul
Starkey and Steve Firszt during the transition.
offers comprehensive timekeeping. Timesheet data can be
exported for payroll purposes, but more importantly, it can
be used to track actual vs. budgeted labor hours and labor
costs, which provides a number of downline benefits.
D-Tools says new views in Business Analytics based
on approved timesheet entries provide understanding of
project status and team performance, while providing better
tools for effective decision-making:
Job costing - allows users to track actual project costs
on labor and equipment for revenue recognition purposes,
thereby providing visibility into whether a given
project is under-, on- or over-budget. Job cost analysis
can be viewed by project and by phase.
Labor utilization reports - display billable vs. non-billable
hours and can be viewed individually by employee
or collectively by labor type in an effort to monitor and
maximize team performance.
Project revenue - calculates revenue earned on a
project-by-project basis within a chosen date range.
Backlog - calculates revenue yet to be earned for a
project, group of projects, or across all active projects.
Among other new feature sets, catalog enhancements are
said to expedite product data management.
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December 2021 CE Pro | 53
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CE Pro December 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of CE Pro December 2021
