The most expensive phone call at a window dealership is the quoter calling the rep back. “Which way does the door swing?” “Is that the rough opening or the glass?” “Was there a photo of the inside?”
Each callback costs a day, sometimes a second trip, and it always means a slower quote to a homeowner who is getting three of them. The fix isn’t a smarter quoter. The fix is a field capture that is complete before the rep leaves the driveway.
The target: one opening, under 90 seconds
We designed Aperture™ around one rule: a rep should be able to capture a complete, checked opening in under 90 seconds, with no signal. That is fast enough to do every opening properly, even on a 30-opening house.
What a complete opening includes
- Where it is: the room and the elevation (front, rear, left, right).
- What it is: window or door, and the type: single hung, casement, horizontal roller, picture, French door, slider.
- Width and height in fractions, plus which measurement it is (rough opening, frame or glass), so nobody guesses later.
- Swing and handing for doors and casements, and panel configuration for sliders.
- An exterior photo and an interior photo. No exceptions.
- Anything unusual, flagged once and explained in one sentence (more on that in Flag the Exception).
The rule that matters most
The app should refuse to call an opening complete while something on that list is missing. A checklist the rep can skip isn’t a checklist.
Where the seconds go, and how to get them back
Typing fractions
A phone keyboard is slow for “36 1/2”. Aperture™ uses a fraction keypad built for tape-measure readings, so a dimension takes a couple of taps.
Repeating yourself
Bedrooms two, three and four often have the same window. Copy to next carries the type, product and settings forward, and the rep only changes what’s different.
Writing notes with gloves on
Voice dictation turns a spoken note into text. The original recording is kept too, so nothing is lost if the transcription mishears a word.
Hunting for what’s missing
Instead of a percentage, the rep sees a plain count, such as “2 items left” or “18 of 20 openings complete”, and can jump straight to the gap.
What the rep doesn’t do
Reps don’t price in Aperture™: there are no rates, totals or estimates in the field app. The rep’s job on site is documentation. The finish button says Submit for quote, and the package it sends should be complete enough that the quoter never has to call back.
How to measure it at your dealership
Count callbacks. For a month, log every time the quoting desk had to contact a rep or a homeowner to finish a quote, and why. The reasons will cluster around three or four missing items. Those are the fields your field capture has to require.