“We rely on Scanifly to make sure everything is to scale for a design.”
How Namaste Solar Eliminated Revisions Using Scanifly
Namaste Solar, an employee-owned cooperative, Certified B Corporation, and Colorado-based solar company founded in 2005, was born out of a realization by co-founder Blake Jones about the true impact of fossil fuels during his time in the oil and gas industry in Egypt.
Namaste Solar was a founding member of the Amicus Solar Cooperative and has seen the benefits of the co-op model firsthand.
Within a year of implementing Scanifly, Namaste reduced revisions from 25% to less than 1% of all projects.
Results From Using Scanifly:
In revisions using Scanifly
Per site design using Scanifly
In site survey capacity
using Scanifly
The Challenge: Reducing Costly Revisions
Blake Jones, along with two other co-founders, started Namaste Solar in 2005 with a determination to help people reduce fossil fuel dependency and always wanted to provide an exceptional customer experience. However, there were systemic challenges standing in the way of that mission.
Keenan Leubbers, Residential Operations Manager and Co-Owner at the company, said revisions in particular had a large negative impact in two ways. First, revisions meant slowed-down installation timelines — sometimes as much as 1-2 weeks while awaiting revision approvals — meaning a lower-quality customer experience than the team aimed to provide. This also had a direct financial cost for Namaste Solar, since re-permitting fees went as high as $500 in some AHJs. Second, delays often led to “severe downtime” for crews, meaning a lot of wasted time and further wasted money for Namaste Solar.
“The opportunity cost is substantial here,” said Keenan. “We lost 2-3 hours redoing work rather than working on a different project and continuing to generate revenue via those projects.”
Namaste Solar’s team knew they needed a more efficient solution to both reduce Surveyor time on-site while also increasing accuracy to minimize revisions.
The team ultimately chose Scanifly’s surveying and design platform, resulting in a near-elimination of all project revisions.
Implementing Technology to Grow
While looking for solutions, the team knew that technology would play a major role in keeping Surveyors safe on the ground while both increasing speed and accuracy.
The team tested a few different solutions and found what they were looking for in Scanifly:
Drones for surveys: This ensures Surveyors are safe on the ground and accelerates survey timelines.
Scanifly design platform: Faster, more accurate design and drafting process that also allows them to share site plans directly with customers.
CRM automation: Namaste uses Salesforce as a source of truth for all sales and project data.
Back-office automation: The team built various integrations that helped with back-office efficiency by cutting down manual data entry, eliminating the chance for human error, and speeding up the report generation process for permitting.
A single 15-minute drone flight helped Surveyors gather accurate measurements for a project without getting on the roof. From there, Project Managers had all the information they needed to create precise designs quickly in Scanifly’s platform, which would dramatically increase capacity. Finally, to-scale models and high-quality shade analysis nearly eliminated costly revisions.
“We rely on Scanifly to make sure everything is to scale for a design. That's really important.”
— Noah Herreid, Residential Project Manager and Co-Owner with Namaste Solar
The Result: Revisions Eliminated
“The detail [with drones] can't be beat,” said Keenan. “We can identify potential issues before they become problems. We shed potential liability due to damages that exist. We can even point things out to customers like, ‘Hey, you need to get that fixed. It has nothing to do with us, but that's dangerous. You need to get that fixed. You should call a contractor.’”
Leveraging drones with Scanifly has also opened up new business opportunities for Namaste Solar, both due to increased capacity from time savings and how potential customers perceive the company.
“Drones are an absolute necessity for Namaste Solar and the industry as a whole,” said Keenan. “When we show up to fly drones while the other company still gets on the roof, it certainly makes us seem more professional.”
Before using Scanifly, Namaste Solar’s process was highly manual and depended on Residential Project Managers to coordinate and oversee every step from site surveys to designs, drafts, and other administrative tasks.
With Scanifly, drones help Surveyors work more quickly and stay safe. From there, Scanifly’s design software ensures quick, accurate designs that don’t need revisions. The result has been significant time savings, increased quality, increased capacity, and increased customer satisfaction throughout the entire project.
What’s Next for Namaste Solar
Bringing on Scanifly has prompted more conversations about how the company can find efficiencies elsewhere, driving overall company evolutions that will help Namaste Solar serve many more customers in the coming years.
Not only is this important from a business growth perspective, but also because it’s helping the team march even closer to its mission.
“There's less surprise, less headache for our customers and that's a really, really big deal for us. Scanifly helps us deliver that.”
— Noah Herreid, Residential Project Manager and Co-Owner at Namaste Solar