Customer Success Story: 50-Person Commercial Integrator Boosts Profit by 5% Using D-Tools

Western Audio Visual, a 50-employee commercial AV integration firm based in Fullerton, California, has increased profit margins by 5% to 6% in the past year after centralizing its operations on D-Tools System Integrator (SI) software. According to Controller Ryan Baumgart, the 25-year-old company replaced a patchwork of spreadsheets with a single, connected system for pricing, purchasing, and project tracking, giving leadership the visibility to catch problems early and protect margins on every job.

"We really were just looking to get more efficient and centralized with all of our information in one spot."
— Ryan Baumgart, Controller, Western Audio Visual

From Spreadsheets to a Single Source of Truth

Western Audio Visual adopted D-Tools SI three years ago. Before making the switch, the company managed pricing, projects, and purchase orders across a mix of spreadsheets and file structures — a system that grew harder to manage as the business scaled.

“We were still using a compilation of spreadsheets and different file structures to keep all of our pricing information in order,” Baumgart says. “It just became too hard to keep track of multiple different projects through spreadsheets.”

Today, D-Tools SI serves as the operational hub connecting Western Audio Visual’s finance, accounting, and operations teams.

“My favorite feature about SI, being on the finance, accounting, and operations side, is just having everything in one spot — whether that’s all our ICOs, all our projects, all our purchase orders,” Baumgart explains.

Getting Ahead of Price Increases and Backorders

With manufacturer price increases and end-of-life product changes a constant challenge in the AV industry, Baumgart says D-Tools SI gives Western Audio Visual the ability to react before a price change eats into a project’s margin.

“It’s really easy for us to see there’s a price increase that just happened, and to see all the projects that we have that have been approved and awarded to us but we still haven’t ordered,” he says.

That visibility lets the team quickly filter for every project tied to an affected manufacturer and place orders before the increase takes effect — something Baumgart says would have been “nearly impossible” to do with spreadsheets alone. The same visibility has helped the team catch backorders and unfulfilled purchase orders before they become a crisis on the job site.

“The biggest thing is that we’re able to be aware of problems before they become a problem,” Baumgart says, “and we can nip stuff in the tail before it becomes an issue where it’s affecting our performance and our customer satisfaction.”

A 5% to 6% Boost to the Bottom Line

For Baumgart, the clearest evidence of D-Tools SI’s impact shows up on the balance sheet. With change orders, labor hours, and project data all tracked in one system, Western Audio Visual can review project performance far earlier and more consistently than it could with spreadsheets.

“In the last year, our margins have gone up by probably about five or six percent, just due to the tracking and the reviews that we have now,” Baumgart says.

That earlier visibility also shortens the feedback loop when a project doesn’t go as planned. “We’re able to learn from it a lot faster, so our engineers, our sales team, and everyone on the operations side are fixing mistakes and things that go wrong a lot sooner,” he adds... a shift he credits with making the company “a lot more profitable and a lot more efficient” overall.

D-Tools' Long Industry History, Support Give Confidence

Baumgart believes points to both D-Tools’ track record and the depth of its AV-specific feature set are important.

“D-Tools has been in the business a long time, so it’s nice to know you have someone who’s been here and is going to be here in the future,” he says. “There’s not a lot of other solutions that are as detailed and have as much scope and breadth, along with the onboarding experience and the training.”

He also cites D-Tools’ training resources and support as a differentiator. “The amount of training, data, and resources that D-Tools provides — not only having a great product but helping you get started and answering questions — has been extremely helpful," he adds.

The Takeaway

For a 50-person commercial integrator competing on tight margins, the results speak for themselves: consolidating pricing, purchasing, and project tracking into D-Tools SI helped Western Audio Visual boost profit margins by 5 to 6 percent in a single year, while giving every department a shared, real-time view of where each job stands.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much did Western Audio Visual’s profit margin increase after adopting D-Tools SI?

Controller Ryan Baumgart reports that Western Audio Visual’s margins increased by approximately 5 percent to 6 percent in the past year, which he attributes directly to improved project tracking and reviews made possible by D-Tools SI.

What problems did D-Tools SI solve for Western Audio Visual?

Before adopting D-Tools SI, Western Audio Visual managed pricing, purchase orders, and project data across multiple spreadsheets and file structures. D-Tools SI centralized that information, making it easier to track backorders, respond to manufacturer price increases, and monitor job profitability in real time.

How long has Western Audio Visual used D-Tools SI?

Western Audio Visual has used D-Tools System Integrator for approximately three years.