Customer Success Story: Electrical Contractor Grows Low-Voltage Business and Cuts Estimating Time in Half with D-Tools SI
An electrical contractor significantly expanded their low-voltage business and reduced estimating time by 50% through implementing D-Tools System Integrator (SI) software, which streamlined their estimating, design, and installation processes.
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Arctic Electricians has been wiring homes around Lake Tahoe for years as a licensed electrical contractor. When Chris Mozzone bought the company in 2019, he saw an opportunity most electricians never chase… to build a design-led low-voltage integration practice alongside the core electrical business, rather than treating lighting control, audio and shading as an occasional add-on.
Today that bet has paid off. Low voltage now accounts for roughly 40% of Arctic’s volume, and the company built a companion brand, Elevated Home Systems, around a showroom in Stateline, Nevada, where homeowners can experience lighting, audio and control systems firsthand well before the walls of their new homes are framed.
The showroom exists because Mozzone recognized a problem every electrician-turned-integrator eventually confronts… the moment a homeowner gets excited about technology is long after the construction process has started.
“A lot of times when we’re talking about how cool this stuff is, there’s Sawzalls going off in the background. You’re in the middle of a construction site. It’s not a very inviting place to try to sell somebody something,” says Mozzone.
Building the showroom gives the company a chance to educate customers on potential smart home features early in the construction cycle.
“We’re not upselling anything. We’re just kind of educating you and showing you what exists. A lot of times people leave here and say, ‘I didn’t think lighting was something I needed. I thought that was an area I could cut corners on. After seeing your showroom, I understand lighting is super important,’” he says.
Growing a Second Trade Has Barriers
Building a low-voltage practice on top of an established electrical business faces challenges. Namely, architects’ plans almost never include a lighting or systems layout, so every contractor bidding a job invents the low-voltage scope from scratch… and no two invented scopes look the same.
Mozzone says when an architect simply hands him a blank floor plan for a lakefront home and says, “Give us a number,” it is akin to someone saying, “I want to buy a car,” but not describing what style of car they want, what they want in the car or how they want that car to perform.
Arctic Electricians takes a different approach. They create their proposals based on what the house needs, so their quotes are differentiated from those from others. For an electrician trying to grow a second trade, that means every low-voltage bid carries risk. If Arctic Electricians goes too far beyond scope, it loses on price. If their proposal presents just the bare minimum in technology, the company is left with tight margins to deliver it.
Arctic’s answer was to standardize both trades on D-Tools System Integrator (SI). Its electrical bids and integration quotes now come out of the same catalog, the same labor model and the same proposal format, instead of two separate estimating processes that only one side of the business understands.
That matters because on a Lake Tahoe home, the two scopes are rarely separate. Generators, service upgrades, lighting control, shading, audio and networking are all seen as “technology” to the homeowner. Likewise, builders want to minimize the number of subcontractors on a project to reduce scheduling conflicts. Running line-voltage electrical and low-voltage smart home technology through a single system with a single contractor makes the process seamless for all parties by reducing the risk of scope creep, a prolonged construction cycles and possibly an off-target margin from juggling multiple trades.
Cutting Proposal Time in Half
For Arctic, building a shared integrated product catalog for their proposals took some effort. The AV and control products came largely from D-Tools’ existing Integrated Product Library, but Arctic’s electrical components had to be input by hand, sourced from electrical distributors such as Platt Electric Supply.
With its dedicated catalog in place, Arctic is able to turn its bids around more quickly using D-Tools SI. Previously, estimating was a two-step process: it required first reading through a set of plans and typing everything out, then going back through the entire set of plans a second time to count it. On a home with hundreds of devices, that meant two chances to miss something. Using D-Tools SI, no one has to go back through the proposal and count everything.
“Now it’s worked out simultaneously. I don’t have to count anymore,” says Mozzone, noting that Arctic has cut its proposal turnaround time by “at least 50%.”
Speed only matters if what goes out the door wins the work. Arctic organizes its D-Tools proposals room by room, so a customer reads the system the way they’ll actually live in it.
“I’ve had people tell us that our proposals are really impressive — the way everything’s laid out, by room,” comments Mozzone
On certain projects, Arctic also uses D-Tools SI’s Visio integration to generate rack elevations and wiring schematics directly from the same project file as the estimate, so the drawings and the price can’t drift apart. For a company whose low-voltage growth strategy depends on showing up as the designer rather than the low bidder, that consistency between quote and drawing is part of the pitch.
Continued Investment in the Platform
Arctic Electricians didn’t grow its low-voltage business by spinning up a separate integration company with its own systems and its own back office. It grew that portion of the business by running electrical and low voltage through the same D-Tools SI catalog. The time saved using a unified proposal system gave the company leeway to build a showroom and enhance its in-house design capability, which ultimately helps them get involved earlier on projects.
“It’s faster and more accurate. That’s what it comes down to,” concludes Mozzone.
Arctic plans to continue its investment in D-Tools SI expanding its electrical catalog data and making more use of D-Tools SI’s plan-view and line-drawing tools. That will keep tightening the gap between what the company designs, what it bids and what it delivers.
See what D-Tools can do for your business by signing up for a free demo.
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