How This Iowa-Based Solar Contractor Stays Ahead Of The Competition With Technology

Eagle Point Solar increased safety, accuracy, and revenue with Scanifly

Eagle Point Solar (EPS) builds solar arrays for residential, commercial, government, and academic clients across the Midwest.

A core value of the company is continual improvement, which means leveling up their processes, including delivering a more precise outcome for clients and a safer environment for employees.

A key way the company improves is by leveraging technology; after implementing Scanifly across the entire project process, EPS saw increased safety, efficiency, and revenues while delivering more accurate designs and a better experience for clients.

Results From Using Scanifly:

The challenge: Year-round activity in the Midwest

Since its founding in 2010, Eagle Point Solar (EPS) has grown from only installing residential solar to building arrays for homes, small rural utilities, commercial organizations, local governments, and academic institutions across the Midwest.

One of the company’s core values is continual improvement, something the whole organization takes seriously. To live out this value – the leadership team always explores ways to improve the company’s workflow.

“The safety factor is a huge one because especially [during winter months], some of the roofs can get a little frosty, a little slippery,” said Lynn Roth, Marketing Director at EPS.

Technology is in the DNA of EPS. Several of the founding leaders have worked together previously in a software company. They understand the necessity of never becoming complacent and the implications of a fast-moving industry.

At a macro level, EPS’s team was looking for technology improvements, both big and small, particularly around enhancing the accuracy of project designs and employee safety. When Lynn joined the company in 2018, EPS was just starting to “dabble” with Scanifly’s survey and design platform. Other key stakeholders included Todd Lindquist, a Technical Supervisor, Matt Pullen, Design & Engineering Manager, and Tod Hollenback, the VP of Design & Engineering.

After finding benefits with Scanifly3D, the company’s core product, from 2018 to 2022, the team became a partner in helping develop new platform features, like Scanifly Prelim. Now, EPS uses Scanifly throughout the entire solar project lifecycle, seeing efficiencies and operational gains from sales through surveying, design, and installation.

Here’s how EPS went from using Scanifly for one use-case to leveraging the entire Scanifly platform for its full process.

Improving accuracy and safety for all solar surveys

EPS has to think about blistering summer humidity all the way to frigid and icy winter elements. Further, with the diversity of roof structures in the Midwest, climbing a ladder is a massive safety risk.

Talking about a particularly slanted church steeple project the team worked on, Lynn commented, “without Scanifly, how would you even approach that? You’d need a bucket lift or something to enable someone to measure the roof — or you can just use a drone with Scanifly.”

After bringing Scanifly into the survey and design stages of the business, EPS found they were able to collect all the data they needed upfront, with a single Surveyor and a single truck roll. Previously, they had to send 2-3 Surveyors out, occasionally on multiple truck rolls, to collect data manually.

“Scanifly took [surveying] to a not only safer level, but to a level that just provided way more data, way more imagery, and way more capabilities,” said Lynn. “And if a site owner asks us to make changes, we can do it quickly with Scanifly — that means a better experience for our clients.”

Building a single source of truth for client data

After bringing more accuracy and safety to the operations process, EPS looked for other ways to bring efficiencies to their workflow. An obvious area to look at was preliminary designs. At the time, EPS was using a major, well-known preliminary design platform that had just significantly raised its prices. Further, the workflow was broken up, since any data from a preliminary design needed to be copied into Scanifly to conduct a survey.

Working with Scanifly, EPS began to test out Scanifly Prelim. Not only was this platform significantly more cost-efficient than the other software they were using, the team liked that they could have a single source of truth for all pre-sales, survey and final design data.

“Being able to utilize a preliminary tool that doubles as our post-assessment design tool with a 3D model is a huge advantage,” said Todd Lindquist, who is now the Key Accounts Technical Supervisor at Eagle Point Solar.

With Scanifly Prelim, the EPS team didn’t have to continually hop between two tools to complete a project design.

Saving clients money and time

Building trust has been part of the backbone of EPS’ impressive growth. This isn’t just about how they treat their clients, but it permeates to other parts of their business. For example, when the EPS teams complete a Scanifly layout, they know that their work procurement order and installation will be spot on.

When it comes time to buy all the materials for a project, redesigns or inaccuracies can result in significant additional costs. Lynn noted that these costs are now eliminated thanks to the data Scanifly’s technology helps collect and process.

“Scanifly is a platform that brings all [the data] together and just provides a much more seamless integration into creating a site assessment,” said Lynn.

Staying one step ahead of the competition

Using Scanifly didn’t just help EPS safely gather more accurate site data; it also enabled them to show that accuracy during sales pitches. This was valuable as the organization bid for larger projects, especially in municipalities and academic institutions with many stakeholders.

Armed with an accurate design, EPS can showcase their work, enabling property owners to truly visualize what the proposed array will look like and understand step by step how EPS leads with quality and thoughtfulness.

“When you have a board of directors or multiple people on a project making decisions, that level of data and accuracy from Scanifly is super important—it helps push those projects to a completely new level versus your traditional static layout,” said Lynn.

Even for smaller projects, leveraging Scanifly has become a valuable marketing tool that gives clients confidence in EPS as an honest, transparent provider.

“Scanifly has been very beneficial in helping us position ourselves as a solar company that utilizes technology to benefit our clients,” said Lynn. “And clients like it because they feel they can trust our data.”

How EPS collaborates with Scanifly to stay at the cutting edge

Beyond simply using novel technology, EPS actually helps create it. As an R&D partner with Scanifly, EPS team members regularly share their feedback on what actually happens in the field. From there, they test out new Scanifly solutions to ensure that any next-generation technology continues to solve real problems for clients and team members.

“As the company grows and we bring on new team members, we can pass along not only our values to them, but then how we utilize and incorporate technology to help us maintain the quality of systems that we design, engineer and build,” said Lynn.

Up next: Improving client communication with technology

As the team looks to the future, Lynn said everyone is focused again on continuous improvement. This time, though, it’s about client communication. The company already features a plain-language description of the solar journey, but Lynn said they want to be even more proactive with a client portal that delivers real-time updates on a given project.

This evolution, along with bringing Scanifly’s platform through the entire project lifecycle, is just one of the many ways Eagle Point Solar continues to improve for its clients. As demand for solar continues to grow, Lynn wants to ensure clients know exactly who the EPS team is and why they can trust them.

“If you were to say, ‘What is the technology that helps a solar company in the future?’ it’s going to be internal and external data communications,” said Lynn. “It’s going to be making sure all people and all departments, as well as the clients involved, are on the same page.”

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