Matthew Tassinari met with nearly a dozen private equity firms interested in acquiring Electrical Systems of Maine. They all asked the same questions.
What's your commercial service breakdown? Your residential revenue breakdown? What's your average ticket?
Tassinari, the company's CFO, couldn't answer any of them.
"It was embarrassing, to say the least," Tassinari said.
The reason he couldn't answer the questions was simple: Electrical Systems of Maine ran almost entirely on paper. Techs got dispatched on a paper work order. Material slips came back to an envelope keeper in the shop, collected weekly by the service manager, then sent to accounting before a bill finally went out.
That process took three to six weeks. Getting paid took another three to six. Cash flow was “pretty bad,” Tassinari said
The PE deal never came together. But Tassinari realized that a change was needed at the commercial and residential shop in Auburn, Maine.
"I took a hard look at our business (and asked myself), 'How can we drive our business more based on data — especially the data that these types of guys are looking for?'"
To find the answer, he went back to a question that almost every PE firm had asked him:
"Are you on ServiceTitan?"
A New Set of Rules
Electrical Systems of Maine went live with ServiceTitan in August 2023. The early lesson that changed everything? The software wasn't going to bend to their old processes.
"You have to conform to the way that ServiceTitan wants to operate," Tassinari said. "You can't impose your crappy processes onto the software. And then once you understand the way the software works, it's like, 'That is so intuitive, why weren't we doing that years ago?'"
Their membership program was the clearest example.
What had been a paper-based system — printed monthly reports, mailed postcards, no follow-up, no online booking, no online payments, and angry customers — became something else entirely.
“Now, we offer discounts on all our other services that we provide…They're getting the follow-up emails, they're getting the follow-up phone calls from our CSRs,” Tassinari said.
Another example: the change from paper work orders. Generator Division Manager Jason Arsenault remembers that headache well from his time in the field.
"There was a lot of in-between stuff that we weren't encapsulating," Arsenault said. "I would go back to a job and I'd be blind."
On paper, generator techs did three services a day “if we were lucky,” Arsenault said. With ServiceTitan, that number is "anywhere from five to seven to eight services a day per tech."
Even better?
"(Now), my tech is sending out his invoice right there or collecting payment on site and we're recognizing it within hours or a day rather than up to two months time for a couple of hundred dollars for a service," Arsenault said.
"(ServiceTitan) is really speeding up everything."
Before and After
Three years into ServiceTitan, the data is there.
Accounts receivable: It used to be 50% due over 60 days → now it’s 10% due over 60 days, with most customers paying within 15 days
Billing cycle: It used to be three to six weeks → now invoices are sent and payments collected on-site, within hours or a day
Average ticket: Up 15% over three years on ServiceTitan
"Now I could say my average ticket for a generator service call is $400. My average electrical ticket is $1,100," Tassinari said. "You can plan revenue around how many technicians you have and forecast a lot better."
'We Know Our Business Inside and Out'
Every division at Electrical Systems of Maine is starting to work the same way — and it shows.
"It's easy for everybody to access the same information," Tassinari said. "(We’re) all using the same software. We're all speaking the same language."
As for the numbers? Tassinari knows exactly how he’d respond if the PE firms walked back in today.
"Now I feel like we are one of those industry professionals," he said. "We know our business inside and out now."
