For Dan Olsen, Senior Vice President of Operations at Global Sight and Sound, the decision to adopt D-Tools Cloud was about more than modernizing the way his team builds proposals. It was about transforming the financial health of the entire business… and the results have been striking.
The Milwaukee, WI-area-based integration company’s business is split evenly between residential and commercial work, and has been on D-Tools Cloud since 2018, having migrated from D-Tools System Integrator (SI). According to Olsen, the single most impactful change they made after switching to web-based D-Tools Cloud wasn't on the design side, it was turning on D-Tools Payments.
"One of the big things we did is adopt the invoicing and payment system through D-Tools Cloud, which has been a huge benefit for us," Olsen says. "Having people be able to pay their project as soon as they accept has been a huge thing."
The numbers speak for themselves. Before D-Tools Payments, Global Sight and Sound was carrying $1.6 million in open accounts receivable. After integrating payments directly into their project workflow, that figure dropped to approximately $500,000… a reduction of more than $1 million, or nearly 70%.
"It's actually brought our accounts receivable down — at one point it was $1.6 million — down to about $500,000 on the open books, which is just a huge benefit for our cash flow," Olsen explains.
For a 21-person integration firm, that kind of cash flow improvement isn't just a financial metric, it's the difference between scrambling to cover payroll and payables, and operating with confidence. The key, Olsen says, is the immediacy the system enables. When a client accepts a proposal, they can pay on the spot, eliminating the lag between signed contract and received funds that has long plagued the integration industry.
Implementing a payment system across an active business carries risk, and Global Sight and Sound took a measured approach by running test transactions and leaning on D-Tools support throughout the process.
"We really used the support and the team behind D-Tools Cloud as we were implementing the payment side," Olsen says. "As we were working through it, we would run some payments through and see how they would go, and then reach out to the team and they'd help us get everything lined up and work through the problems that we had. So that just made it a smooth transition to get that up and going."
That kind of hands-on partnership during rollout is what Olsen credits with making adoption stick. Rather than pushing through on their own and encountering friction, the D-Tools team served as a safety net, catching issues early and resolving them before they became habits.
D-Tools Payments are only part of Global Sight and Sound’s D-Tools Cloud adoption story. Olsen points to the broader consolidation the software has delivered as equally transformative. In an industry notorious for tool sprawl, his team has been able to eliminate multiple software subscriptions and run the entire project lifecycle, including design, proposal, project management, invoicing, and payment, from a single platform.
"In the AV industry, I think we're all using so many different softwares to manage different things," he says. "What I really like about D-Tools Cloud is the way that we can eliminate so many other softwares and just have everything in a single platform where projects can move from conception all the way to implementation and billing in one smooth platform."
The design side has also delivered gains. D-Tools Cloud's ability to recognize frequently used products and automatically suggest accessories has accelerated proposal output and directly improved the team's close rate.
"The workflow has increased our ability to output proposals to customers in the fastest time possible, which just helps our close rate," Olsen notes.
For integration firms still chasing invoices and managing cash flow month to month, Global Sight and Sound's experience makes a compelling case: when payments are built into the moment a client says yes, the financial picture of the entire business can change dramatically and quickly.
D-Tools is the Integration Business Platform for the technology integration industry. D-Tools Cloud is a cloud-based proposal, project management, and business operations platform that enables integration firms to manage their entire business — from initial design through installation and payment — in a single, connected solution.