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Many years ago, I read a series of published sign estimating exercises. They were characteristically based on a sign that had already been produced, but the resulting estimates came from a dozen or so other companies and/or regions.
The pricing methods, as well as the reported figures, wildly varied. Some final numbers (from the lowest to the highest) were apart by as much as a factor of ten.
I once even participated in one of these surveys. My memory banks have shorted out on the exact details, but I remember the basis for it was a single-page, two-dimensional sign design, with sizes and specs. I was requested to send in a price and some criteria as to how I arrived at this amount.
Several years later, I'm unsure where my final total landed, but the fact that estimating signs has long been open to interpretation has given the industry a long-standing desire to control and optimize the time it takes to arrive at a quote. Enter estimating software.
Estimates Anyone?
This article intends to explore several of the existing sign and graphic estimating applications currently available to the industry (applications received by press time were from manufacturers Activity(R) Software, Cyrious Software, and EstiMate Software), and preview them for the first-time buyer or user. While some of these packages are also extremely robust at running every aspect of a business (including the ability to schedule, manage a contact database, order materials, etc.), the idea here is to focus solely on estimating. (And I should mention that this is not a judgment as to which program is best.)
The purpose of estimating software is to reduce the time spent working on "low profit" activities, thereby ensuring that you will experience a more productive work day and not putting in extra hours to take care of the jobs you were neglecting because you were too busy computating. Sign shop owners could even find that using this software can result in so much extra available time that they can reduce a seven-day work week to a regular five days (or even, gasp, learn they can take a day off). And best of all, this software allows the sign shop to realize the potential to earn a larger profit...