FAQ
How Can Our Software Improve Your Business?
If you’re looking for opportunities to improve or grow your business, software should be at the top of your list. As you explore your options, we understand that you’ll have questions. The Integra Group is committed to answering your inquiries, and these FAQs make it easy to start.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is BOSS®?
BOSS® is a technology service designed to improve every aspect of your business, from start to finish, from the time a prospect is identified to when you’re cashing the check. BOSS® keep you organized, enables profitable bids, streamlines job costing, simplifies scheduling, creates invoices, and provides owners and executives a window into the business—something that’s otherwise difficult to maintain as a company grows. It’s our goal to have all the information needed to run and understand the business stored in one spot and accessible to all those who need it as securely as possible. This information is frequently gathered during the normal course of business, not by adding extra work, saving your team the trouble of double data entry.
I see that your company is based in Missouri, the “Show-Me” state. Where’s the proof that BOSS® works?
Last year, our clients grew their businesses 16.4% on average. Since our inception, our clients have grown their businesses an average of 15% per year. At that rate, a business will double in size approximately every five years! And those who have known you longest know you best. Of our first 20 clients, 100% are still BOSS® users.
What is your track record?
We believe that the best testament to the value of BOSS® is our high percentage of long-term clients and their constant referrals, which lead to an average growth rate of over 30% per year for our business.
Who qualifies for BOSS®?
Any business wishing to kickstart growth and increase profits.
What accounting systems does BOSS® work with?
An accounting integration is an expected part of every software implementation that we do. Since our inception, we have done accounting system integrations on almost every single project. We have successfully integrated with a wide variety of accounting systems, including QuickBooks, Microsoft Dynamics GP, and Sage 300. If you rely on something else, we’re always up for a new challenge.
How big does my business need to be?
We have successful client partners with as little as $1 million in annual revenue. We’ve found that most companies need a system like BOSS® when they get to $3 million in revenue, but we also have clients with hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue.
How do I find out more?
Watch our executive briefing. Afterwards, we’ll call and offer a live demonstration. There is never any obligation or pressure. If you don’t want to wait, email us at info@BOSSLM.com and we’ll have someone call you directly to answer your questions.
What does your company do?
We leverage technology in traditionally blue-collar industries: landscaping, river transportation, and food service.
Do you understand your focus industries?
Yes, but we’re always learning. For all of our focus industries, we always have several experts on our team who have significant boots-on-the-ground experience and decades of shared experience.
What kind of training is available?
At The Integra Group, we take training seriously and offer the flexibility to deliver it according to your needs. Most of our training resources are provided at no additional cost. We provide in-depth, live, on-site training two weeks before your company goes live. We also offer monthly live Deep Dive webinars in which we highlight a particular part of the system and explain its use. We provide quarterly BOSS® Universities at our headquarters where we cover the functions of the system at a more in-depth level. This is a course designed for executives and other advanced users.
Our experts also offer training at our annual client conference. We have a constantly evolving library of training videos available 24/7 on our support site, and our system has built-in context-specific help functions. We provide live web-based seminars for each major software release, including hard-copy training, documentation, and release notes.
Is BOSS® easy to use?
Albert Einstein said, “Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler.” The industries we specialize in may look simple on the surface but they can be deceivingly complex. Any enterprise software built to support a complex business in a comprehensive manner is going to require an investment in training, especially for the complex functions and sophisticated users.
Following Einstein’s advice, we work to make things as simple as possible. Our mobile apps are simple and intuitive and are provided in both English and Spanish (as are the mobile training videos). Our client partners frequently comment on how quickly their teams are able to learn the new software, even with no prior experience.
Is BOSS® expensive?
BOSS® is affordable, with monthly costs scaled to the size of each organization and tracked seasonally with your needs. BOSS provides an excellent return on investment for growing companies, and that’s how we ask our clients to evaluate BOSS because ROI is the bottom line for any business investment.
Given that our goal is having long-term clients, we work to ensure that your organization receives a healthy return on its investment with BOSS®. Plus, we never stop working to increase your ROI. Ever. Ask the clients who’ve been with us for many years and they’ll tell you that the BOSS® of today is far superior to the one they purchased and without any change in the pricing model whatsoever. However, if you’re not serious and determined to grow your business and increase your profits, BOSS® is not a good fit for you.
Do you ever make improvements to BOSS®?
Yes, constantly. We have a team of developers going to work every single business day (and often beyond) to improve BOSS®. We get feedback from our clients on what they need, weigh how those suggestions affect the product, and go about improving the application methodically. Once a particular development cycle is complete, we roll out the new version to each client at their request. We even occasionally come up with a good idea on our own. The major drivers of our efforts are improving efficiency, accountability, and actionable intelligence.
How do you get feedback from your clients?
We hear from our clients in numerous ways, formal and informal—through our account managers, support personnel, phone calls, emails, training forums, the user conference, and site visits. We are always listening. When we’re preparing for a significant enhancement, we form a subject matter expert (SME) committee of four to six of our sharpest employees in a given area and formally request their ideas and feedback.
Will BOSS® be there when I need it?
Yes. BOSS® was designed and built by The Integra Group, a software company that’s been solving business problems with technology for over 20 years. We’re a financially secure evergreen company that enjoys a large and growing customer base across multiple industries throughout the U.S. and Canada. We think long term and grow methodically with great care. We know our customers are depending on us around the clock, and we take pride in building extremely stable systems that don’t go down.
Why have I never heard of you?
This was an actual question posed to us last year by a large company based in Texas, and we appreciated it. Up until this point, client referrals have been our bread and butter, resulting in new clients that kept us growing as quickly as we could without sacrificing quality. Though we always appreciate client referrals, we’ve made substantial investments in personnel and technology to prepare to expand even more rapidly and are now starting to market ourselves proactively. As with all that we do, we test the waters and improve the process as we learn.
Are you just software providers?
We sell software, but we’re really in the market of business partnerships. Most of our client partners have a fine-tuned intuition regarding their businesses, but the successful business eventually outgrows the founder’s gut instincts because they simply don’t have the day-to-day feel they once did and good instincts are difficult to develop in others.
We work to provide an entrepreneur with tools to augment those instincts as a business grows and processes evolve along a controlled and sustainable trajectory. Our work is centered on the software because it’s the best tool to gather and present the information required for our clients to make smart business decisions, but at the core, we’re just businesspeople who understand technology. We appreciate and understand that the decisions are made by people, not software and systems. We see our job as providing the information our clients need to make informed decisions.
Once I’m on board, will you raise the price?
Clients receive maintenance updates at no additional charge. We always reserve the right to request additional charges for significant new features, but so far, we have never requested additional charges from existing clients.
Will you nickel and dime me to death?
No. Our monthly time and materials invoices are an exceedingly small percentage of our total revenue.
What are the benefits of BOSS®?
BOSS® helps you:
- Increase your company’s revenue.
- Increase profitability.
- Drive efficiency throughout your organization.
- Provide business intelligence tools for your decision-makers.
- Prioritize more accurate job costing.
- Deploy a professional web-based client interface to manage the interactions with your clients.
- Improve accuracy in your proposals with rapid rebids, letting your sales reps cover more ground.
- Bring software tools to the field via mobile devices.
- Consolidate data with a central place for all of your information.
- Access software tools anytime, anywhere through our 100% web-based product.
