Lexul was founded in 2014 as a custom software development company. Over the years, they’ve developed numerous custom solutions for field service companies. With each solution developed specifically for the needs of their customers, they noticed the gaps in the functionality of off the shelf software solutions for commercial and industrial trades. In 2022 Lexul began development on a new field service software called “Lexul Field Service” to fill those gaps. It serves as a solution for commercial and industrial field service companies across the nation to increase performance, drive efficiency, and ultimately, help businesses get paid faster.
Our History
The Beginning
Started in 2014, we entered the internet business by offering web design and “smart” websites. Our target market was businesses that needed a little more “intelligence” in their website – more than just a static page.
What We Learned
There’s a lot of competition in the web design industry. Many companies sacrifice quality to be more price competitive. We didn’t want to sacrifice quality so we began to shift our focus away from general web development.
Moving Into Application Development
In the beginning of 2015 we started our first major custom application development project. With it we realized some of the significant challenges in software development but also the opportunities for improvement in the industry. By the end of the year, we had 4 moderate sized custom app projects under our belt.
What We Learned
The biggest lesson of the year was that the terminology and assumptions of functionality vary greatly from software developers to business leaders. This lead to a rocky first year of application development but gave us a path forward to improve upon.
Focusing on Interns
Up to this point our business model involved Eric Ollis, President, doing sales, implementation consulting, and project management. The behind-the-scenes talent was through development contractors, both domestic and international. While international contractors with exceptional programming skills were hired, we found that they commonly lacked the business level understanding.
We hired our first local interns the summer of 2016 which provided us with highly intuitive individuals that had moderate programming skills.
What We Learned
We found that university interns have a better skill breakdown for business software development as it has more conceptual challenges than programming challenges. We were able to focus more on designing software solutions for business’s problems instead of relying on the client to provide the ideal solution specifications.
Developing our Platform
After two years of general custom software development, we refined our focus to Field Service related software. We found that our clients relied on a relatively small number of features to deliver their otherwise custom business software. With such great feature overlap, we saw the value in a software platform to start each project from.
What We Learned
Over the year, we learned that while most clients use many of the same features, they have to be implemented in slightly different ways. With each new project, we improved our core feature set and their flexibility to new methods of implementation.
Our Focus
For 2018 we are expanding our staff to meet the growing demand for our highly efficient software development technique. We will be expanding our knowledge in the Internet of Things space as that is where we see the future of business data reporting. By leveraging the efficiency gains with the Lexul Platform, we expect to deliver over a dozen new software solutions to businesses in 2018.
What We Learned
We improved our ongoing support and maintenance methods. With a growing list of supported projects, the increased support demand and maintenance operations started impacting efficiency. We’ve streamlined the operations to balance balance client expectations and cost.
Our Focus
For 2019 we are expanding our modular software solutions as well as locating to larger office space to meet our growing needs. As we support more companies with our technology, we have a greater understanding of the value we provide to these companies and are continually working to enhance it.
Changing Directions
COVID revealed a common problem for a lot of our customers so we worked to find a solution. In the past, many workflows for field service staff were extremely rigid to ensure quality of work and the data collected. COVID changed a lot of workflows which required a lot of software changes – at a time when cash was tight for many businesses.
Through COVID, we piloted a new idea: Incentivizing employees as if they were owners in exchange for looser workflow controls. The tests from the pilot were successful so we’ve revised our methods around this new found advantage.
Driving Change for 2021
With the potential of rising wages and corporate taxes in 2021, we are eager to work with businesses to recognize their most productive employees.
The Future of Field Service
2022 came in quickly, and with it, we started focusing all of our efforts and assets towards one brand new software technology called “Lexul Field Service”. By digging into our many years of industry knowledge, experience, app design, and problem solving, we created an all-in-one platform for field service workflow and management.
With 8 years of custom field app development, we realized what the market does not offer (because people turn to us for a custom solution). We’ve realized there is a widespread demand specifically for this, and in response, we have developed this platform as an off the shelf solution.
Solving Field Service Challenges
Since shifting gears and focusing on our new SaaS platform Lexul Field Service, we have greatly expanded and enhanced our growing field service platform. One of the avenues we have done this is by gathering customer feedback to find additional solutions to the problems they face in the industry.
In this new year of 2023, we plan to continue to enhance our product, and better solve the challenges that our customers are facing when going from work requested to invoicing the customer.