Faces of the Frontline: Scott and Charles from Sunrun share their Skedulo story

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Sunrun is a leading solar energy provider in the United States. The company operates all across the country, helping home owners make the move to clean energy with the installation of high quality solar panels and batteries. 

Scott is a Retail Sales Supervisor for the Northern Connecticut region. He has been with Sunrun for almost 5 years and started on the frontline as an in-store sales rep before accepting a management position 2 years ago.  

Charles has been with Sunrun for 5 years and is a Retail Program Specialist on the retail channel partnership team. He oversees Sunrun’s sales managers to ensure effective scheduling of 800+ staff across hundreds of retail stores.

Life on the job before Skedulo

Charles and Scott both remember the days when scheduling Sunrun’s retail salesforce involved emails, spreadsheets and online forms. 

“It felt like the movie A Beautiful Mind where you’re writing on a window wondering how to organize all these people,” remembers Charles. “With hundreds of different retailers, staff and schedules it’s a monster to make sure everyone will be in the right place at the right time.”

As a Retail Sales Supervisor, Scott manages a team of 12 sales reps who work between 15 retail stores. 

“Before we started using Skedulo, scheduling was very stressful and time consuming. When you’re using spreadsheets and online forms to manage daily check-ins and checkouts it’s also a real struggle to ensure compliance without full visibility.”  

“Managing a team of reps means I’m always putting out fires and handling scheduling issues each week, and this was a definite challenge before Skedulo.”

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Life on the job after Skedulo

Since deploying Skedulo and rolling it out to their field sales teams, Sunrun’s scheduling process has been completely transformed.

“Once Skedulo was rolled out, it was amazing to have all the scheduling data consolidated,” says Charles. “From a compliance perspective, Skedulo helps us sleep at night because everyone knows where they need to be the next day.”

“The ability to see all our schedules in one place is huge for us.”

For Scott – who had the unique experience of using Skedulo as a sales rep and now as a manager – the change has been remarkable. 

“Skedulo is a great tool compared to what we used in the past. Piecing together a consistent weekly schedule is a delicate balancing act, and Skedulo makes it easy to plan that out even as far as 3 months in advance.”

“Having that visibility on where everybody is at, and the ability to make quick adjustments, is fantastic. For example, a rep may say they have a transport issue and can’t make it to a store 40 minutes away but can get to a closer one. With Skedulo, I can change shifts on the fly and have it show up in real time on the rep’s mobiles which has been invaluable.”

Scott says transparency and accountability have been the biggest impacts of using Skedulo. 

“Since Skedulo, there’s been greater transparency for myself as a manager and for staff in knowing where they need to be every day. Being a remotely managed organization – which is especially true in COVID – means I’m not in the field every second. I also can’t be at every store at the same time. So the biggest impact has been helping to drive accountability: ensuring reps are instore when they’re supposed to be and giving me visibility as a manager knowing they are there.”

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“Skedulo helps us meet our staffing commitments to retail partners and get the proper amount of hours into retail locations to drive the sales activity we need.”

Timekeeping is another benefit for Sunrun’s field staff, who may occasionally forget to log their times for payroll. 

“Just recently I had an employee who had forgotten to log their time for payroll on a couple of days. Lo and behold we checked Skedulo and there were the check-in and checkout times. We were able to take that exact data and get it to payroll which was hugely helpful.”

“My favorite aspect of Skedulo is the navigation. It helps new hires quickly learn the lay of the land and I’ve even had a couple of reps use it to direct an Uber when they had transport issues.”

Skedulo helps us plan our lives and spend more time on what matters 

Charles and Scott say Skedulo saves them a lot of time which frees them up to focus on activities that add more value to the organization. 

“Before Skedulo I would spend 5 to 6 hours a week scheduling. Skedulo has shaved that in half. It’s given me so much time back.”
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“It’s our policy to schedule 4 weeks out on a rolling basis and Skedulo has made that so much easier to complete each week.” 

“On a professional level it means I can spend more time coaching, guiding, training and giving feedback to sales reps which ultimately drives performance and results.”

“On a personal level Skedulo gives me more time to do what I love, such as hiking or reading a good book. It’s taken my role closer to a 40 hour workweek which is great.”