Nystrom Electric

For over a century, Nystrom Electric has served the Siouxland area as a trusted, family- owned electrical contractor.

“We’ve been around for over 100 years,” Vice President of Operations Mandi Steensen said. “Nystrom is a family-owned and operated business. It’s been passed down generation after generation.”

When Steensen joined the company, she realized Nystrom’s processes could be improved with tools better suited for its next phase of growth.

Moving Away From Manual Processes

At the start of her tenure as Vice President, Nystrom’s field and payroll processes required stacks of paper timecards and manual data entry.

“We were very pen and paper, before,” Steensen said. “Our guys would turn in physical timecards each week on the day of payroll and then we would manually go into a spreadsheet and calculate all of their labor hours.”

The process delayed payroll, caused errors and lead to misplaced information.

“Some of them lost those papers… it just became a real challenge for us and a real opportunity to streamline all of our processes,” Steensen detailed.

WorkMax® Modernizes the Field

To address these time tracking inefficiencies, Nystrom Electric implemented WorkMax, a mobile app built specifically for construction crews. The goal was to eliminate physical timecards, improve accuracy and give field employees an easier way to enter time daily.

“[Our field workers] log their time in real-time using their phones,” Steensen detailed. “We didn’t have to purchase additional iPads or computers for them.”

With digital timecards replacing the old physical ones, the company immediately got more up-to-date information from the field.

FOUNDATION® Brings Payroll In-House

As their time tracking improved, Nystrom also overhauled their payroll processing, turning to WorkMax’s sister product, FOUNDATION accounting software, to bring both their job costing and payroll in-house.

Implementing both systems created a connected workflow from field to office, allowing labor data to flow seamlessly from time tracking into payroll.

“We actually made the decision to implement FOUNDATION along with Service Dispatch and WorkMax modules together to try and save time,” Steensen said.

Once payroll was brought in-house, the integration between WorkMax and FOUNDATION eliminated duplicate entry and gave the accounting team greater visibility and control over labor costs.

“Payroll has been cut down to probably four hours a week at the very most. WorkMax works very well with FOUNDATION.” Steensen said, “In order to create efficiencies, to bring payroll in-house, we couldn’t have done that without WorkMax.”

The Investment Pays for Itself

Since implementing WorkMax and FOUNDATION, Nystrom Electric stopped outsourcing their payroll and greatly slashed their overhead costs.

“We paid our CPA probably $1,500 a month to process our payroll. We do process every week, so about a $15,000 savings over the year, which more than covers the cost of WorkMax,” Steensen said.

The company also saw a major boost in the quality of their data, calling the digital time tracking process “100% more accurate.”

Planning for the Next 100 Years

For Nystrom, WorkMax was truly a turning point in how the company operated.

“It’s allowed the guys to spend more time on the job, which means we get to bill more of their time and spend less of their time manually filling out paperwork every day,” Steensen said.

Additionally, the company is really benefiting from the clarity and connection WorkMax provides.

“The most valuable functionality is just streamlining our processes from the guys in the field to those of us in the office,” Steensen remarked.

“The application allows us to talk and communicate amongst each other. It allows us to pull real-time reporting.”

Together with FOUNDATION, the integration has strengthened communication, accuracy and confidence across the team.

“It’s been the best of any experience I’ve had previously at other companies I’ve worked for… I’m glad we chose to go with WorkMax when we did,” she said.

Nystrom Electric continues to honor its family legacy while embracing new technology, balancing 100 years of tradition with tools designed for the future. They feel strongly that they now have the right systems in place to thrive for many decades to come.