Streamlining Operations Across Six Projects: How an 800-Person Electrical Contractor Cut Inefficiency and Built for Growth
Electric Plus is one of Indiana's leading electrical contractors, headquartered in Avon with additional offices in Bloomington, Lafayette, and Kokomo. With more than 800 employees serving commercial, healthcare, institutional, educational, and industrial clients across the state, the company operates at a scale that demands efficient, reliable systems across every function of the business. Under the leadership of President Tim Wicker, Electric Plus has pursued a deliberate strategy of operational improvement — identifying friction points across departments and investing in solutions that make the work faster, more accurate, and easier for the people doing it. That pursuit led them to Leaf Software.
The Challenge
Inefficiency Hiding in Plain Sight Like many large contracting organizations, Electric Plus had accumulated a set of manual, time- consuming processes that had simply become part of the routine. Nobody questioned them — they were just the way things were done. But over time, the cost of those inefficiencies became impossible to ignore. In the prefabrication and manufacturing area, workers were relying on hand sketches to understand what they were building. In payroll, a process that ran every Monday consumed six hours of staff time. In field service, time documentation, dispatch, workflow, and billing all lived in separate systems — creating double-entry headaches and slowing down the team. Customer relationship management was similarly fragmented. The common thread across all of these challenges was the same: these were things that should have been easy, and yet the tools and processes in place made them unnecessarily hard. "It's that stuff we knew should be easy, but we were painfully not knowing how to make it that way. It's really frustrating when the little things are always there. Getting those to go away is just a monumental thing for us." — Tim Wicker , President, Electric Plus
Finding the Right Partner
A Consultative Approach That Earned Trust Electric Plus first learned about Leaf Software through their network and decided to reach out. What started as a single project has since grown into six active engagements — a trajectory that reflects the trust built through each successive collaboration. From the very first meeting, the Leaf team's approach stood out. Rather than arriving with a pre-packaged pitch, they walked the Electric Plus facility, asked questions, and focused entirely on understanding the problems at hand. For a company like Electric Plus — practical, people-focused, and skeptical of vendors who try to force-fit solutions — that approach resonated immediately. Tim also notes that the cultural alignment between the two organizations has been a key factor in the partnership's success. Leaf's employee-first, collaborative ethos mirrors Electric Plus's own values — and that shared culture has made working together feel natural rather than transactional.
"They're not trying to make us fit in some box. They're very much: what do you need, what are your pain points, what are your headaches? The approach they bring is: it's your solution we're trying to figure out. We're not going to try and shove a solution down your throat." — Tim Wicker , President
The Solutions
Prefabrication & Manufacturing: From Sketches to Digital Clarity The first project tackled Electric Plus's prefabrication facility — the EDGE building where the company manufactures electrical assemblies before they go to job sites. Workers on the shop floor were navigating their work using hand-drawn sketches, which created room for error and slowed production. Leaf developed a digital solution that pulls design information through to the fabrication shop and displays it on iPads and screens on the floor. Workers can now see actual product images and precise specifications in real time — eliminating ambiguity and reducing the back-and- forth that comes with hand-drawn documentation.
Payroll: Cutting a Six-Hour Monday in Half Before Leaf's involvement, Electric Plus's payroll process consumed roughly six hours every Monday. The workflow was heavily manual, with numerous steps that were slow, error-prone, and frustrating for the team running them. Leaf streamlined the process end-to-end, cutting at least two hours from the cycle with further improvements still in progress. The goal is to reduce the total time by three hours — bringing a six-hour ordeal down to three. For a payroll team that runs this process every single week, that reclaimed time represents a meaningful reduction in operational overhead.
The Solutions - Continued
Service Management: One Integrated Workflow Electric Plus was rolling out new service management software when Leaf stepped in to make it work the way the business actually operates. Time documentation, job workflow, dispatch, and billing had all existed as separate functions, requiring staff to enter the same information multiple times across different systems. Leaf integrated these functions into a single streamlined workflow connected directly to Electric Plus's ERP, eliminating double entry and giving the service team a unified view of each job from dispatch through billing. Tim noted that the service manager described the changes as making monumental differences to how the group operates day to day. "In our payroll group, they've cut at least two hours off a six-hour payroll process. We've literally cut their time in half — and if she was sitting here, she would go on and on about how great things are." — Tim Wicker , President CRM: Relationship Management, Modernized Alongside the service management rollout, Leaf is helping Electric Plus implement a modernized CRM system. With 800 employees across four offices serving clients in multiple industries, having a reliable, centralized system for managing customer relationships is critical to sustaining growth. The CRM is nearing launch and represents another step in Electric Plus's effort to bring its business systems in line with the company's size and ambitions.
Consistent Communication, Real Accountability With six concurrent projects in various stages of development, keeping everything on track requires active communication. Leaf and Electric Plus maintain regular weekly check-ins — even when a given week produces nothing more than a brief confirmation that things are on course. That cadence of consistent, low-friction communication has been instrumental in keeping projects moving and catching issues early. The Working Relationship "The collaboration and communication has been great. We've had standard weekly meetings just to talk about how the projects are going. It's nice to have that communication even if it's only a 10-minute phone call when nothing has changed." — Tim Wicker , President Electric Plus recently made a significant strategic move: becoming an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) company. With 800 employee-owners now sharing in the company's success, the incentive to find efficiencies, eliminate waste, and identify better ways of working has never been stronger. Every improvement in profitability goes directly to the team's bottom line — and their retirement. Tim sees the ESOP transition as a catalyst for the kind of grassroots improvement culture that partnerships like the one with Leaf are built to support. When an employee identifies an inefficiency or suggests a tool that could make the business run better, they're not doing it for management — they're doing it for themselves and their colleagues. With a strong construction market in Indianapolis and growing presence across Indiana, Electric Plus is well-positioned for continued expansion. The operational improvements delivered through the Leaf partnership — and those still in progress — are laying the groundwork for a company that can scale without the friction that once slowed it down. Looking Ahead: ESOP, and a Culture of Ownership
"If Joe Smith decides to find a better way, or helps us find a partner like Leaf that can make us more profitable — it goes straight to their bottom line. It's not just Tim or the man. It's affecting each one of them and their pocketbook at the end of the day and their retirement." — Tim Wicker , President
Conclusion
Electric Plus's partnership with Leaf Software is a study in what happens when a consultative, curiosity-driven technology partner meets a company willing to look honestly at its own inefficiencies. Six projects in, the results are tangible: payroll time cut in half, a manufacturing floor working from digital precision instead of hand sketches, a service team with an integrated workflow, and a CRM on the horizon. But the broader story is about culture and trust. Leaf didn't arrive with answers — they arrived with questions. By taking the time to understand exactly how Electric Plus works, they built solutions that fit the business rather than forcing the business to fit the software. For a company that just became employee-owned, that kind of partnership — where the gains are real, measurable, and felt by everyone — is exactly what growth looks like.
Watch the full Success Story
STREAMLINING OPERATIONS ACROSS SIX PROJECTS: HOW AN 800-PERSON ELECTRICAL CONTRACTOR CUT INEFFICIENCY AND BUILT FOR GROWTH
Client
Electric Plus — Avon, Indiana
Industry
Electrical Contracting (Commercial, Healthcare, Institutional, Educational, Industrial) Tim Wicker, President
Key Contact Company Size
800+ employees, 4 offices across Indiana
Partner
Leaf Software
Engagement
6 active projects: manufacturing, payroll, service management, CRM, and ERP integration
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