Denver Machine Shop

Denver Machine Shop in Henderson, CO does heavy industrial repair, as well as being a prototype machine shop, and they have been family owned since Fred White bought his partner out in 1916. Denver Machine Shop is a generational business in terms of its ownership, but also its employees. As Scott White, President, said, “Being a generational business is not just our family, but it’s the families of all of the employees that have past knowledge of all we do from one to the next.” There are several father-son teams in their shop, and they love having that continuity in the office and on the shop floor.

The current owners of Denver Machine Shop are Scott and Eric White, who are identical twin brothers and Fred White’s great-grandchildren. Scott and Eric bought Denver Machine Shop from their parents in 2002 with the aim of making the shop grow. They were very successful in that. In 2001, the shop made $1 million in revenue and they took that up to $7 million in revenue in 2020 with Denver Machine Shop and Kendo Inc., a business they bought in 2016. However, they didn’t only grow that revenue by buying another shop.

Back in 2007, Scott and Eric realized that they wanted their shop to grow and that they would not be able to do that with the paper system they were using to track things around the shop. Scott was also worried they were missing things, like knowing how long a job actually took to run. Since it was hard to get all of their information in one place, it was hard to know if they were looking at complete and accurate information on everything from billing to the cost of a job. So, they decided to get an ERP system.

They knew having all of their information in a digital database would make it easier to find things than having a paper system. They would also be able to quickly check on everything happening in the shop. If your shop is small enough, then everyone knows everything that’s going on, but once you reach a certain size, that is not the case anymore. For example, occasionally it happens that Denver Machine Shop will ship a job that they have not billed. In the past, they might never have known. However, now that they have E2 SHOP, once a week Scott can run a report to compare shipped vs. billed and make sure there are not any problems.

E2 SHOP has also helped their shop grow. As Scott said, “E2 helped us sustain 10% year over year growth over the period of a decade.” Those are the kinds of numbers a shop loves to see. And, as their shop grew, they were able to sustain that growth with the organization and tracking that E2 SHOP offered. As Scott said, “I believe we’re more accurate in our job costing and in capturing the actual time and materials that go into a job to allow us to bill for it appropriately.” All these things have helped their shop to be the best it can be without spending too much time on paperwork.

A few years ago, Scott and Eric updated their E2 SHOP software to the hosted version on the cloud. With the impact of COVID-19, they are happy they took the time to upgrade back then. As Scott said, “I’m glad we made those investments several years ago and got up to speed because during this time it’d be pretty hard to run the business using your own servers.” Now, they can have people easily working from home.

When asked about E2 SHOP on the cloud, Scott replied, “It’s the way to go.” He was a little hesitant about changing over to a SaaS (Software as a Service) model, but, as he said, “The benefit of being on the web certainly overrides that. Right now, I’ve got people working from home, and they run E2 from home. They can just get on their computer and do it.” Despite the pandemic, Denver Machine is keeping the shop running and its employees safe.

From helping them reach their goals, to finding the source of problems, to solving problems before they even happen, Scott White is so glad they bought E2 SHOP. The software has helped support their shop and, as Scott said, “I know we can’t live without it now.”

E2 SHOP has helped Denver Machine Shop grow over the years, but Scott continues to look ahead. He wants their shop to keep improving. As he said, “Moving forward, E2 allows us the record-keeping and the ability to see things real-time so that we can make faster decisions and better decisions concerning the direction of the company. …I would like to try to take some of the reports that are in E2 and center my KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) around the reports that are valuable to us and help steer the ship. It’s a very, very powerful tool to help you to manage your business better.” Denver Machine Shop is on course to weather what comes ahead and to grow in future years, and E2 SHOP will be there to help make that happen.