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Articles by Adam Stone

Other than my personal life and hobbies I am all about the system integration and A/V industry. I started in 1981 as a “TV delivery specialist” for the Good Guys a west coast CE chain. From there I started my own big dish satellite installation company which morphed into a home theater installation company in the early 90’s. I got out of the installation business in 1996 and went to work for an electrical contractor as project manager of their residential division where I was exposed to the complexities of old school/analog job costing, estimating, blueprints and project scheduling. Being a long time PC geek and creator of some database driven estimating tools I knew that there had to be a better way to deal with these complex projects. During the course of my employment there I was exposed to Visio as an easy to use drawing tool. After spending some time with it I realized that I could hook it up to a database and automate many of the disparate processes I needed to do to accomplish my tasks. That let to the formation of my current company D-Tools which is the leader in the marketplace with thousands of companies using our design, engineering and business management tools. My direct contact information is on the About tab.

Explaining the D-Tools CRM System – Lead Management

09/15/2008 – 2:15 pm | Comments Off362 views

We have a LOT of leads in our system. The current count is 11,192 and I archived any lead that was created before 2006 during the last conversion of CRM systems. Thankfully, Zoho CRM handles leads really well. This is the process we use to separate the forest from the trees and allow our sales team to focus on the most productive leads.

Explaining the D-Tools CRM System

09/11/2008 – 12:29 pm | Comments Off810 views

One of the luxuries of being the boss is that I can choose what projects I want to get to get involved in here at D-Tools.  For the most part all of the core software …

Thoughts on the Recent CEDIA Expo

09/09/2008 – 12:38 pm | Comments | 179 views

We just got back from the CEDIA Expo (Custom Electronic Designer Installer Association) trade show in Denver.  I consider this our “home” show because I launched the D-Tools product line at this same show in …

FREE Visio Tips and Tricks Webinar

08/29/2008 – 12:05 pm | Comments Off224 views
FREE Visio Tips and Tricks Webinar

My good friend and D-Tools Certified Partner Kevin Mikelonis from Process DSG (Dealer Services Group) is giving a free Visio tips and tricks webinar on October 3rd.  I have seen some of the stuff that …

How to Add the New Middle Atlantic Visio Rack Shapes to a D-Tools SI Project

08/28/2008 – 5:25 pm | Comments Off668 views

In this post I went over some of my history with Middle Atlantic Products (MAP) and how we created the first version of RackTools the Visio based equipment rack design software.  If you read that …

The New Middle Atlantic Products Visio Rack Shapes are Here

08/28/2008 – 2:05 pm | Comments Off575 views

I am a big fan of Middle Atlantic Products (MAP) and have been using their products for around 15 years.  When I was a system integrator I used to pour over their catalog looking for …

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