With weekend services averaging 26,000 attendees – making it one of the largest-attended churches in the United States – Willow Creek Church is by all definitions a true American non-denominational and multi-generational Evangelical Christian megachurch. Located in the Chicago suburb of South Barrington, Ill., the church’s internal production team, Willow Creek Production, is responsible for technical and creative arts at all Willow Creek Church facilities. To ease that colossal challenge, the production team has standardized Jetbuilt’s cloud-based AV proposal generation software to streamline its department procedures.
Willow Creek Church’s original facility in South Barrington, Ill., includes seating for 7,000 members and features services for a variety of needs for different age and people groups. Since its start in 1975, Willow Creek has expanded to additional locations in Chicago, Crystal Lake, West Chicago, Huntley, Glenview and Lincolnshire. With multiple locations, Willow Creek is serviced by Willow Creek Production to facilitate AV integration in auditoriums, activity centers, offices, meeting rooms and other community spaces.
Estimation and proposal software alternative
“In the past, we would create proposals with simple Google spreadsheets, and while they work great for adding up numbers, it isn’t the best solution for presenting to a committee,” says Dave Cooke, chief engineer for Willow Creek Production. “We would transition our spreadsheets into proposals and PDFs, which became quite tedious. Combining all of the appropriate details consumed a lot of time and energy, until we found Jetbuilt,” Cooke notes. “We began searching for an estimation and proposal software, which is how we stumbled upon Jetbuilt and for the last few months, we’ve used it three to four times a week to generate proposals for the many projects we’re working on. At first glance, Jetbuilt seemed like it was geared toward AV integrators to allow them to more efficiently track projects and sales, but after reading about Florida International University’s internal implementation of Jetbuilt, we felt this software was a good fit.”
With facilities throughout the Chicago area and large audiences, it’s critical for Willow Creek Church to have state-of-the-art technology to provide their audience, both in-person and streaming online, with an unparalleled audio and video experience. Jetbuilt has reportedly enabled Willow Creek Production to generate proposals more efficiently, whether for an auditorium or a personal office, and to manage projects throughout the variety of extensions of the church.
In-house integration services
“Willow Creek Productions is a fairly big department within Willow Creek Church, which is an even larger organization, and it can be tedious to manage projects at different locations. With Jetbuilt, the more we use it, the more efficient we become at the processes and following the work flow. We’ve been able to adapt our internal processes to include creating and tracking proposals with Jetbuilt, which has allowed us create more proposals in the same timeframe it would take to create one proposal,” explains Cooke. “For example, if someone is looking for a TV in their office, I can pop into Jetbuilt and generate a quick proposal with the television, a television mount, HDMI cable, Apple TV and any additional accessories within minutes. With Jetbuilt’s integrated product database, we no longer need to call our sales representative to ask for pricing on various different items, many of which we don’t end up buying. It has simplified our processes and eliminated the need for pulling pricing details from outside sources.”
Jetbuilt’s features include integrated product database, dealer pricing, team collaboration, change orders, purchase orders, QuickBooks integration, and their innovative project overview page. These functions have allowed Willow Creek Production to eliminate the need for archaic spreadsheets. “Jetbuilt has a plethora of features, which gives us far more capabilities than using a spreadsheet,” Cooke said. “We’re using our time better and becoming more efficient at our proposal presentations. Jetbuilt is tremendously helpful when we create larger proposals, which typically have to go through more scrutiny and a rigorous approval process. With Jetbuilt we can create a nice, clean proposal with cut sheets and pricing for different options. Jetbuilt makes it easy to incorporate different options and upgrades into a single proposal.”
Contractor connection
Once proposals are approved through executive departments, Jetbuilt allows users to reach out to contractors with a Request for Proposal within minutes. Users can manage photos, drawings, bid requirements, scope of work, and documents associated with the project, creating and delivering a high-end, comprehensive RFP. The project can also be shared with vendors to allow for straightforward and immediate collaboration. Users can chat as they work together to refine their project – while the original project remains saved. With Jetbuilt’s RFP feature, churches and other organizations can collaborate internally and interact on projects, a feature that is completely unique to Jetbuilt users.
“Being such a large organization, we use many different types of online software for different processes, whether it’s time management, budgeting, etc., and Jetbuilt is definitely one of the nicer software solutions available to us,” Cooke noted. “Jetbuilt has done a great job of designing a tool that compliments many of the solutions we already use, while providing us with professional proposals. Not only is it simple to use, but we can create proposals that are simple to present. The proposals we’ve created with Jetbuilt have allowed us to standardize our approval processes and we’ve even received compliments on our new proposals. I have already recommended Jetbuilt to other churches that face similar challenges and I will continue to recommend Jetbuilt to other churches and houses of worship.”
Within the last year, Jetbuilt has been standardized by a growing number of facilities, including college campuses and churches, to quickly design and budget systems, create proposals and manage projects for self-build projects. “We are pleased to see multiple churches, including Willow Creek, RockHarbor and others implementing Jetbuilt for enhanced proposal generation and project tracking,” says Paul Dexter, founder of Jetbuilt. “Jetbuilt was designed with the integrator in mind, whether it’s a large integration business or an in-house integration department within an organization, to allow users to simplify project management.”
Jetbuilt, an online platform, allows users to collaborate with a team on any project and is compatible with any operating system including Apple and Windows and boasts hundreds of thousands of AV, IT and security products integrated into the system, as well as QuickBooks and Sage Accounting integration. Jetbuilt connects with vendors to provide direct and distributor dealer pricing, custom products and more. More than just a proposal builder, Jetbuilt allows users to work independently or collaborate on a live project, create project scopes, deliver request for proposals to clients, budget systems and request and manage bids from vendors. For more information on Jetbuilt’s proposal and estimation software for churches, see: (visit link).
