About Atlas
About Atlas
AMG is the product of a team of retail corporate project/program managers repeatedly dealing
with the ineptitude of service providers around the nation. AMG founders set down to
brainstorm all of the repeat problems pervasive throughout the industry and sought after a more
intelligent approach that could also be the most economical approach. Through the years AMG
has defined and perfected this system. Below are the most impactful issues that we have
circumvented followed by the solution.
Lack of Immediacy.
We found that most service providers (at least top level management) had a desire
to be responsive and handle work orders as quickly as we desired. The
hindrance was that these providers were most always utilizing subcontractors and
maintained little control over the subcontractors in their network. Control was
missing over the subcontractors schedule as well as over pricing.
Immediacy Solution.
We set up a core group of skilled structural craftsmen / disaster recovery specialists /
plumbers / electricians / handypersons in key cities in the major metro regions. These
are employees that answer directly to our headquarters based in Charlotte, NC.
AMG can handle the vast majority of work orders via this team because our control
allows us to absorb travel time to rural areas that most subcontractors would not for
small scope repairs while still being able to complete large scopes in a quick time frame.
This led to the first word of our motto seen above "Immediate".
Lack of Affordability.
Price gouging from service providers was an epedemic that we all began to realize
we had come to expect and believe was the only option. This cost incurred was
directly connected to the lack of control that also caused a lack of responsiveness.
We also noticed that each time we would deny overpriced proposals it would
drastically delay the projects completion deadlines because service providers
would have to negotiate subcontractors if they were lucky or resource a whole new
subcontractor which would take even longer and often be just as expensive with the
service providers mark-up.
Another problematic issue for most service providers has to do with their
organizational configuration. The standard practice is to consolidate admin and
project managers into one office and oversee projects remotely. This creates a
large overhead that has to be paid for from company gross profit which inevitably
leads to high prices invoiced to the retailer.
Affordability Solution
Self performing the vast majority of projects affords us the opportunity to price
our repairs at fair market value for services rendered without any mark-up! For
repairs that necessitate a specialist not employeed by AMG and for the "one-offs"
that may require a subcontractor, AMG has constructed a contractually obligatory
price agreement with pre-qualified contractors. This provides us with as much
control as possible over sovereign entities. For transparencies sake, AMG
incorporates a 20% mark-up on subcontracted projects. Due to our price
agreements the retailers still see an overall 30% average decrease in pricing as our
research showed that the average direct-to-retail vendors pricing was at a gross
profit of 50%. This was mainly due to vendors subcontracting to other service
providers who subcontracted the work again. This would happen routinely and
often times include 3 to 4 levels of mark-ups. AMG will only subcontract as a last
resort and only subcontract to companies who are self-performing to avoid multiple
tiers of providers.
The second issue involving increased overhead that inflates pricing has a simple and
obvious solution. AMG project managers work from home which eliminates
overhead. There are a percentage of project managers who work from a small
corporate office with the admin to handle special projects. This advent led to the
second term of our motto above "Affordable".
Lack of Quality
One of the most frustrating and costly problems we all encountered on a regular
basis were quality control issues. A high percentage of these were due to, yet
again, service providers who were subcontracting and possessed little control over
them. Getting the vendors back onsite for quality assurance was difficult and time
consuming at best. The service providers were often unable to get the contractors
who performed the work to correct the issues or worse yet, they lacked the
abilities to do so properly.
Quality Solution.
The solution again is to self-perform as much as possible. At the heart of each
solution above is to maintain control. Any time you contract out the provider is
literally contracting out control of the project. This consistently lead to poor
performance whether by not being responsive, price gouging, or unsatisfactory
repairs. AMG has a self-contained Quality Control department that oversees that
each project is handled with professionalism and utilizes the highest level of quality
measures. Finally, we have the last word of our motto "Quality".
Contact Us Today!
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Office: 888.552.1751
Fax: 704.412.3312
Email: service@atlasmaintgroup.com