From SOPs to Strategy: How Piktochart Unified Chelan Valley Heating and Cooling Through Visual Communication

Chelan Valley Heating and Cooling, a rapidly growing HVAC company in Washington’s mountain region, successfully implemented Piktochart as their primary visual communication tool. In their third year of operation, they’ve established themselves as the premier contractor for high-end residential projects, serving a growing market of remote workers and vacation homeowners relocating from Seattle.

Under the leadership of CEO Rob Rex, the company has leveraged Piktochart to standardize its training materials, organizational planning, and marketing collateral, leading to improved internal communication and operational efficiency.

Despite Chelan Valley’s growth, they faced an issue; fleshing out their branding assets so their marketing could maintain their growth trajectory. Rob and his team struggled to find the right design tool. As a result, they signed up to several different apps, which resulted in inconsistent branding across materials

Most notably, some team members were using Canva, which presented a distinct problem, as Rex explains: “The issue is that a lot of people use Canva, and so then you create something, and it literally just looks like your logo on the same one that everyone else uses for their logo.”

While Canva has its strengths for its design, the team were unable to unify their design for training materials and documentation, making it difficult to maintain quality standards. They needed a platform that could accommodate team members with varying technical abilities, as not all employees were equally tech-savvy. Additionally, maintaining multiple software subscriptions was creating cost inefficiencies in their operations.

Rex emphasizes the importance of tool standardization: “Instead of paying for 10 different programs, we just pay for one, and we all use the same one. And then we all get trained on the same one, so we’re all really good at it. Because if you’re using four different things, you can’t be great at four things as opposed to just one you’re awesome at.”

Having a previous positive experience with Piktochart, Rex introduced the platform to standardize the company’s visual communication needs. His approach was collaborative rather than directive:

In training and documentation, the company was finally able to create visually enhanced Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), develop supplementary infographics for new employee training, and integrate visual elements into technical documentation. 

“Typically, we have Google Doc with bullet points, but that’s not enough in training new people. So we’ll supplement it with little infographics explaining things on it, showing images of what the work looks like and making it a little bit prettier because there’s only so much you can do with a basic Google system. It’s not very appealing and memorable.”

After onboarding Piktochart into their workflows, Rob and the team could develop a comprehensive organizational chart for 10-year planning and create scalable visuals for monthly strategic meetings 

Now, Chelan Valley Heating and Cooling is actively working to implement more data-driven metrics to measure the impact of their visual communication strategy. And thanks to their improved visual comms, they can set their sights on improving their operations in several key areas: training, marketing, and content production.

Finding Success with Piktochart

The successful implementation of Piktochart can be attributed to several crucial factors. The platform’s accessibility allowed users with varying technical expertise to effectively create visual materials; service technicians and energy auditors could create training documents and SOPs regardless of design experience.

Using only Piktochart also saved Chelan Valley hundreds of dollars in subscription fees to a dozen design tools. 

The quick turnaround time for creating professional-looking materials improved efficiency, while the flexibility in document sizing and formatting met diverse needs. 

Perhaps most importantly, the platform enabled the creation of unique, branded content that helped the company stand out from competitors.

Chelan Valley Heating and Cooling has seen firsthand the value of standardization in maintaining brand consistency across all materials. Quick, in-house content creation versus outsourcing has saved time and resources. Through the power of visual communication, Chelan Valley leveled up their organizational efficiency in training and planning. 

Internally, the company’s organizational planning has been particularly enhanced through Piktochart. As Rex notes, “Our organization chart is massive and we use Piktochart for building it. The branch has so many levels and so many people because it’s not just where we are right now but what we’ll become over ten years.”

Rex notes the positive impact that Piktochart has had on their strategic planning: “The owner of the company really likes it too because we go back to that [organizational chart] all the time in our monthly meetings. We’re always messing with it and saying, ‘Okay, are we on track?'”

As a result of the visual comms, organizational planning processes have become more streamlined and engagement has increased in strategic planning meetings. 

Drawing from his experience implementing Piktochart across the organization, Rex offers valuable insights about overcoming common hesitations in creating visual content. 

He observes that businesses often spend substantial amounts on professional advertising and marketing materials, yet the results aren’t always as impressive as one might expect. This realization has helped his team overcome their initial reluctance to create their own visual content.

“There’s a lot of things you could do really quick, like in less than five minutes on your own with Piktochart,” Rex explains.

Rex emphasizes the value of consistency and reusability in their visual content strategy. For regular events like monthly or weekly meetings, the team has found that they can simply adjust existing templates rather than starting from scratch each time. This approach not only saves time but also helps maintain visual consistency across all company materials.

Piktochart has proven to be an effective solution for Chelan Valley Heating and Cooling’s visual communication needs, supporting their growth from a startup to a leading HVAC provider in their region. 

As Rex summarizes,

The platform’s ease of use, cost-effectiveness, and versatility have made it an integral part of their business operations, supporting everything from day-to-day communication to long-term strategic planning.