History

Joe Dunn founded DunnWell in 2003 with the simple idea that information technology could dramatically improve customer satisfaction for basic facility services. In his years in the industry, Joe had observed that customers never fully understood what they were receiving from the vendors, and the vendors often lacked the information from the customer to do the job right. What if both the customer and the vendor had a system for documenting expectations and results?  A system that held both sides accountable for a quality outcome?

Joe's first hire at DunnWell was the CTO, Brian Smithwick. Of course, he wasn't called the CTO in those days. He was the "computer dude" who had responsibility for building the system of Joe's dreams. Turns out, Brian was a good choice. Prior to his technology career, Brian was in chicken farming. The thing about being in chickens that applied so well to DunnWell was the necessity to be effective and cheap. "It better work right, and it better not cost much," was the refrain that rang in Brian's head as he went to work building ServiceNet - DunnWell's online application for service administration and validation. To accomplish this goal, Brian chose open source technology and cloud computing for the backbone of ServiceNET. Cheap and effective. You can read more about that on his chickentechnology blog.

Joe's timing was pretty good. Everyone was getting comfortable with the idea of applications on the Internet. Everyone was getting connected via smartphones and mobile devices. And digital cameras and video recorders were becoming basic tools of the trade for service vendors. DunnWell could collect facility information from customers and then match the work requirements with a national network of vendors who documented their work via digital photos and mobile phone applications. The positive reaction to ServiceNET from both sides was tremendous.

Customers could finally see and hear and audit the work of the vendors at a scale never before imagined. Monitoring hundreds or even thousands of jobs across hundreds and thousands of locations could now be done from the office via an Internet connection. Vendors benefited too. They could now concentrate on technicians and equipment management instead of the mind numbing details of scheduling, reporting, and invoicing. Both sides got better information for making decisions to optimize facility services. Better information means better decisions. That's the DunnWell Difference.