Aiden Cooper
September 24, 2025
In Florida’s competitive impact window and storm protection market, time is often the deciding factor between winning and losing a customer. For years, O’Donnell Impact Windows & Storm Protection relied on a two-step process: creating permit-ready plans in E-Tempest, then building separate estimates in Excel.
The approach worked—until it didn’t.
Every project required starting from scratch twice: first generating technical drawings, then moving to Excel to prepare the quote. Even small customer changes—switching a window type, adjusting a color, adding a shutter—meant redoing entire plans and recalculating costs.
The result: estimates often took up to 72 hours to deliver. In an industry where homeowners typically sign with the first contractor to put a polished estimate in their hands, the delay was costly. Sales teams spent countless hours buried in revisions rather than building relationships. Errors crept in. Opportunities slipped away.
The breaking point came during Hurricane Milton. As the storm approached Florida, demand for estimates skyrocketed. O’Donnell’s sales staff were overwhelmed—so much so that some began waking at 2:00 a.m. just to keep up. Even then, the backlog was unmanageable. Plans had to be redrawn, estimates re-entered, and clients left waiting. “It was chaos,” one manager recalled. That moment made clear: the old system wasn’t sustainable.
In 2024, O’Donnell made a decisive move. The company adopted Windsketch, an all-in-one platform where plans and estimates are generated simultaneously. Instead of managing two separate systems, their team could now draw a project, publish it with a click, and instantly produce a precise estimate complete with a visual map.
Revisions—once dreaded—became simple. A salesperson could update colors, adjust specifications, or swap in a new product line without starting over. Within minutes, the client had a new plan and a new estimate, side by side.
The shift was immediate and profound.
Most importantly, the speed changed the dynamic with customers. Studies in the industry show that 78% of homeowners choose the contractor who delivers the first estimate, not necessarily the lowest one. By putting professional plans and numbers in a client’s hands faster than the competition, O’Donnell moved to the front of the line.
One year into using Windsketch, O’Donnell’s numbers tell the story: a 22% increase in closed deals. The only change was the process. By collapsing what once took three days into a matter of minutes, the company gained both efficiency and trust.
For customers, the experience is seamless: a clear plan, an accurate estimate, and confidence that the team behind it can execute. For O’Donnell, it’s meant not just faster sales cycles but stronger relationships and a sharper competitive edge.
O’Donnell’s journey illustrates a broader truth in today’s home improvement market: speed and clarity win trust. Contractors no longer succeed by being the cheapest. They succeed by being the first to deliver professional, accurate, and visually clear estimates.
With Windsketch, O’Donnell Impact Windows & Storm Protection turned a chronic bottleneck into a growth engine—and in doing so, showed how technology can rewrite the rules of the industry.
What about you? Are you ready to leave delays behind and step into the future of window, door, and shutter estimating?
👉 Book your free demo today and unlock your free trial with Windsketch.
Aiden Cooper is a Product Specialist at Windsketch, where he brings his expertise to continuously enhance customer experiences and optimize product implementation processes. With meticulous attention to detail and a passion for innovation, Aiden collaborates closely with the sales and development teams to ensure our solutions meet and exceed user expectations. His proactive approach and ability to translate complex needs into effective functionalities make him an invaluable asset to the team.