How DFW Fence Contractor Scaled from $3.5M to $6M with ArcSite

About DFW Fence

• Industry: Fencing
• ArcSite customer since: May 2022
• Their Story: DFW Fence Contractor is home of the hand-built fence. Founded 20 years ago, they are a local custom fence contractor dedicated to providing great customer service and products. As former military veterans, they strive to uphold a standard of high-quality fencing to suit their customers' needs. They are a small business committed to better serving their customers. 

The Impact 

• DFW Fence Contractor saw revenue growth from $3.5M to nearly $6M since the implementation of ArcSite
• ArcSite freed up founder Marcus McCrary to work on the business instead of in it, allowing him to have time to focus on marketing, branding, and automation
• They hired a purchasing manager who can now shop materials strategically across multiple distributors using consolidated ArcSite material lists
• They streamlined payroll for subcontract crews because labor is pre-calculated per job
• The company invested in its institutional knowledge, training staff on how to use the ArcSite workflow to grow their own skillsets and estimate independently

How The Business Started

The best opportunities are the serendipitous ones. The city you never imagined yourself in, but now call home. The job you never imagined yourself doing, but grew to love. For Marcus McCrary, owner of DFW Fence Contractor, that’s exactly how his business got off the ground. 

Founded over 25 years ago by McCrary after leaving the U.S. Coast Guard, DFW Fence Contractor has become a family business employing 17 people and running 8-9 crews during peak season. 

What started as a garage door business that accidentally fell into fencing has grown into a $6 million operation serving the Dallas-Fort Worth area, specializing in residential and commercial fencing projects. It's about understanding what Texans truly want: to be friendly with their neighbors while maintaining their privacy.

But as McCrary and his team discovered, growth brings complexity. And without the right systems in place, that complexity can become a bottleneck that prevents further scaling.

The Challenge

Even with decades of experience, DFW Fence Contractor's manual workflow was creating friction that limited their ability to grow.

When a job was sold, the production team had to sit down with graph paper and pencil to draw every single fence drawing by hand. 

"I can remember days back in the past in the spring where we might sell 30 jobs in a week," McCrary recalls. "When you're talking about you had a normal workflow of maybe 10 to 15 jobs sold in a week, and now you're double or tripling that flow, and now you have to go sit down and draw all these drawings, you're talking about Captain Crunch, eat up a lot of time."

Manual redrawing consumed hours of production team time that should have been spent on higher-value work, and communication gaps with customers became prevalent because the team was buried in paperwork. Any good business owner knows that frustrated employees working longer hours during peak season to catch up on administrative tasks does not translate well. 

As McCrary puts it, "All that extra time and frustration leads to frustration with a client. You're tired, you've worked extra."

As DFW Fence Contractor grew, he essentially wished he could duplicate himself, with younger staff needing training and guidance to learn the ropes. 

The Solution

McCrary spent time searching for the right tool, something that could streamline operations without requiring deep CAD expertise. He needed software that could help his team, many of whom were new to the fencing industry, work independently and empower them to be more autonomous. 

That's when he found ArcSite in 2022. "I wanted something where I could simply draw it, and then that would be the price," McCrary explains. "I really needed something that can help me operationally, because if I can fix operations, then I can go fix sales."

ArcSite eliminated the need to manually draw every sold estimate. When a job was accepted, the drawing was already complete and ready for production. The production team could instantly see all the details they needed: how many posts, rails, rolls of chain link, gate specifications, and more. 

"Once that job sells, we have a full list of what we need," McCrary says.

DFW Fence built custom products in ArcSite that allowed them to set their margins once and then trust that every estimate would be accurate. "You set your margin in the program. It calculates your cost, and you have your margin as your profit, and you never lose if your estimators estimate it right."

"Almost six guys in my office can build a model, and it's shareable," McCrary notes. "That knowledge is shareable within your organization."

For customers, the proposals stand out with the detailedness that DFW Fence is known for. Instead of just a quote, DFW Fence delivers a complete package, complete with a professional drawing, photos from the site visit, detailed notes, and financing options, all in one polished proposal.

The Results

By moving from manual graph paper drawings to ArcSite's digital workflow, DFW Fence transformed both their operational efficiency and their bottom line.

The ability to scale operations without proportionally scaling headcount has been transformative. "With better marketing now that we're doing, because we've been freed up because of a program like ArcSite, we're hoping to hit 6 million this year."

Perhaps most importantly, ArcSite gave McCrary something you can't put a price on: time. Time to focus on strategy instead of operations, to build the business he wants to hand off to his son in six years. Or just time to do the things you love: golf, fish, and spend time with family. 

"I think a program like ArcSite, I don't know what the price tag is for a business owner. I'm sure everybody's different. For us, it's kind of priceless."

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