The Ups and Downs of a Service Contractor’s Software Buying Journey

I’ve watched a decent amount of Oprah in my life, so I’m pretty well trained as an armchair psychologist. Today’s episode is about the ups and downs of committing to a field service management solution.  Friends, you are not alone…

Beware of “All in One” Software – The “All” will be “Small”

The demand for “all in one” software in the service contracting space must be high, because I see lots of vendors claiming to be such.  These vendors proclaim to prospective customers that a single integrated system from a single vendor…
,

Software Advice from Wall Street

There is a saying on Wall Street regarding investment decisions - cut your losses, dump your losers, double down on a winner. The basic philosophy comes from the concept of discounted cash flow analysis. It does not matter how much money you…

Don’t Get Gigged by Software – Measure the GIG

Lots of companies get “stuck" (or gigged) with bad software because they do not know how to measure the quality of the vendor during the sales cycle. One of the best ways to measure a software company prior to buying the application (aside…

Cloud Computing & Service Contractors – A Perfect Match

Service contractors need the cloud, but over and over again we see companies that are confused or unsure about how moving to the cloud will affect the operations of their business. Change is scary.  As human beings, we are wired to avoid change,…

How Good Software "Learns" to Help Service Contractors Over Time.

Operating a business in a vacuum is a handicap.  There's a limit on information you can gather about smart business practices when you are swamped with managing the details of your enterprise.  How helpful would it be to have "partners" in…

The Only Certainties in Life – Death, Taxes…& Software as a Service (SaaS)

- Apologies to Ben Franklin -  .   The actual quote is  "In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."   If Mr. Franklin were alive today,  there's little doubt that he would add a third item to this list -…
, , ,

Looking for Software Innovations? Look for Loosely Coupled Integration

ServiceTrade integrates with any other application you might find necessary to run your business through what we call “loosely coupled integration.” What this basically means is that the two (or 3 or 4 or more) applications DO NOT SHARE…
, , ,

The Rich Get Richer: Why Smart Service Contractors Make Smart Software Decisions

I have noticed an interesting trend with ServiceTrade customers: the large majority are already in the top 10% of the industry regarding both systems capability and typical service contractor metrics – growth, gross margin, net margin –…