As commercial service contractor, you must manage a perpetually fluctuating volume of work orders. A slow week is followed by a weekend full of repair requests. A big project lands on your plate, spreading your resources thin. A heat wave or polar blast initiates an early start to your busy season.
Meeting the demands of busy spikes and seasons can put a strain on your techs—hurting retention and morale. But with labor shortages and margins in mind, growing your team to meet temporary demand is not realistic.
What makes more sense is to expand your existing team’s capacity with a technology solution that automates and simplifies many of their tasks. Increasing the productivity of your current team not only allows room for more business, it also improves the quality of your service.
In this article, we’ll focus on freeing your most valuable resource—your technicians—from the time traps of busy work so they have more time and energy to do the job they’re specially trained to do.
Freeing Your Techs From Busy Work
By allowing techs more time for their primary responsibilities, you can improve overall efficiency and satisfaction for both techs and customers. Some benefits of improved technician efficiency include:
Increased Productivity
When technicians spend less time on administrative tasks, they have more time to focus on maintenance, installs, and repair work. This leads to faster completion of jobs, resulting in improved productivity for the business.
Improved Employee Satisfaction
Technicians often get into the field because they enjoy hands-on work and problem-solving. By reducing tedious admin work, techs are able to spend more time doing what they love and are trained to do. This equals improved employee satisfaction and reduced turnover rates.
Enhanced Customer Experience
Removing the burden of busy work enables techs to perform maintenance, repairs, and inspections more quickly and effectively. This leads to improved customer satisfaction and increased customer loyalty, winning you repeat business and positive referrals.
Here are some key ways to give techs back their time.
Less Time Behind the Wheel
The busy work: Technicians are spending a large portion of their days sitting in traffic or driving long routes created by reactive and inefficient scheduling.
Solution: Technology-assisted scheduling that prioritizes convenient routes and fewer miles can reduce windshield time and give techs back a significant chunk of their day.
Fewer Phone Calls
The busy work: Without access to real-time work order changes, location details, equipment history, and other customer data, your techs find themselves consistently dialing the office in search of the information they need.
Solution: Mobile access to real-time customer data gives techs the information they need without disrupting their task list to call the office. Bonus: A software solution that centralizes real-time data ensures your office staff and technicians have the same, up-to-date information at all times.
Fewer (and Easier) Administrative Tasks
The busy work: Technicians are spending too much time on administrative tasks, like creating invoices and quotes, that could be assigned to the office. Additionally, the manual processes of time tracking and keeping paper records are inefficient and burdensome.
Solution: Two solutions here. One: Narrow you techs’ responsibilities to their incredibly valuable skilled work, assigning administrative tasks to your office. And two: use a commercial field service application that includes time-tracking software for contractors, digitizes paperwork, automates time tracking, and allows techs to easily upload supporting media saves time and eliminates frustration in your tech’s day. These two things will give your techs more time to do their best work, find more repair opportunities, and service more facilities in the day.
Less Time at the Office
The busy work: Dispatching from the office and returning there at the end of the day is wasting your tech’s time and reducing the number of jobs they can complete.
Solution: Enabling your techs to dispatch from their homes and submit work order paperwork electronically eliminates the need for frequent office visits, improves routes, and gives your team back time to do more—and better—work. It also allows the office to close out work orders as soon as they’re completed rather than having to wait for techs to deliver paperwork to the office.
Giving Busy Work the Boot With the Right Technology
The benefits of optimizing workflows for your technicians are many. Better employee satisfaction and retention; more efficiency in the field; better customer service; and smoother overall operations in your business. Finding the right tool(s) and leaning on technology for improved efficiency is essential.
ServiceTrade is a premier platform built specifically for commercial service contractors. Learn how our platform can help you give techs (and your office staff) back their days by booking a demo.
Navigating the Skilled Labor Shortage: Balancing Supply and Demand
For mechanical contractors, the busy season is a great opportunity to show customers that they can rely on you, but the increased workload creates a lot of stress for employees and customers, especially during a skilled labor shortage. Here we explore some innovative ways to balance the stress between supply and demand and optimize workflows for technician productivity during the busy season and beyond.
The Magnitude & Implications of the Skilled Labor Shortage:
There is currently a 40% shortage of skilled technicians in the workforce. Moreover, the industry experiences an 8% net loss of technicians each year. The growing gap between labor supply and service demand is only expected to worsen over time for mechanical contractors. To make matters worse, demand for mechanical service calls increases by an average of 30% during the summer months according to the usage data in ServiceTrade.
There’s a difficult balancing act that contractors face. On one hand, they can hire more technicians to meet the demand during the busy season, but this may result in excess labor and higher operating costs during the slower periods. On the other hand, hiring just enough technicians to handle the baseline demand may lead to unhappy customers and churn during peak seasons when response times are crucial. So, how can contractors find a balance?
1. Update how you prioritize service calls
Traditionally, mechanical contractors prioritize service calls based on urgency, revenue, and margin. However, introducing a new metric called “Gross Profit per Labor Hour” and creating a customer scorecard can revolutionize this approach.
Gross profit per labor hour:
Karim Nice, owner of BlueHat Mechanical, introduced us to this powerful metric. Gross Profit per Labor Hour enables contractors to identify customers who generate more profit with the same amount of labor, allowing them to prioritize work that maximizes their earnings. Without it, contractors may not realize that the top-grossing customer may have significantly lower gross profit for labor hour compared to a slightly smaller customer.
Creating a customer score:
To consolidate the metrics and prioritize customers effectively, contractors can create a customer score. Some key metrics to include: total revenue, margin, gross profit per labor hour, average work order total, and quote acceptance rate. By assigning points based on different ranges within each metric, a weighted score is obtained. This score enables contractors to sort their customer list and identify the customers who bring the most value to their business. Dispatchers can use this score to determine priority order, giving faster service to high-scoring customers.
By using metrics like gross profit for labor hour and creating a customer scorecard, contractors gain a deeper understanding of which customers drive the most value for their business, so they can prioritize their work accordingly.
2. Stop wasting technicians’ time
Another valuable tip is to stop wasting technicians’ time on unnecessary tasks. Reallocating administrative tasks to other team members protects technicians’ productivity, even beyond the busy season. So, some do’s and don’ts:
❌ Don’t require techs to hunt for work order details.
Set technicians up for success by equipping them with the tools they need to get the job done as efficiently as possible. This includes work order details, equipment details, service history, and any additional instructions or access codes. By doing so, you eliminate the need for them to spend valuable time contacting others for information.
❌ Don’t have techs create quotes and invoices.
Unless absolutely necessary, refrain from having technicians create quotes and invoices in the field. Leverage tools like mechanical estimating software to streamline the quoting process in the office, allowing your technicians to focus on their core expertise. While you may bill for those labor hours, it’s more efficient to delegate these administrative responsibilities to other team members, especially when there is a technician shortage. You can still bill for those hours, just don’t have your technicians doing it.
❌ Don’t have techs run to the parts house.
Similar as above, it’s vital to optimize the utilization of your highly skilled and expensive technicians to do the skills they’re trained to do, especially given the ongoing labor shortage. So instead, allocate these tasks like running to the parts house to junior or non-technical staff. You can still bill for those hours as you would normally.
✅ Do have techs document equipment issues.
Encourage technicians to capture every repair opportunity and have them do it in a way that makes it easy for the office to generate accurate quotes and determine if repairs can be deferred until the busy season subsides. Documenting repairs creates future revenue opportunities for your business.
A commercial service platform like ServiceTrade helps mechanical contractors set their technicians up for success.
3. Keep projects agile and on budget
K & R Mechanical, a ServiceTrade mechanical customer, excels at keeping projects on budget and on time. A tip their Vice President of Service, James Mugabero, recommends is to hold daily project review meetings where you review financial reports and check operational statuses.
Review real-time financial reports daily.
Review the financials of every project to see if you are projected to be over or under budget based on where each project is from the expected completion. Comparing projects side-by-side gives insight into if there are project(s) that you can reallocate resources from to a project that is over budget or behind schedule. Looking further into each project’s performance gives insight into what is affecting the budget.
Hold team stand-ups each day.
During the daily project review meeting, check the performance of projects from the previous day, so you can make decisions for today. You may discover the opportunity to relocate technician resources to service calls. The operational review ensures you never lose track of a project and maintain technician efficiency.
To keep projects on budget during busy seasons, implement a daily project review meeting where you analyze real-time financials and conduct operational review. Leveraging mechanical project management software can streamline this process, providing a centralized platform for tracking project progress, financials, and resource allocation in real time. These practices enable better resource allocation, risk assessment, and decision-making, ensuring projects stay on track and meet financial targets.
The 3 big takeaways to start implementing now:
Prioritize work from a complete view of a customer’s value.
Delegate tasks like quoting and invoicing to the office.
Review projects daily to plan resource deployment and protect your profit margin.
How ServiceTrade Helps You Streamline Operations and Speed Up Cash Flow
Keeping cash flow steady is crucial to meeting expenses, investing in growth, and maintaining operational stability. However, achieving a fast, efficient invoicing cycle can be a challenge when processes are manual or disconnected. ServiceTrade tackles these issues head-on, offering solutions that help contractors streamline operations and speed up cash flow. Here’s how ServiceTrade enables service contractors to move from job completion to cash in hand, faster than ever.
1. Utilize Mobile Tools to Capture Job Details in Real Time
One of the biggest sources of invoicing delays is missing information, requiring back-and-forth communication between technicians in the field and office staff. ServiceTrade’s mobile application enables technicians to capture and submit job details—photos, videos, parts and labor—in real time, reducing gaps in documentation and allowing the office to invoice as soon as the job is complete — without waiting for paperwork to come back from the field days or weeks later.
Benefits:
Improve field-to-office communication: Real-time data capture keeps the office informed, allowing for faster invoicing.
Minimize follow-up: Technicians submit complete job information before leaving the site, preventing delays due to missing or incomplete details.
Boost productivity: Office staff spend less time tracking down job details, freeing them up for other essential tasks.
2. Streamline Invoicing to Accelerate Payments
Invoicing quickly and accurately is key to getting paid on time, but manually building invoices can lead to delays, errors, and missed revenue. With ServiceTrade, contractors can streamline their invoicing process, ensuring that invoices can be generated immediately upon job completion. Technicians submit parts and labor details directly from the field, providing the office with everything needed to send an accurate, timely invoice—often within hours of completing a job.
Benefits:
Eliminate delays: Automated invoicing reduces the lag between job completion and invoicing, improving cash flow.
Increase accuracy: Digitally documented job details and automated pricing ensure that invoices are accurate, reducing the likelihood of disputes or delays.
Reduce administrative burden: Office staff spend less time chasing down job details, allowing them to focus on revenue-generating activities.
3. Use Pricing Contracts for Consistent, Error-Free Billing
For contractors, invoicing can be a complex process, especially when rates vary by job type, technician, or customer contract. ServiceTrade’s platform enables contractors to standardize pricing, ensuring consistency across invoices and reducing the chances of billing errors. With a reliable system that applies contract-based pricing automatically, invoices are sent out faster and with greater accuracy.
Benefits:
Speed up invoicing: Contract pricing eliminates the need to calculate rates manually, reducing the time from job completion to invoicing.
Reduce errors: Contract pricing minimizes the risk of incorrect rates or charges, preventing costly billing disputes.
Build customer trust: Consistently accurate invoices show clients that your business operates efficiently and transparently.
4. Pre-Bill for Recurring Services to Improve Cash Flow Consistency
For service contractors with recurring contracts, ServiceTrade enables pre-billing—billing clients for routine maintenance and inspections before the service is completed. By sending invoices in advance, contractors can maintain steady cash flow even when field activity is lower, such as during off-peak seasons. This approach also reduces time spent invoicing after each visit, simplifying billing for recurring clients.
Benefits:
Steady cash flow: Pre-billing ensures a consistent income stream, helping contractors manage expenses even during slow periods.
Simplify recurring invoicing: Automated pre-billing reduces the workload for office staff and provides clients with predictable billing.
Reduce late payments: By invoicing in advance, contractors can encourage clients to pay upfront or on time, minimizing cash flow disruptions.
5. Enhance Quoting for Faster Approval and Cash Flow
ServiceTrade’s streamlined quoting makes it easy to generate accurate, detailed quotes for additional repairs or pull-through work identified during a job. This speeds up the quote approval process, allowing contractors to capture and complete more revenue-generating work without delay. By quoting faster, contractors increase the chances of immediate job approval and completion, enabling quicker invoicing and faster cash flow.
Benefits:
Increase revenue opportunities: Faster quotes enable contractors to capture more repair work from existing clients.
Accelerate the cash cycle: Rapid quote approvals lead to faster job completion and invoicing.
Improve client satisfaction: Detailed, accurate quotes help clients make informed decisions quickly, enhancing the customer experience.
6. Provide Customers with Easy, Digital Payment Options
For faster cash flow, ServiceTrade offers digital payment solutions that allow clients to pay invoices online as soon as they’re received. By making payments convenient and accessible, contractors can reduce delays caused by waiting for checks or bank transfers. Digital payments not only speed up cash flow but also simplify financial tracking, making it easier to monitor accounts and manage collections.
Benefits:
Accelerate payments: Digital payment options reduce payment processing times, getting cash in hand faster.
Improve cash flow visibility: Track payment status in real time, allowing better financial planning and management.
Reduce time spent on collections: Faster payments mean fewer outstanding invoices, reducing the burden of collections.
7. Use Data and Analytics to Monitor Cash Flow and Adjust Operations
ServiceTrade provides robust reporting and analytics, giving contractors visibility into key metrics that impact cash flow, such as invoicing time, average payment speed, and accounts receivable. By tracking these metrics, contractors can identify cash flow bottlenecks, streamline collections processes, and make data-driven adjustments to improve overall financial health.
Benefits:
Identify bottlenecks: Analytics reveal where delays occur, enabling targeted improvements in the invoicing cycle.
Make data-driven decisions: Use cash flow data to adjust invoicing practices, set payment terms, and streamline collections.
Enhance financial stability: Monitoring cash flow consistently allows contractors to plan accurately and avoid cash shortages.
Ready to Speed Up Cash Flow with ServiceTrade’s Invoicing Solutions?
ServiceTrade empowers contractors to streamline operations and accelerate cash flow through faster invoicing, real-time data capture, set pricing, and digital payment options. By improving every step of the invoicing process, ServiceTrade helps contractors maintain consistent cash flow, improve customer satisfaction, and focus on strategic growth.Ready to transform your cash flow process? Book a demo with ServiceTrade to see how the platform can help you speed up invoicing and keep your operations running smoothly.
6 Modern, Must-Have Scheduling and Dispatch Capabilities
In a commercial service contracting business, efficiency isn’t just a goal—it’s a necessity. You know firsthand how quickly missed appointments, overloaded schedules, and disorganized dispatching can erode customer trust and cut into profits. These problems don’t just cause headaches; they impact your bottom line and your company’s reputation.
But there’s a solution. With the right scheduling and dispatching capabilities, you can eliminate inefficiencies, improve customer satisfaction, and boost your team’s productivity. Below are six impactful capabilities that can help you streamline your operations and drive better results.
1. Technician Job Matching
When dispatchers lack detailed information about each technician’s skills, certifications, and availability, they have to assign jobs based on guesswork or limited information, leading to mismatches between tasks and technician capabilities. This results in errors, rework, slower job completion times, and frustrated technicians—ultimately hindering productivity and service quality.
With access to detailed profiles that include each technician’s specific skills, certifications, and availability, your schedulers and dispatchers can assign jobs more accurately, ensuring that the right technician is matched with the right task. By optimizing these assignments, you’ll reduce the likelihood of errors and rework, leading to faster job completion times and higher job satisfaction among your techs. The result is a more productive workforce, improved service delivery, and a more efficient overall operation.
ServiceTrade’s schedule and dispatch board provides comprehensive technician profiles, enabling dispatchers to assign jobs based on each technician’s skills, certifications, and availability.
2. Drag-and-Drop Scheduling
Traditional scheduling methods can be rigid and time-consuming, especially when changes are needed. Without an easy way to adjust schedules, your team can waste time on administrative tasks rather than focusing on service delivery.
Drag-and-drop scheduling allows dispatchers to quickly and easily adjust job assignments in real-time, accommodating changes or emergencies. This flexibility improves operational agility, reduces downtime, and ensures that resources are allocated efficiently, leading to better service outcomes and higher productivity.
ServiceTrade’s drag-and-drop scheduling feature simplifies the process of adjusting schedules, allowing dispatchers to quickly reallocate resources and respond to emergencies.
3. Customizable Queue for Prioritizing Jobs
Dispatchers are juggling multiple tasks—assigning technicians, managing schedules, and tracking job statuses. With outdated tools that require manual input and screen-switching, high-priority jobs can easily get lost in the shuffle, leading to delays and unsatisfied customers.
With the introduction of an interactive queue, dispatching becomes a more streamlined and efficient process. Dispatchers can easily prioritize jobs in the queue, ensuring that urgent or complex tasks are always at the forefront. This prioritization reduces the risk of critical jobs being overlooked and allows for more efficient management of the dispatch process. The result is improved operational efficiency and higher customer satisfaction, as urgent needs are addressed promptly and accurately.
ServiceTrade’s schedule and dispatch board includes an interactive queue that allows dispatchers to organize tasks based on urgency and importance.
4. Multiple Timeline Views
Without a clear overview of technician workloads across different timeframes, schedulers face challenges in optimizing resources, balancing technician schedules, and ensuring that all jobs were completed on time. This lack of flexibility and visibility often resulted in underutilized technicians, overbooked schedules, and missed opportunities to maximize productivity.
The introduction of multiple timelines greatly improves how schedulers manage and optimize schedules. Whether you need to make precise, hour-by-hour adjustments or plan weeks in advance, these views offer the flexibility and insight necessary to enhance scheduling efficiency and technician utilization.
Day View: Perfect for making detailed, day-by-day or hour-by-hour adjustments.
Week View: This broader perspective helps schedulers optimize workloads over several days.
Month View: Essential for long-term planning and technician capacity management.
This simple yet powerful approach leads to more balanced workloads, higher productivity, and more efficient use of technician time, ultimately improving service delivery and customer satisfaction.
ServiceTrade’s dispatch & schedule experience includes day, week, and month views, along with a specialized capacity planning tool within the month vew.
5. Real-Time Scheduling Updates for Technicians
Keeping technicians informed about schedule changes can be a cumbersome and time-consuming task. Dispatchers have to rely on phone calls or manual messages to update technicians, leading to delays, miscommunication, and inefficiencies. This outdated process makes it difficult for technicians to stay on top of their schedules, resulting in missed appointments, wasted time, and disruptions to their day.
With real-time updates, schedule changes are communicated instantly and accurately, eliminating the need for time-consuming phone calls and manual updates. Technicians receive up-to-date information about any changes to their assignments, allowing them to adjust their plans quickly and efficiently. This reduces the likelihood of missed appointments and enables them to start their day directly from home if needed. Techs can focus on delivering excellent service without the distraction of last-minute scheduling surprises.
The ServiceTrade app keeps your techs informed about any schedule changes in real time. Techs receive updates instantly, helping them manage their day more effectively and enabling a smoother, more responsive operation.
6. Real-Time Job Status and Technician Location Tracking for the Office
Not only do techs need real-time info from your office, your office needs real-time information from the field. Without real-time updates, dispatchers face challenges in knowing the exact status of ongoing jobs, the current locations of technicians, or the overall workload. This lack of visibility leads to inefficient job assignments, increased idle time, and missed opportunities to optimize technician routes. As a result, operations are frequently disrupted, leading to delays, unnecessary travel, and reduced overall productivity.
With access to real-time job status updates and location tracking, dispatchers can make informed decisions quickly and efficiently. They can see exactly where technicians are located, how jobs are progressing, and what the current workload looks like. Real-time visibility allows your office team to reassign tasks on the fly, optimize routes, and ensure that every technician is working at full capacity. The result is a significant reduction in idle time, minimized unnecessary travel, and improved operational efficiency.
ServiceTrade’s dispatch board provides real-time updates on technician locations, job status, and workloads.
Learn More about ServiceTrade’s New Scheduling and Dispatching Board
ServiceTrade’s innovative scheduling and dispatching experience is custom built for commercial service contractors with profitability, efficiency, and technician happiness in mind. See how it, along with ServiceTrade’s many other capabilities, can transform your business.
Simplified, Smarter Scheduling: Meet ServiceTrade’s New Dispatch & Schedule Experience
Efficient scheduling and dispatching are crucial for maximizing technician productivity and enabling your front office to handle more work with less headache. Despite your best efforts, work can still slip through the cracks, techs can have unnecessary windshield time, and opportunities can be missed. To address these challenges and based on extensive feedback from customers, ServiceTrade has completely re-imagined scheduling and dispatching for commercial contractors like you.
Use the new scheduler and dispatcher today! Here’s why you should care:
New Experiences
The Dispatch Board
The new Dispatch Board is designed to help you manage technician schedules more effectively and prioritize the most important work. What else makes it so great? Well, it’s specifically designed for commercial contractors, so it’s tailored for the way you’re used to managing your techs and customers, enabling you to solve problems in new ways that matter to you.
One of the key improvements is the Queue. This working area enables you to manage jobs you’re actively coordinating. By dragging jobs into the queue, you can prioritize and organize work without cluttering the schedule. This is particularly useful when handling multiple urgent service requests. As technicians become available, you can assign these queued jobs, so that nothing important falls through the cracks.
Using the new Available Jobs drawer, it’s easy to find and schedule the highest value and most profitable work with advanced filters to identify jobs by type, service line, geographical region or office, and more. By proactively optimizing and filling your schedule with the jobs that are most important and valuable to your business, you can prevent urgent tasks from overshadowing more important work.
The Map Scheduler
The Map Scheduler offers a geographic view of your operations, making it easier to assign jobs based on location. This visual interface not only shows where each technician is but also displays unscheduled work, allowing you to optimize routes to include additional tasks and minimize travel time. For instance, when a technician finishes a job early, you can use the map to find any nearby unassigned jobs and quickly reassign them.
In addition to the interactive map, the Map Scheduler includes improved search and filter capabilities, similar to the Dispatch Board, that allow you to customize which jobs are visible so that you can prioritize and schedule the most profitable work first.
Multiple Timeline Views
The new Dispatch & Schedule experience includes multiple timeline views to help you see and manage your schedule in a number of useful ways.
Day View: Ideal for making day-by-day or hour-by-hour adjustments. This view is for more precise scheduling and helps you manage any overlapping jobs.
Week View: This view is perfect for optimizing workloads over several days. This broader overview helps balance technician schedules.
Month View: Best for long-term and tech capacity planning. This view provides an overall picture of your schedule, helping you plan in advance and understand how well utilized your technicians are.
For enterprise customers, Capacity Planning is available within the Month View, helping you monitor technician utilization for the month. This tool is essential for identifying under-utilized technicians and balancing workloads to maximize productivity. By reviewing the Tech Capacity View, you can ensure that all technicians are effectively scheduled and downtime is limited.
Other Improvements
The ability to assign colors to technician swimlanes, block off their unavailability times, and adjust what you see by reordering offices and technicians helps you make better decisions and view the schedule in a way that makes the most sense.
5 things you can do with the new Dispatch & Schedule experience:
Prioritize urgent jobs: Use the Job Queue to keep track of and assign urgent service requests as soon as technicians are available.
Optimize technician routes: The Map Scheduler shows you the best routes for your technicians, minimizing travel time and maximizing productivity.
Schedule high-value work: Advanced filters in the Available Jobs drawer help you find and prioritize the most profitable jobs.
Plan long-term: Use the Month View to see a big picture of your schedule and ensure all technicians are fully utilized.
Customize your view: Tailor the Dispatch Board to your needs by assigning colors to technician swimlanes and reordering how offices and technicians are displayed.
From the customer
“ServiceTrade’s new dispatch board is fast, easy to use, and helps our coordinators make better dispatching decisions quicker than ever.”
— Mike Nevels, Service Coordinator, Jayhawk Fire Sprinkler
Schedule Smarter
See how the new Dispatch & Schedule experience simplifies the way your dispatchers assign and schedule technicians and jobs. These enhancements provide the tools you need to make smarter scheduling decisions, reduce travel time, and keep your technicians on track.
Start using the new Dispatch & Schedule experience today and see how it can improve your scheduling in July! Explore the new experience by requesting a demo today. For detailed information, see the new Scheduling Jobs with Dispatch and Schedule help center article.
Want to see more?
Get in touch with our software specialists to see more about how you can use our new dispatch and scheduling tools.
Maximizing Technician Productivity: A Game-Changer for Commercial Service Contractors
In today’s fast-paced commercial service industry, every minute counts. For mechanical and fire contractors, downtime isn’t just an inconvenience, it’s a drain on profitability. ServiceTrade understands the challenges contractors face, which is why our latest webinar focused on revolutionizing technician productivity.
Slash Tech Downtime: Working Faster, Smarter, and More Profitably
At ServiceTrade, we believe in empowering contractors to streamline their operations and maximize their profits. In our recent webinar, we delved into the theme of slashing tech downtime. The goal? To equip service managers and technicians with the tools and strategies they need to work more efficiently, reduce callbacks, and increase customer satisfaction.
What We Covered:
Optimized Dispatching: Get the right technicians to the right jobs at the right time with the right parts, minimizing customer turnaways and excess drive times.
Smarter Coordination: Enable coordinators to make informed dispatching decisions faster, ensuring efficient scheduling and resource allocation.
Enhanced Customer Communication: Easily remind customers about upcoming appointments, keeping them informed and engaged.
Empowered Technicians: Equip technicians with the tools and information they need to work faster and more effectively, reducing callbacks and warranty costs.
Improved Visibility: Gain real-time visibility into your team’s performance, ensuring outstanding work every step of the way.
Efficient Job Closure: Close out jobs faster and ensure work is performed to spec with a single interface that summarizes all necessary information.
Transforming from On-Demand to In-Demand Contractors
The big picture story is clear: Repeat visits kill tech productivity. In today’s skilled labor shortage, wasting technician time is a luxury no contractor can afford. By implementing technology and processes that eliminate repeat visits, contractors can unlock productivity, increase revenue per technician, and reduce administrative costs.
Hear from Our Success Story: Guardian Fire Protection
Our webinar featured Scott Agge, CEO of Guardian Fire Protection, who shared how ServiceTrade helped transform their operations. You can read more about Guardian’s success story here.
Get Started Today
For owners, service managers, and ServiceTrade admins, maximizing technician productivity isn’t just a goal—it’s a necessity. If you’re ready to accelerate deals, convert to SQOs, and revolutionize your business, ServiceTrade is here to help.
Advanced Asset Management: Transforming Contractor Operations for Maximum Efficiency
For commercial mechanical and fire contractors, managing building equipment and assets effectively is crucial for staying ahead in a competitive market. Traditional methods of asset tracking, often limited to basic equipment lists, fall short in addressing the complex needs of modern contracting businesses. What’s needed is a more intelligent, comprehensive approach to asset management – one that not only tracks but also predicts, informs, and guides every aspect of your operations.
Elevating Technician Productivity: From Reactive to Predictive Maintenance
The shift from reactive to predictive maintenance is a game changer for technicians. With access to detailed asset history and AI-driven predictive insights, technicians can anticipate potential issues before they escalate. This foresight allows for better preparation, more accurate diagnoses, and quicker, more efficient repairs. The result is a significant reduction in time spent on each job, fewer callbacks, and an enhanced ability to manage a persistent skilled labor shortage.
Streamlining Office Operations: Mitigating Risks and Enhancing Decision-Making
For the office team, advanced asset management capabilties offer a powerful tool for risk mitigation and strategic asset management. By having a granular view of each piece of equipment’s history, your team can make smarter, more informed decisions, reducing the likelihood of unexpected equipment failures. This proactive approach not only improves operational efficiency but also positions your business as a trusted advisor to your clients, guiding them in their capital planning and maintenance strategies.
Building Stronger Customer Relationships: Trust and Predictive Insights
In today’s market, building and maintaining customer trust is paramount. Providing customers with detailed equipment history and predictive insights positions you as more than just a service provider; it establishes you as a strategic partner invested in their long-term success. This level of engagement enables you to better anticipate and meet customer needs, leading to increased loyalty, higher retention rates, and the opportunity to command a premium for your advanced level of service.
A Strategic Shift in Contractor Services
The evolution of asset management from simple lists to intelligent, predictive tools represents a significant opportunity for contractors. By adopting advanced asset management practices, you can transform your operations, enhance technician productivity, streamline office tasks, and build stronger, more trusting customer relationships. This strategic shift in how you manage building equipment and assets can set you apart in the industry, driving growth and profitability in an increasingly competitive landscape.
Every year, hiring and retaining skilled technicians gets more difficult, yet leading mechanical and fire protection contractors are growing faster than ever because they focus on getting the most from the techs they have. That’s why ServiceTrade is launching several innovative capabilities designed specifically to help you boost the productivity of your technicians. Watch this video to learn more about the exciting new capabilities recently released and those coming later this year:
New and Improved Capabilities Coming Later This Year
Modern Dispatch Board
A modern dispatch board, built around the best practices of industry leaders, helps your team manage more service calls, prioritize higher-margin work, and ensure every tech’s schedule is fully optimized. On the days when the phones just won’t stop ringing, the priority queue, routing map, and quick call capture help your dispatchers control the chaos and keep customers content.
Customizable Dashboard
Everyone in the office has different responsibilities, needs, and priorities so the completely customizable dashboard gives each manager, coordinator, and every other front-office team member the unique visibility they need to prioritize the most profitable work so they can keep your technicians focused on the highest-margin jobs.
Agreement Tasking
Paired with NorthBoundary, the only sales application made for mechanical and fire protection contractors, new maintenance and inspection tasking in ServiceTrade will provide the first end-to-end solution for selling, managing, and delivering task-based service programs so that you can sell and deliver the highest quality, most competitive, and most profitable offerings in your market.
Recently Released Capabilities Available Now
Recently launched with ServiceTrade’s Summer 2023 Release, there are several new capabilities available today that will help you boost the productivity of your technicians.
Ensure Technician Success
New mobile app features help your techs record every work detail so you can accurately bill customers, avoid callbacks, and identify more pull-through opportunities.
Organize Project Operations
Built to help you control fast-paced projects like repairs, retrofits, and other large-scale jobs, project management capabilities give you real-time financial and operational visibility so you can keep every project on budget and on track.
Streamline Agreement Sales
The new integration between NorthBoundary and ServiceTrade helps you manage sales from prospect and proposal to schedule and service to review and renew so you can win and retain the most profitable customers.
ServiceTrade is committed to innovating to help commercial contractors like you overcome the skilled labor shortage by boosting technician productivity. Learn more at www.servicetrade.com or request a demo to see how ServiceTrade can help you today
How Digital Inspection Forms Streamline the Inspection Process
Digital inspection forms are a powerful solution for life safety service contractors looking to streamline operations.
However, at present, a majority of contractors in the fire protection business are still using paper. There’s a 60% chance that’s you!
But as the world has come to rely on digitization, and more digital offerings like InspectionManager have come on the market, the age-old tradition of paper-based inspections has begun to make less sense.
If you’re feeling a mounting need to improve the efficiency of your inspections and better manage liability, you’re not alone.
Here is a look at some of the biggest benefits of replacing paper-based inspections with inspection automation software.
More Efficiency and Less Liability Risk With Digital Inspection Forms
A step-by-step set of tasks that lead experienced and novice technicians alike through the process
Ability to easily and legibly document deficiencies found in inspections
Ability to attach digital photos into the form when deficiencies are found
Multiple audit trails with time-stamped actions that prove what work was done, and when
Online access to inspection history information, inspection forms, and much more.
In addition, fire inspection software helps ensure that techs use the right inspection form from the get-go. And required fields ensure that technicians fill out the form completely – with all the data that’s required by Authorities Having Jurisdiction (AHJs) for that particular type of inspection.
Digital Inspection Data Makes Creating Inspection Reports Simple
After the service has been completed, the post-service report is what builds long-lasting business relationships with customers, owners, and stakeholders. Once a service has been performed, a digital reporting system like Service Link allows for the fast generation of a professional, easy-to-read, branded report with supporting photos.
This report provides proof that the services actually were performed. It also helps generate additional revenue by highlighting opportunities for improvements or deficiencies that need to be resolved. When stakeholders read a service report and understand what was done and what’s needed, the submission of a service quote for additional work comes as no surprise.
Digital Inspection Software = An Easier Way to Meet NFPA Code Standards
Inspection forms for each NFPA standard (25, 72, etc.) must address all the safety attributes and devices that are contained within that particular type of inspection. The NFPA offers standard inspection testing forms in a PDF format that can be printed and filled out by hand. However, most companies that provide life safety inspection software have their own inspection forms.
If you’re using an inspection form straight from the NFPA, it’s going to meet NFPA standards. However, if you’re using an inspection form from a third-party inspection tool, it’s best to ensure that the forms are routinely updated as NFPA standards change.
Note: With the acquisition of Asurio, ServiceTrade now has a team of code experts who review changes in NFPA standards and modify inspection forms to reflect updated standards and changes in code.
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When it comes to a side-by-side look at paper vs. digital solutions, digital service forms and reports provide transformative, game-changing features and functions that build customer relationships, and also generate more business and profit in the long term.
For more information on ServiceTrade’s digital inspection form capabilities, check out InspectionManager.
A Better Approach to the Skilled Labor Shortage
At ServiceTrade’s 2022 Digital Wrap Conference, CEO Billy Marshall presented an innovative solution to a core challenge that’s top of mind for everyone these days—the ongoing labor shortage.
The statistics are concerning. For every two techs that retire each year, only one enters the field. But demand for your services continues to grow. So what’s the play? Billy offered this 3-step strategy:
Minimize demand work
Sell to better customers
Organize around the goal of keeping your techs on track
We’ll get to those in just a minute. First, an illustration…
The F1 Analogy
Watch this:
In case the analogy isn’t clear, your technicians are your race cars on the track. The growth and limitations of your business rely largely on the quality and efficiency of their work. But in a labor shortage, skilled technicians are a constrained resource. You can’t just go out and hire more techs. You can’t tag in another race car.
But you can innovate and build up your supporting team, your pit crew, your technology-empowered office staff and sales team. Employ as much administrative staff as you need to achieve one mission – keep the technician solely focused on doing the high-value, hands-on work that only they can do.
3 Steps to Growing Revenue Without Hiring More Techs
Minimize Demand Work
You can’t plan for demand work. It causes chaos and throws off schedules. Prioritize maintaining and repairing equipment with routine service. If you have customers who refuse to properly maintain or repair equipment, consider cutting ties with them, raising their prices, or deprioritizing their service.
Sell Better Customers
If demand for your services is high, make room for only the best customers. Good customers would much rather sign up for your premium packages than risk their equipment failing. Good customers want predictable operating expenses, not the unexpected and unpredictable cost of demand work.
Organize Around the Goal of Keeping Your Techs On Track
Take administrative burdens off of your technicians. Invest in your office staff. Make sure that everyone in the company understands the goal and is working toward optimizing technician efficiency. Software helps you do just that.
You can learn more about growing your business despite the skilled labor shortage by watching the full presentation.
