Perspective on software recruiting from a recent college grad

Have you seen “The Hunger Games” movies or read the books? To give you a very watered down version, the premise surrounds a collection of children that are elected as Tributes to have an annual battle amongst each other until there is a single winner. Entering into the job fair felt similar to what I […]

Google home services and its impact on small and medium businesses

As we’ve been talking about for a while, Google is making a move into home services. This week we have a first look at how Google may be inserting itself into service delivery for customers who are using the search engine to find a vendor. Google is testing Home Service Ads for users in San […]

Key principles to maximize the value of your service contracting business

At some point, every business person or entrepreneur wants to be paid the full value for the investment of time, energy, love, and money they have made in their business.  Whether that payday is an arms length financial transaction with an unrelated third party or a passing of the business to the next generation, everyone […]

Google wants your service business, too

If you are a service contractor, get ready for a tough fight to hold your customers and your service margins.  Google is crashing the party.  The same technology formula that wrecked your parts business is coming after your service business.  Google bought Homejoy, an Internet technology company dedicated to the cleaning services market, this week […]

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 invested (spent) historically, all that matters is what you will invest (spend) in […]

What is great customer service worth? About 20% and $41 billion.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock recently, you know that Uber is a taxi service start-up that connects drivers with folks who need a ride. As a business, Uber connects riders and drivers (just as a taxi service does) and they collect a 20% fee on top of what is paid to the driver. […]

Amazon plumbing? Google HVAC? Navigating the digital service contracting landscape.

What does it mean when two of the biggest names in Internet technology jump into the service contracting business?  It means that service contracting is a huge and lucrative market that is due for a shake up (or a shake down, depending on your perspective).  Amazon and Google are both taking on initiatives that will […]

Remember when you had a parts business?

Remember the good old days? Before Google and the Internet destroyed your parts business? Remember when advertising was local? When your listing in the yellow pages and the phone number on the side of your trucks would yield calls for replacement parts? The great margins on most of the parts disappeared when everyone could Google […]

Jesse James’ advice for service contractors

Jesse James, Train Robber I have been to multiple events in the past several months where service contractors from many trades (food equipment repair, fire safety, specialty cleaning) lament the insertion of one or more parties between themselves and their customers.  It seems that when they do not directly influence the terms of service with […]

Give yourself a raise – 5 ways service contracting software puts more money in your pocket

One of the consistent themes we hear from our service contractor customers is how expensive, slow, and cumbersome basic administrative tasks become when they attempt to scale their business with their on-premise PC server-based applications. Scheduling, inventory management, billing, payroll, customer service requests – all of these activities seem to get choked up with an […]