To Do: Start Using an Online Task and Project Management App

In some ways I miss the old way I kept track of my to do list.  It was a piece of paper with an item on every line.  I would draw a small box to the left of the item, then a description to the right.  When the item was completed, I colored in the […]

Daydreaming of Big Jackpots and 1975 Fuel Prices

I had to chuckle every time that I walked by the Powerball signs last week that couldn’t display full $1,500,000,000 jackpot because the signs have just 3 digits to show the number in millions. This past weekend, there was the opposite situation in Houghton Lake, Michigan where they didn’t need the dollar digit when the […]

Don’t Let the Back-Office Tail Wag the Company Dog

All too often, as field service companies are considering new software, they base decisions on their historical software usage patterns and let the tail wag the dog.  Since accounting software is the primary, and often only, business application in use, companies search for ways to extend back-office capabilities to the front office and beyond.  This line of thinking is understandable, but […]

Don’t Limit your Techs to Just One Tool – or Just One Mobile Application

If you’ve been reading our blog for a while (thank you, by the way), you’ve heard ServiceTrade advocate a connected IT ecosystem of business operations applications for your customer service, accounting, inventory, CRM, payroll, email marketing and online reviews.  There are modern, mobile solutions for all of these needs that work within an integrated system. […]

Don’t bring an operations knife to a customer service gunfight: Customer engagement must be the first priority in a connected world

“Why yes, I regularly purchase products from mail order catalogs” said no one in the last 20 years.  Yet 20 years ago, most catalog retailers were thinking to themselves “If only we could improve our operations and reduce our cost of delivery, print, and call centers, we will outprice the competition and really rake it […]

Stop Texting. Start Messaging!

On several occasions, I’ve walked into a meeting with dispatchers, schedulers, and service managers who were glued to their phone texting with their technicians in the field.  Why should the office staff use a tiny keyboard on a phone to update and respond to the techs when they have a full size keyboard and monitor at […]

Password Headaches? Some Simple Advice to Ease the Pain

Cloud applications are like banks: Your money is much safer under lock and key at the bank than it is under your mattress because anyone can “hack your house.”   Bank security is as good as it gets, but like a bank, your data is only as secure as the keys to the vault; your password(s). […]

Automate Collections With InvoiceSherpa

In today’s connected world, new online services are popping up each day to improve the connections between you and your customers. One connection that is critical is the payment connection, and we found a cool app called InvoiceSherpa to help you. This fantastic product helps service contractors better manage their invoices and boosts cash flow by […]

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 same database. Instead, data is synchronized across the applications in a manner that is based […]

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 – when they first engage with us, yet they readily buy ServiceTrade (typically with only about 2 weeks of […]