A consumer doesn’t think about their air conditioning, electricity, or plumbing until something happens. Then they call a contractor to fix a problem. Commercial contractors deal with problems on an entirely different level and proactively maintain equipment to make sure properties have the essential utilities people use every day.
Software options for commercial contractors have been limited and the industry is realizing the opportunity that technology has for operations, productivity, and addressing the skilled labor shortage.
CEO of BuildOps
Alok Chanani, CEO of BuildOps, recently spoke to SourceForge about the BuildOps field service management operations platform and how software for commercial contractors positively impacts their business.
What is BuildOps for those who don’t know?
BuildOps is a cloud-based all-in-one commercial service software and construction project management platform. What that means is the platform unifies and streamlines the operations side of a commercial contractor business into a single easy-to-use interface that shares data across all job functions. From service work to projects and everything in between.
An HVAC, mechanical, plumbing, or electrical contractor can manage operations in one software instead of using multiple software programs or apps and physical paperwork to run the business. We’ve brought in the most important parts into the platform, designed it to share data and created workflows that match what commercial contractors are using now.
A commercial contractor can create and email a quote to a customer, get approval, schedule the technician visit, and dispatch the tech all through the platform without another software program.
Technicians use a connected mobile app that tracks their time, has customizable gated workflows and task lists, and can accept customer signatures in-app. This removes any need for paperwork because it’s all available in the app. Also, techs can create quotes onsite if they see any pull-through work, and those sync with the BuildOps platform.
Essentially, we looked at the commercial contractor workflows and saw how broken they were, and how much time was being wasted with multiple systems, paperwork, and manual processes and developed BuildOps to solve that problem.
The cherry on top is that our commercial customers are actually seeing such a dramatic improvement in their workflow that their revenue is actually increasing. They’re crews are more efficient, they can identify and take on additional jobs with the highest profit margins. Operations optimization is driving their revenue goals, which is critical during busy seasons and during times of recession.
Who is it for?
The platform is designed for commercial contractors, regardless of their industry. Our main customers are in HVAC/mechanical, plumbing, and electrical, but we’ve also seen the fire life safety and garage door industry find a lot of use in the platform.
If you do any type of commercial service work, then BuildOps is potentially a perfect fit. What we stress to potential customers is that BuildOps is an ideal match for the commercial workflow. We have customers that handle both commercial and residential but businesses with more commercial work will see ROI almost instantly. What’s the difference? Commercial contractors manage customers with multiple properties, which isn’t something usually found in residential contracting, or they’re working on large-scale commercial projects like multi-story buildings, commercial properties, or something that requires a lot of specialized skills and experience along with managing a lot of data, regulations, crews, and digital files.
The best thing about BuildOps is that the workflows we designed are customizable for your specific business use case. An HVAC contractor has the same general workflow, but each company is different and we work with them during implementation to customize the platform to meet their needs.
What does BuildOps do different from other field service management Software?
The core of BuildOps is that it’s designed for a commercial contractor and their workflows. Historically, commercial contractors have used a lot of different software to manage operations. It could be Microsoft Word to create quotes and invoices, Google Calendar to schedule appointments, and using pen and paper for job visits. Then all of this needs to be manually collected and entered into some kind of customer management system, which has been file cabinets. This analog and digital hybrid creates a lot of problems, especially for revenue reporting or accurate customer history views, and technician productivity insights. Essentially, you’re only looking at the present and can’t review the past or forecast the future.
BuildOps uses a mobile app and cloud-based platform combination to digitize what used to be analog and manual and automates a lot of these steps. Customer history is stored, along with any extra properties they own, and all jobs or projects can be attributed quickly. Now you can see how long they’ve been a customer, what jobs you’ve completed, and the total customer revenue.
And for technicians, the mobile app replaces any paperwork they’ve dealt with before. Time tracking is included so technicians can log travel time, work time, and breaks. This is synced to the BuildOps platform and crew leads or office managers can approve payroll without having to ask or find missing time sheets.
Technicians can also log work time so you know exactly how long a job took them, giving crew leads and managers insight into how productive they are. Also, the app uses a mobile device’s camera so technicians can take photos or videos to document the work they’ve done. The last step of every job visit is customer approval and we have a customer signature feature so customers can sign on the app directly. It’s also important to know that BuildOps focuses on the operations side of the business, but we also thought about how commercial contractors manage the finance side. The BuildOps platform integrates with major popular accounting software sending relevant financial data over so businesses can see financial health.
What were the biggest impacts that customers experienced?
The feedback we received was positive. Many commercial contractors still use pen and paper and different single-purpose software to run the business. Their onboarding experience was a lot of surprise and excitement because all these repetitive and manual tasks disappeared.
One consistent example is how quoting in the BuildOps platform gave hours back to the office. Customers were using Microsoft Word to create quotes. They had to reference price books and make sure they were including any possible custom pricing. Once the quote was finished, they
had to save it, print it, and mail it to customers. Some were able to email quotes, but then it would get lost because there’s no direct tracking.
BuildOps quoting starts from the customer account. You start a new quote and it imports the customer data and the specific property information if they have more than one. As you build the quote, you can automatically pull prices from price books saved on the platform. After it’s finished, the quote is exported as a PDF and emailed directly from the platform. Now you have start-to-finish quoting in one place along with direct quote tracking. One customer increased quoting output by 80% and overall revenue by 50% just implementing BuildOps.
We wanted BuildOps to present more visibility into operations where it didn’t exist before. Reporting is very popular because owners can now understand how their company actually runs across more of the operations instead of only focusing on revenue. The technician app has reduced callbacks too because some contractors add equipment checklists to make sure techs bring all the assets back after a job.
Service agreements are another popular feature. Commercial contractors need service maintenance agreements to keep consistent cash flow in the business and our workflow makes it easy to create, schedule, dispatch, and invoice customers. Keeping all the data within the platform creates efficiencies our customers haven’t seen before.
Some of our customers tried using field service management software platforms before, but they were forced into software designed for residential contractors, which doesn’t match the commercial workflows and creates more confusion because residential software is meant for single properties, not multiple properties like commercial contractors deal with.
Even some major residential field service management companies have released a version of a commercial field service management software platform, but the feedback we’ve heard is that it’s more of a rebrand of the residential software.
Why should a commercial contractor use BuildOps?
We designed BuildOps to solve a commercial contractor problem that we’ve experienced personally. There hasn’t been a commercial contractor operations platform that focuses on the commercial workflow and simplifies it so that owners can focus on their business.
Commercial contracting has a lot of repetitive operations work that impacts the productivity and efficiency of the business overall. Techs waste time with paperwork, both job reporting, and time sheets, and can lose it before it’s turned in. Office staff, who deal with all the paperwork or manage dispatch and scheduling, waste hours with paperwork maintenance instead of focusing on their actual work.
There’s a skilled labor shortage in the commercial contractor industry right now. It’s a priority that more tradespeople enter the industry, but existing commercial contractor companies also need to update and evolve operations to make things more efficient and not stay the same because “that’s how we do it.”
There’s skepticism when buying software, I think we all experience that, but BuildOps has proven it’s the best option for commercial contractors who want to increase efficiencies and grow their business. We’ve found that by adopting BuildOps, many customers are lessening the impact of the labor shortage because it allows their office and field technicians to become much more efficient. Successful BuildOps customers are actually doing more (and more profitable work), with fewer resources. This puts less strain on the business and keeps employees happy, which has a positive impact on retention. It’s a win-win across the organization.
About BuildOps
BuildOps is an all-in-one cloud-based software solution that empowers commercial mechanical, plumbing, and electrical contractors to manage operations – from service to projects – all on a single platform. BuildOps streamlines communication, minimizes risk, and grows profits using technology built specifically for the commercial speciality contractor. Founded in 2018, BuildOps has gone on to transform the lives of commercial contractors across the United States and Canada. Learn more at BuildOps.com.
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