We are living through an unprecedented time of technological change. It’s not just smartphones, which have seen the fastest ever adoption of any technology in the world’s history. There is also ever cheaper solar power, self-driving and electric cars, drones, not to mention breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. Benjamin Dyer of Powered Now focuses on just one of these - smartphone technology – and looks at how this is going to change things in the plumbing trade.
The smartphone is still arriving
The arrival of the internet and now smartphones have already devastated the newspaper, music and magazine industries, not to mention camera makers and several other sectors. It’s also had a huge impact on politics. But generally, it takes a while for technology to fully make its mark.
It was a long time after the car arrived that railways started closing. It was even longer before out of town shopping started along with the huge supermarkets. Even the mobile phone took 10 years to reach 7% penetration of the UK population and 20 years before everyone had one.
The modern smartphone puts a powerful computer in your pocket connected to all of the world’s Information. It is only ten years old. That means the big impact is still to come.
Jumping on every band wagon isn’t a great idea and you can be too early. However, as sales of these devices are rising strongly, it’s a sensible for anyone working in the trade to set aside any prejudices and get themselves prepared. Being slightly ahead of the game could land you with new customers and new business.
The impact on plumbing
The “connected home” with everything communicating with the web will probably have the biggest impact on sparkies, but plumbers won’t be entirely exempt.
Sensors and controls connected through WiFi to smartphones are getting cheaper and cheaper. The latest sensors don’t even need a power connection, they draw their power from radio signals.
It won’t be long before monitoring water flow becomes standard, with warnings for leaks and floods. It should be possible to turn off the water automatically once a leak is detected and inform the homeowner through their smartphone. As we all know, catastrophic leaks don’t happen often, but when they do they can be incredibly destructive.
If you also do heating, new sensors will soon mean that the system can know when anyone is at home, and proximity tracking of mobile phones should enable a house to warm up before anyone gets back.
The challenge for plumbers is to keep abreast of the technology as adoption starts to take off.
The big impact on your business
For plumbers, the biggest impact of the smartphone revolution may not be on the job itself, but on administration and paperwork. That’s what we will consider in the rest of this article.
After all, paperwork is a big issue. When my company was interviewing people from different trades on camera, including plumbers, one question always got a vehement reply. That was “What do you think about paperwork?”. The almost universal answer was “Paperwork? I hate paperwork”. There was one exception, the builder who said “I abhor paperwork”.
The good news is that the smartphone revolution can really help. Using an app can significantly cut the effort it takes to do paperwork.
Solving the paperwork problem
Most people who start trade businesses are bad at paperwork. That’s because we can’t be good at everything and as a rule trades people are great with their hands rather than their pen. In business it makes sense to focus on your strengths and delegate tasks that you are less good at.
At the same time, you should be taking every possible opportunity to simplify the task of administration and paperwork. In the modern age that means investing in computer systems.
Making the investment
Most people don’t find it a problem to invest in good tools. Investing in hated paperwork solutions is less instinctive! However, putting the right people in place, designing processes that work and keeping everything as simple as possible does make sense. Also, you will need a system, or app that runs both on a smartphone in the field and back in the office or home. The good news is that there are now many powerful systems available, including those from my company, Powered Now.
Making efficiency gains
A degree of cynicism to new ideas is justified, especially when the ideas come from a supplier like me. That’s why I would like to outline some of the specific ways that your plumbing business can benefit from a mobile phone based computer system:
Easier and quicker invoicing. The faster you invoice, the better. Invoicing straight from the job means you can remember the details, are less likely to ignore small extras and will get paid faster. Your customer will also be psychologically more willing to pay immediately after completion and they have less time to have any second thoughts.
Automating reminders to your customers. For instance if you can schedule work for annual servicing when you are less busy that will mean that there are less peaks and troughs. This means less down time and smoother cash flow.
Producing your quotes more quickly. Some of our customers do quotes for small jobs while sitting in their van just after visiting their prospect. The quicker you can quote, the more business you will win. You will have better recall of what the customer asked for and it takes less effort.
The challenge
My company has noticed that the businesses that use our system the best seem to be expanding the fastest. Of course, you don’t necessarily need a system to grow quickly, but you do need to be very well organised.
There is a saying that you may have a mess. But if you then get a computer, you will simply have a computerised mess. That’s why effort must be made to get your processes working well before choosing the right system. You must then learn to use it properly by investing in training. The truth is that in the short term it’s more cost and effort, but it will pay back in spades later. There is no gain without pain.
This isn’t unusual in life. After all, despite the pain, we have all learnt to drive. But it didn’t happen overnight. Similarly, plumbers will have an adoption curve as well as a learning curve before they all use smartphones to run their businesses.
Detailed benefits
A system can help in many ways in organising your work and doing the related paperwork. It’s best to illustrate this with real life examples from my company’s product, Powered Now. Here are the benefits you can get:-
Save time. It’s much quicker to raise quotes and invoices using a modern system:
Customer names, phone numbers and emails can be copied from your address book. The full address can be looked up from just the postcode. After you have put in the customer details once, they will always be available with no further input. Just like Google, any lines you previously entered can be auto-completed when you need them again.
You can create quotes and invoices at the customer site or sitting outside in your van. You can do this even when there is no signal!
If the invoice matches the quote, it can be created from the quote with one click.
All VAT is calculated automatically.
Everything for a job is in one place with the initial quote and all variants and additions totted up automatically. Running totals of what’s been accepted, invoiced and paid are kept.
Enhance your sales process and sell more:
Faster response to customers. Quotes can be generated very quickly, from site when they are straight-forward.
Look more professional. Quotes look highly professional with minimum effort.
Control your sales process. You always know the status of your quotes: once you send them by email, the system lets you know when the email was opened and whether the quote was accepted or rejected. That helps you to know when to follow up and what to say. If you lost to the competition, it often gives you another bite of the cherry.
Manage your team more effectively:
Powered Now lets you run a diary that allows multiple team members to attend an appointment.
Track all team members on a map and see their proximity to appointments.
Have a company chat facility exclusively for your team that is both one-to-one and shared.
The impact of technology
Smartphones are changing many things in the world and the plumbing business is not immune. Some of the changes will introduce interesting new products. Life is also full of things we don’t like with paperwork one of those things. So the fact that smartphone technology should help here is perhaps the most important point.
My hope is that this article provides some useful provocation and my wish is that you can rise to the challenges and opportunities from the smartphone revolution. Good luck!
About the author
Benjamin Dyer is CEO and co-founder of Powered Now. Powered Now’s mobile app aims to take the pain out of paperwork for plumbers and other trade and mobile businesses.
www.powerednow.com
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