How to Choose the Right Commercial Service Management Software
As a busy commercial services contractor, you may get so caught up in day-to-day business operations that you neglect to identify strategies to improve and grow your business.
Successful commercial service contractors use field service management software to streamline operations and generate more revenue, so they can better grow their businesses. The key? Finding the right software that will grow along with your business.
High-powered commercial services software provides:
A centralized platform with automation
Optimal workflows for increased efficiency
Accountability to drive improvement and growth
Since every commercial service business possesses its own set of needs, it’s important for business owners to research available software vendors and examine essential software package features and pricing. To assist you in your search for the right software solution, below, we’ll share some key features and benefits of commercial services software.
What is commercial services software?
Commercial services software helps you manage every aspect of your commercial services business. Cloud-based software works to improve the efficiency of your operations, connects your office to the field, enhances customer interactions, and increases the accuracy of your reporting.
The best software systems provide commercial services businesses an all-in-one solution, enabling companies to automate and implement best-practice workflows in every department, division, and location. Software providers should also give superior customer service, including onboarding assistance and ongoing customer support.
Scheduling and dispatching
Commercial services software optimizes all of your business processes from the office to the field. When it comes to choosing a new software, scheduling and dispatching functionality top the list of important features.
ServiceTitan commercial service software provides optimum flexibility, enabling your office staff to schedule weeks or months in advance, so your team can adequately prepare for complex jobs. Dispatching software increases oversight and flexibility, ensuring you send the right tech to the right job by the right route.
Once at the job site, ServiceTitan’s mobile app ensures techs possess complete customer and job information, from the facility or property manager’s phone numbers to past work order history. Use templates to create forms for technicians, which you can trigger for certain job types or during a certain point in the job cycle.
Does your commercial service company operate in more than one location or in multiple trades or markets? If so, it’s even more critical to streamline operations. Standardizing processes became key for Shane Jaeger, President of Operations at the Texas-based Lawton Group.
“We did not want HVAC doing something one way and plumbing doing it another — or San Antonio operating differently than Dallas,” says Jaeger, whose four companies include Benjamin Franklin Plumbing, Lawton Mechanical, Lawton Commercial Services, and Buckaroo Pest Protection. “We had to get our standard operating procedures streamlined so we were all moving in the same direction.”
Project tracking
Whether you own a small business or a large commercial enterprise, accurate project cost tracking factors into whether your commercial projects remain on time and on budget.
Commercial services software enables commercial contractors to view real-time budget versus actual cost, so you can see how much of your budget is left as jobs progress through to completion.
Proper project tracking is essential for progress billing, which enables you to invoice work as you complete certain milestones or phases. It increases cash flow, so you don’t have to wait for the completion of a project to get paid.
The #1 newsletter for the trades.
“Tracking the budget outside of your software leaves more room for human error,” says Vanessa Gonzales, co-owner and founder of Albuquerque Plumbing, Heating & Cooling Inc. and Senior Manager of Product Utilization at ServiceTitan. “With ServiceTitan, you can make sure the latest version of the spreadsheet is being used by everyone.”
ServiceTitan also centralizes project data, so your entire team stays on the same page. With ServiceTitan’s mobile app integration, data from the office syncs instantly to technicians’ tablets. What does this mean for large projects? Your team can immediately access project information such as documents, proposals, blueprints, and permit information, without calling into the office.
“A lot of that is just so useful with our construction team,” explains Kitty Dunn, Dispatch Manager at Interstate AC in Nashville, Tenn., which performs 90% commercial work. “We’ll do multimillion-dollar jobs and we have all these units to install, and they need to go in specific places. So for those guys to have all of that information at their fingertips has been amazing.”
Customer management
There’s a reason why customer relationship management (CRM) ranks at the top of the list for commercial service companies. Enhanced communication helps keep customers satisfied with your company’s work.
ServiceTitan’s customer management functions enable you to view pictures from the job site and listen to phone calls on a timeline associated with every customer. The ability to capture photos on the job site also works to establish trust with customers.
“We’re able to share pictures and videos in real time with the project managers or the location manager, and we can actually show customers the problem and they can see it in real time,” Jaeger says. “They see what we’re trying to explain to them, and a picture’s worth a thousand words. If you show them a video, that’s even better. They know you’re telling the truth. They can see how dirty it looks, and they don’t have to go up on that 200-degree roof and look for themselves.”
On the service side, use ServiceTitan customer experience software for customer notifications, SMS texting, and technician arrival tracking. Customers can book appointments online through their customer portal, view invoices, or make online payments. Convenient options make it easier for your customers to do business with you and provide a superior customer experience.
Payroll and accounting
Tired of manually recording duplicate data entries, or logging in and out of multiple systems to accomplish your accounting tasks? ServiceTitan field management software integrates with trusted accounting software like QuickBooks, Intacct, and Ryvit’s integration platform, increasing accuracy and saving you time.
ServiceTitan’s integrations allow you to monitor transactions in real time, generate invoices and purchase orders, and manage your finances without switching back and forth between different software.
Contractor payroll software enables technicians to clock in and out right in ServiceTitan, flag discrepancies, and digitally sign off on timesheets at the end of each pay period. Automate complex performance pay to reward and retain your top employees.
Another benefit of automated timesheets and payroll? When you accurately account for labor costs, you stay on top of job costing and see the profitability of your projects in real time.
Performance reporting
Reporting improves your commercial service company’s scalability and profitability. Tracking and analyzing key business metrics shows you exactly where your business needs to improve.
Metrics measure progress company-wide, all the way down to individual technicians.
Gary Cosmer, Partner, President and CEO of Lovett Services, which performs large-scale commercial work and projects in the Portland, Ore., area., created a scoreboard using data from ServiceTitan, QuickBooks, and one other product.
The scoreboard shows a snapshot of performance on top key performance indicators (KPIs) and individual projects, so the company maximizes efficiency and keeps jobs on track.
Howard Blair, HR Director and Vice President of Lawton Commercial, says ServiceTitan allowed the company to set expectations for revenue generation and provide feedback with specific reports.
“We can sit down with (techs) on a weekly basis and give a scorecard of where they’re at and where we can improve,” Blair says.
The best commercial services software gives you the reporting tools to improve and advance your company in the right direction.
Ready to learn more? See how ServiceTitan compares to the competition and find the right software for your commercial services business.
ServiceTitan Software
ServiceTitan is a comprehensive software solution built specifically to help service companies streamline their operations, boost revenue, and substantially elevate the trajectory of their business. Our comprehensive, cloud-based platform is used by thousands of electrical, HVAC, plumbing, garage door, and chimney sweep shops across the country—and has increased their revenue by an average of 25% in just their first year with us.
