From Chaos to Clarity: Streamlining Your ServiceTitan Data

Keeping your ServiceTitan data clean provides a solid foundation for efficient business operations, yet many contractors unknowingly sabotage their success with poor data management.

Pam Duffy, Founder and COO of Powerhouse Consulting Group, talks about the critical role of clean data in reporting, workflows, and business efficiency during a recent episode of the Mastering ServiceTitan podcast—where we get expert advice from power users. 

One of the things new ServiceTitan users get most excited about, Duffy says, is gaining access to better reporting and metrics so they can grow their businesses.

“The data you can get out of ServiceTitan can really fuel your business decisions and help you get to where you're wanting to go faster,” she says.

But new users get less excited when it comes to inputting the right data onto the platform, or learning the workflows and processes to follow to keep your data clean and produce reports that are accurate and usable.

“You have all these amazing reports and data to look at, charts, graphs, and dashboards. And yet none of that means anything at all, because you haven't really kept a good tab on keeping that data input clean,” Duffy says. “To get the magic out of ServiceTitan, you have to keep your data as clean as possible.”

Duffy shares real-world horror stories of contractors losing millions due to bad data practices and provides actionable strategies for setting up your account properly from the start, preventing duplicate jobs, and maintaining long-term data accuracy.

How poor data management can cost your business

Powerhouse Consulting Group works with contractors in the trades to conduct a health assessment of their business by digging into the data inside their ServiceTitan account. 

“The data really tells a story, and sometimes the story the data tells us is y'all don't have good workflows,” Duffy explains. “For example, we've seen millions of dollars left on the table in sold estimates. The estimates are sold, but there’s no workflow to follow up and actually book those estimates.”

In some instances, the businesses even paid out commissions on those sold estimates, but never actually did the work or captured the revenue for the job.

“We also see a lot of contractors with duplicate jobs or duplicate customers on their accounts,” which creates chaos and poor customer service in your call center, she adds.

How to set up ServiceTitan with clean data from the start

To set up your ServiceTitan account properly from the beginning, Duffy offers expert advice: 

“Don't just dump your data in and then walk away,” she says. “That’s a surefire way to ensure that you're not starting on the right foot. Your reports are inaccurate from day one.”

Instead, take the time to analyze your data, define your business units and job types, add materials and services to your pricebook, and establish clear workflows for estimates, sales, invoicing, and more. 

“Really make sure you nail that right at the beginning. That way you can ensure your data is clean from the start,” Duffy says.

And while you may need someone to champion the change management process, she suggests teaching everyone how to use ServiceTitan as early as possible.

“If there's only one person on your team that knows ServiceTitan well, then everything else is going to fall apart as soon as you start adding everybody else into the system,” Duffy explains. “We strongly recommend that you start early, and often, with training the team and getting them into that demo environment.”

The Powerhouse team works with hundreds of contractors every day who use all sorts of inadequate setups and workflows to run their operations, and they know how to help them find a better solution.

“We really see the power that's available in ServiceTitan, and we're able to use that knowledge to guide any new customers into their new workflows, whether it be sort of the standard workflows or maybe alternate workflows,” she says.

And before you go jumping at the next new shiny configuration or add-on platform, make sure you’re utilizing the full functionality of ServiceTitan’s core product. 

“A lot of times, the core product can do everything that's needed, and you might just not be knowledgeable about how to utilize that core product fully. You might only be using 20 percent of the core product features,” Duffy explains. “So, adding on a feature gate or a configuration might not get you what you need.”

How to maintain clean data when implementing new workflows

Before implementing new workflows or adopting new features in ServiceTitan, establish a baseline for where you are currently and where you want to go.

Initially, Powerhouse clients often express frustration over their business’s messy data management, saying, “I didn’t realize it was this bad,” or “I didn’t realize our data was so off,” or “I didn’t realize our team wasn’t following this workflow.” Duffy says these contractors feel like their operations are spiraling out of control.

On the other hand, successful contractors acknowledge the messy data mistakes, explore possible solutions to their problems, and try to move forward.

“Understanding where you're at today and understanding the root cause of the problem. That's always going to be step one, and doing so from a place of a team-oriented and a growth-oriented mindset,” she advises.

Next, make sure someone takes ownership of implementing or managing the change internally. This might include conducting regular data audits, leading training sessions with employees, or possibly working with Powerhouse to create fully customized standard operating procedures. 

“Another common cause for bad data is people leaving the company, which happens all the time, but they're leaving with that knowledge in their brains,” Duffy explains. “So, a documented workflow that you can hand to a new person that comes to your team and say, ‘These are the exact steps that we follow every single time we book a job. It has to be this way.’ That’s what's really going to drive consistency over time.”

Then, it’s just a matter of making a commitment to fully implement the change and monitoring the results.

“Another really common mistake we see is that people stop at that 50 percent point or 75 percent point in a change management process, and then we lose,” Duffy says.

To lock in those changes at 100%, for example, maybe your change management leader runs reports each month to make sure your duplicate customers or duplicate locations report is at zero or they log into your membership billing to make sure there are no failed billing runs.

“If we're not really making sure that we're following that to a T every month, it's going to go great for month one. It's going to go okay for month two. And then we're going to forget about the process in month three,” Duffy says. “So, that last 20 percent of real follow-through is so important.”

Failed billing runs on memberships might result if you switch to a monthly billing cycle instead of annual subscriptions and your members’ credit card changes. If you’re not checking the monthly billing runs, you may never catch that failed payment. Or you may end up providing membership services to a customer who never paid for the membership.

“The onus is on you as a business to have that workflow in place of going in and checking the membership billing runs monthly and really making sure that everything has been captured correctly,” she adds.

With ServiceTitan, you can create customized reports and dashboards to help you monitor how your team is implementing any changes and regularly check in on those results. Duffy advises setting up a simple report that should have no data on it, so when a line item appears on that report you know something is off.

Examples of this type of report might be maintenance visits that need to be scheduled this week, maintenance visits that should have happened last week, or jobs scheduled in the past. All of those should produce a zero-sum report, she says.

“My biggest advice is, don’t wait for a crisis to happen,” Duffy says. “Make sure you’ve got your own house in order.”

First steps to take to clean up your ServiceTitan data

Getting your house in order starts with developing a completely solid pricebook, Duffy says. 

“If you're having problems with your proposals, estimates or quoting, that's stemming from your pricebook,” she says. 

Also, make anything to do with your accounting processes top priority.

“If you're not able to reconcile what's going on in ServiceTitan and what's going on in your accounting software, that’s a big problem,” Duffy says. “That needs to be No. 1 on your list.”

And if you think your data is messed up but you can’t identify the exact problem, ask Powerhouse to assess the health of your business and find the right solution.

“We try pretty hard to give a very even assessment of what’s going on and give kudos where kudos are due,” Duffy says. “But we do want to highlight areas where the data might not be what you think it is.

“What's most important is making sure you can count on your profitability and you can count on your job costing being correct, so you can go into meetings confidently, knowing the decisions you're making to move the company forward are correct,” she adds.

You can find this interview and many more by subscribing to Mastering ServiceTitan on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or here.

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