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Software is an integral part of any successful electrician business. However, according to data, only 25% of organizations use some form of management software. The rest still use paper, Excel, or a patch of tools to stay organized and manage day-to-day operations.
Using electrical contractor software is essential for an electrical business if you want better dispatching, job scheduling, inventory management, and customer experience. Moreover, using electrical contracting software will make your business better at tracking its KPIs in real-time, improving your crew’s performance and service delivery.
Here’s what you need to know about electrical contractor software, what features you should look out for, and how it can transform your electrical contractor business.
What is Electrical Business Software?
Electrical business software, or electrical contractor software, is a field service software that helps electricians run their electrical business. Electrical business software ranges from a CRM and QuickBooks for electrical contractors to a payroll management system.
Some software solutions combine all these features, providing a comprehensive package covering all electrical business needs, including customer relations, crew management, and accounting. This includes crucial aspects of your electrical business, such as:
- Job scheduling
- Creating estimates
- Work order management
- Invoice payments
The Typical Features You Get with an Electrical Business Software
The highlight of electrical contractor software is the features that allow it to make running your electrician business easier. Typically, you get different features from different vendors. However, here are the most valuable you should consider.
Lead Management and Marketing
Lead management is crucial to the marketing strategy of an electrical contractor business. You don’t want a new potential customer slipping out of your hands due to poor communication and an unorganized contact list.
Good electrical business software should allow you to have email templates and an updated contact list for swift communication with clients about various issues such as estimates, work orders, and quotes.
It’ll be better if the software can integrate with other email tools, for instance, by exporting your contact list, to allow your electrician business to leverage more advanced lead management and marketing tools.
Real-Time Employee Communication
Working with a crew on the field and administrators in the office can be a major source of headache for most electrical businesses. Service delivery can be hampered without a seamless flow of information, and dispatching or scheduling may not happen in time.
An electrical contractor software allows your teams to have on-the-go communication, making it easier to receive updates on work orders from the techs in the field, allowing the office admins to prompt invoices or inventory requests quickly, as needed.
Electrical business software, which includes a mobile app, typically offers the best features for on-the-go employee communication.
Digital Lead Generation Forms
Capturing leads is crucial in growing and expanding your electrical business. A proper electrical business software should provide a lead generation form where you can capture customer details and store them in a CRM to build a relationship with them.
Good software should allow you to customize these forms and add your own data fields to capture customer information unique to your business.
Employee Time Tracking
Time tracking is essential in electrical contractor businesses to know where your crew is, how long they’ve taken on a work order, and determine payroll. Good electrical business software should have an employee scheduling and time tracking feature to simplify tracking labor expenses and minimize downtimes.
Using a mobile app, your crew can add their time entries for approval which can be synced to your preferred accounting software for payroll.
Job Routing and Dispatching
Your team needs to be dispatched quickly and early and use the best routes to get to work faster. A good electrical contractor software should simplify the dispatching process, sending techs notifications about a work order and when they need to address it.
A good electrical business software will integrate with a reliable maps provider to provide automated routing for your crew, ensuring techs get on site quickly and with lower transportation costs.
Customer Experience
Customers get a good impression of your electrical business if its systems rely on robust electrical contractor software. A good solution will allow your business to give customers the right attention and enhance their experience by doing the following:
- Automating recurring jobs
- Tracking customer history
- Providing online self-service customer portals
- Adding reminders for customer follow-ups
Accounting
A good electrical business software should provide your business with financial management tools that help in invoice processing, payments, and estimate creation, among other accounting processes.
Some solutions allow you to automatically convert quotes and estimates into invoices the customer can pay once the work order is complete before the electrician leaves the job site. The best solutions also offer integrations with more advanced accounting software such as QuickBooks, ensuring you avoid accounting mistakes such as double date entries.
Reporting
You must always keep a critical eye on your electrician business to ensure everything works correctly. A good electrical contractor software solution allows you to generate reports and data on your business performance to get insights into your customers, revenue, and crew.
The best solutions allow you to generate custom reports based on your unique business needs and enable data-driven decisions.
The Benefits of Using Electrical Contractor Software
The adoption of electrical contractor software is steadily growing, with data showing that the market size is expected to grow at a CAGR of 13.3% between 2023 and 2030. The following key benefits are spearheading this increased adoption.
Reduced Operational Costs
Since you can access real-time data, analytics, and communication, electrical business software allows you to optimize operations in your electrician business and save costs.
For instance, with smart scheduling and dispatching, only the most qualified tech will attend to a work order, ensuring no repeat requests to fix unsolved issues. According to research, 15% of work orders are unresolved after the first visit because of poor technician assignments.
Better Information Accessibility
With electrical business software, your entire crew and office team has immediate access to the same information, smoothening operations and ensuring everyone is on the same page regarding all aspects of the business.
Improved Customer Satisfaction
Electrical contractor software streamlines your business operations, boosting customer service and satisfaction since work orders are completed on time, communication is swift, and payment is made much easier.
Source Your Software from a Trusted Vendor
Investing in electrical contractor software is a wise decision your business can make. Crew operations get much easier with software, and customers enjoy working with your business since its operations are smoother and more effective. Contact a trusted vendor today and choose which software works best for your electrician business.
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