According to a Forbes study, there are 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created each day. Companies, contractors, organizations, including Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), rely on such data to grow their businesses and deliver excellent customer service.
Today, commercial HVAC contractors are more aware of the importance of data and how they can use it to make better business decisions. Such companies use HVAC software and the data generated daily through real-time reporting to understand the current market trends, optimize their business for higher profits, and stay ahead of the competition.
Here’s what you need to know about effective reporting and how it can superpower your business for growth.
What is Real-Time Reporting?
The growth of technology has broadly impacted how companies run their businesses. Before the digital era, the process of collecting and analyzing data was quite slow. As a result, this also slowed down the pace of competition and growth. Using manual methods of collecting and analyzing data simply doesn’t cut it in today’s digital world.
Real-time reporting is a Business Intelligence (BI) feature that HVAC, plumbing, fire, mechanical, and any other commercial contractor can use to stay ahead of the competition.
Turning data derived from real-time reporting into actionable insights is now the standard for doing business and getting (and staying) ahead.
At a high level, you should be able to monitor:
- Fleets
- Projects
- Technicians
- Repair and maintenance schedules
- Finances and resources
- Customer relationships and profitability
And that’s just the high-level view. With powerful reporting, like what comes built into BuildOps’ all-in-one platform, you can really dig into the nitty-gritty specifics.
On top of that, the beauty of real-time reports is that they can be easily shared and accessed online by anyone who needs them, regardless of where the user is located. Not to mention, all of this is possible without compromising your data security.
Remember, choosing the right tools and software is half the battle. With innovative reporting comes innovation to your business — the key to offering the best services and continuing to grow.
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Benefits of Real-Time Reporting
The HVAC industry is quite competitive, and getting real-time information, data analytics, and reports across various operations is crucial to the growth of your business. There really isn’t anyone on your team that won’t benefit from having access to and leveraging real-time reporting.
Here are three key advantages you might be missing out on if you’re not actively using real-time reporting in your business.
- Get Immediate Insights
As the name suggests, real-time reporting allows you to access the data you need whenever and wherever you need it. Back in the day, you could get away with adapting your business to trends that come out on a quarterly or yearly basis. These days, you’ve got to be quicker than that because your competition is also adopting new real-time reporting tools increasing their pace and efficiency.
It’s possible to run reports on your data using a third-party system or configure an integration that does this automatically. But the simplest and most effective way to ensure detailed, accurate, and up-to-date reporting is by using an end-to-end operational system that has robust reporting built right in.
Hot tip: Look for a cloud-based system in order to truly provide the most timely metrics. If you’re tied to on-premise software, you’re extremely limited to when and where you can get the data you need to drive your business. On the other hand, cloud-based software centralizes all this data in one digital cloud. With one platform to manage all your operations, built-in reporting to pull data across all of them, and the ability for anyone on your team to access that information from their own device — now that’s reporting in real-time.
- Make Informed Decisions
Speaking of immediate insights, don’t forget that data has an expiration date. Over time, data depreciates in value as it becomes less and less accurate. Therefore, the information you collect is only as good as how fast you can actually act on it.
With good reporting, you’ll be able to see at a glance what’s working for your business and what’s slowing you down — projects that are over budget, job types that are yielding higher margins, techs that are crushing it versus techs that could use more training… the list goes on.
Armed with this information, you have what you need to adjust and change course. Not only do you have quantifiable data to inform your decisions, but you’re able to follow through on those decisions in rapid succession.
Day to day and year to year, you’ll be able to identify where techs’ time is being best spent, what types of units are most and least efficient and profitable, where you have opportunities to expand your services and produce more revenue. In fact, if you’re using BuildOps, every single field throughout the platform is able to be configured into a report.
This list only scratches the surface.
- Budget
- Time to complete a repair or installation
- Ticket value
- Time to get to a worksite
- Leads generated
- Most profitable customers and technicians
- Operational trends
If you’re not measuring it, you can’t improve it, and if you’re not continuously improving, your competitors will eat your lunch. With all your data within reach, you know exactly how to keep your operations running smoothly, your team at max productivity, and your customers happy.
- Respond to Customers Without Delay
As if a broken AC wasn’t uncomfortable enough in your home, it can be mission-critical in the commercial setting. If you want to remain your customers’ contractor of choice, you have to be able to be there when they need you, and that could be at the drop of a hat.
In most cases, real-time data can even help you avoid such situations. When you’re able to track all of your operations in a quantifiable and measurable way, you can get ahead of trends occurring in your business.
Notice that a certain asset type always begins to fail at a certain age? You can adjust your maintenance schedules to ensure the failure is avoided before it ever becomes a problem.
In the event of an unforeseen problem or emergency, analytics will help you act fast and mitigate the damage. Using field service management software, you know where your techs are, what jobs they do best, and the comprehensive history of your customers’ assets.
Combine these insights to respond quickly and resolve the problem at hand. This also makes it easy for the team to request the resources they need and have them approved immediately.
Once the job is done, real-time reporting keeps you accountable for actually getting paid faster — the customer gets a seamless experience, and you get money in your pocket.
Use Real-Time Reporting to Grow Your Business
The growth of your business depends on how quickly you can respond to your clients, how effective your team is, and how satisfied your customers are with the service you provide. Though utilizing data to manage teams and make better business decisions doesn’t happen overnight, investing in real-time reporting will pay off quickly and continue to reap rewards in the future.
If you’re ready to see how real-time reporting can transform your business, talk to one of our product experts here at BuildOps. As vital as reporting is to running a modern business, it’s only one powerful part of our all-in-one solution designed specifically for commercial MEP contractors. You can request a demo today, and we’ll be in touch shortly to schedule a call.