The impact of COVID-19 has caused every business owner to rethink the way they market their service and run their operation. New technologies have provided fresh inspiration.
When you consider that in 2022, 80% of people found their tradie online, it’s easy to see how far the landscape has shifted from the days of relying on the yellow-pages and a solid word of mouth rep.
Powerful new technologies enable you to better engage customers, offer new cutting edge services, and bring slick automation to your operations. If you remain stuck in the old way of doing things, you will be left behind. That’s why taking advantage of new innovations in technology is more important today than it ever was before.
01 DIGITAL TRAINING
We don’t want to toot our own horn – but over the last 6 years, the Tradies Success Academy has helped thousands of trade and service based business owners all across the world create the businesses and financial freedom they always dreamed of – and it’s all been done online.
Digital training is affordable, time-efficient, convenient, and extremely powerful. In 2022, whatever type of help you need for your business and personal growth is readily available at your fingerprints.
Today, there is simply no excuse not to get the training you need.
02 E-INVOICING
Do you want secure, efficient, and cost-effective invoicing? Do you want to be paid on time, and with ease?
Then consider e-invoicing, which can be run through accounting software like Xero.
1.2 million invoices are sent in Australia each year. Processing a paper invoice costs about $30.80, and a PDF invoice costs $27.97. E-Invoicing on the other hand only costs $9.18 – about one third of the cost.
In addition to this, about 20% of traditional invoices are botched – they can be sent to the wrong person or contain incorrect information. This delays payment, complicates the back-end of your business, and slows everything down.
03 DIGITAL REPORTS
Any regular report, like safety inspections or staff training, can be made digital. Digital reports create an opportunity for new and dynamic reports which can also be customised.
You can access digital reports from any electronic device, and create them to be far more intuitive and flexible than regular reports. For example, a Digital Safety Report could be designed to automatically populate supporting documentation relevant for the client.
They’ll ramp up your on-site and off-site upsells, they’ll create consistency and reliability across your business, minimise errors, give your business an elite touch, and create a much more slick and professional experience for the customer.
Software like iAuditor and Jotform is what you want to be looking at to create digital reports. It’s not the trade industry standard just yet, but implemented correctly, digital reports are an extremely powerful tool with the potential to transform your business operations.
04 DRONES
Drones with cameras are an awesome tool for tradies where access is an issue to assess a job.
Drones are increasingly being used by sparkies to inspect hard to reach areas, which has obvious safety benefits and provides real-time data.
Obviously, the use of drones can massively improve efficiency and quoting times.
A word of warning that there are legislative requirements and guidelines to consider, too – Check out CASA (Civil Aviation Safety Authority) for more information on this.
05 VIRTUAL REALITY
Virtual reality is going to have a massive impact on tradies and the construction sector in the next two or three years. VR tech is already being used by some sectors of the architectural and job planning area.
Imagine being able to show your clients what a finished job looks like! Virtual walk-throughs will help you spark your customers imagination and get a quote over the line. This is likely going to be the reality in the coming years, offering a really impressive point of difference and memorable customer experience for those first on board.
06 JOB MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE
Job management software is an absolute game-changer for business operations. Tradify, SimpRo, ServiceM8 and many others, can make juggling multiple projects and jobs an absolutely seamless process.
Today, tradies are embracing this technology in record numbers to save time and money.
With a job management system, you can save time with visits to the site, brief your team remotely, and have images related to each job attached and categorised within the platform. Pre-made forms, invoices, GPS tracking, messaging and integration with other software has smoothed out trade business operations and enabled much greater productivity and profit margins.
While we love business done on a handshake and the good ol’ pen and paper, life is infinitely easier and more organised as technology advances and tradies can go from initiating conversations to quoting, from one job to the next, to invoicing and maintaining relationships with ease.
