Run a Better Service Business

As a business owner or manager you are always looking for ways to streamline and increase efficiencies in regard to the processes involved in running your business. A lot of time and effort went into your research for the right solution. Your decision to invest in your business by utilizing the solution offered by High 5 Software was made because you saw a definite return on investment (ROI). Some of the things that you discovered were:

• More Billable Hours: You will never miss a billable opportunity again with the use of automated features. With less people needed for back office activities you can free up time for technicians to generate revenue with billable hours in the field.
• Expand Your Service Area: Increase your client base with top notch customer service and expand your work region using streamlined subcontractor management.
• Get Paid Up Front & Faster: Save money everyday by being paid earlier using our prepaid services feature. Invoice with ease using our diverse billing options; combined, partial, progress, & recurring.
• Cash Flow Management: With streamlined inventory, invoicing, subcontractor, delivery & service you will better manage your cash flow and always be notified which what accounts are outstanding.
• Sales Force Automation: Boost revenue through service industry best practices with complete customer relationship management features. You can provide follow up activities and easily create & deliver proposals.
• Build Profitable Maintenance Contracts: Set recurring billing and service level agreements (SLA) to get better support retention rates and generate more revenue.
• After you have made the investment in your business the question is how do you optimize and protect that investment? Or, to say it another way, how do I make sure that I am covered? That is where High 5 Software’s commitment to your success comes into play thru support.

If in your service business you run a fleet of service trucks to get your techs to the customer’s location, how much does it cost you in lost revenue or wasted labor costs when your trucks are broken down and your techs are idle as you scramble to find someone that can fix your trucks? Do you take on the expense of having a full time mechanic on the payroll along with the necessary equipment that they would need? Or do you look for a reliable solution (support) outside of your business so that you do not have to incur the overhead costs yourself? I think we all know the answer to that.

Having current support for your Service Management Enterprise software gives you access to a first class development and support team that is specifically dedicated to your success in regards to the benefits that attracted you to High 5 Software in the first place. All this is accomplished without you having to add to your payroll by hiring additional staff. The other option would be incurring the expense of having to train existing personnel which would most likely have a negative effect on their other duties…particularly if they are directly involved in the generation of revenue for your company.

You talk and we listen. One of the key ingredients in the enhancements and upgrades that go into the SME software comes from the feedback that we get from you. Our expert development and support team puts in many hours listening to customers and enhancing products to improve your business processes and drive efficiency. The only way to reap the benefits of this is by being on an active support plan. I am sure that you would want to ensure the success of your investment now and into the future…Click here to learn more.

Although it looks easy, developing custom software for your business is very hard.  Custom business software is ten times more expensive than off the shelf software.  Full Article

Instead of taking the path of custom development or continuing to hang on to your existing custom solution (which includes a bunch of excel files all over the place!), search for an off-the-shelf solution in your industry.  It’s critical that you look for a solution within your industry, there are many companies that have been around for many years honing their solutions for your industry.  If you feel that you will need custom elements or that you have custom business processes, find an off-the-shelf solution or a company that is willing do custom development around their standard solution.

If you have any inclination about developing your own custom business solution, STOP.  Find an industry specific off-the-shelf solution.  This will allow you to focus on your business, and let the business software companies get you up and going on the off-the-shelf solution.  If you have a field service company dealing with higher end equipment, inventory, or subcontractors contact High 5 Software or email sales to see if our software fits your needs.  If our software doesn’t fit your needs, keep looking, in fact our sales people will recommend other solutions if ours is not a fit.

Full Article

High 5 Software has been ranked #11 in the list of top field service management software!  Thanks to our customers, employees and partners of making this happen!

Top Field Service Software

This is a great time to purchase capital equipment and software for your business.  2012 still has the Section 179 deduction up to $139K for new and used equipment and software like SME from High 5 Software or $560K total.  See this link for a simplified explanation: Section179.org  or go to the IRS site for the unreadable version  IRS 179 Deduction

While congress farts around on the fiscal cliff, it’s not clear if this will continue next year so take advantage of this deduction this year, especially if you have profits in your business.  Of course, if you don’t have profits in your business, maybe you should buy software to improve your profitability!

Mention this blog and your salesperson can provide up to 5% discount on your High 5 Software purchases for Dec 2012 only.

Manta started a discussion about ERP versus CRM.

However, they missed the discussion about Line of Business applications like SME, so I had to add my two cents!  Most small to medium size companies should search for industry specific applications to run their business and NEITHER ERP or CRM.

Here is my reply to this article:      http://connect.manta.com/t/know/-the/-difference/-amp/-the/-value/-erp/-vs?uid=656549&f=12&t=34271&start=0

There is another important category typically called Line of Business (LOB) application. These applications are industry specific to meet most of the “ERP” needs of a business without incurring the huge price of a full blown ERP package. Examples include industry solutions to support Manufacturing, Inventory management, MSP/IT companies, Field Service, Transportation, marketing, Online ecommerce, a Yogo Studio, and many more.
Many of these industry specific solutions include CRM.

As a small to medium business, you should first find an industry specific solution and not try to search for an ERP solution because it will be too expensive and difficult to implement and use. Nor should you look for a CRM solution, because it will only provide a partial solution.

We provide industry specific solution for Field Service companies for over 20 years. This means we have refined our software for the needs of this industry working with many companies. If your business is in this industry, you would spend 100 times less than an “ERP” solution. Note that technically our solution could be considered an ERP solution, I think when searching for a solution look for specific software such as “field service management software” rather than generic term such as ERP or CRM.
Regards,
Mark Stair, President, www.high5software.com

Fire & Safety Service Management is a matter of life and death

Live long and prosper with the right Fire & Safety service management

Imagine tracking 1000’s of pieces of fire and safety equipment that people rely on for the safety of their employees and families.  It’s really something you want to get right!  Not only is the safety of people at stake, but regulations insist that equipment like fire extinguishers are checked and inspected every year.  Then try to do this profitability with the right process and tools.

The amount of info to track and manage could be daunting, but if you enter the info once and then have repeating or recurring work orders, the effort can be tractable.  Here is the high level business process of managing this info:

1. Capture all the customer sites.  Integration with QuickBooks can automate this step or good importing tools from excel can really help.
2. Load all the customer equipment to the site such as fire extinguishers, back flows, emergency exit lights, smoke detectors, fire hoses, alarms and more like what is in this list: http://www.fireprofireprotection.ca/services.html.  Excel importing or a mobile barcode can capture all the customer equipment on site and then sync into the system.
3. Create recurring orders for each site with the various service work to be performed for each piece of equipment.
4. At the appropriate time, the recurring orders are automatically generated and specific techs can be scheduled.
5. Techs are notified on mobile device or PC through email calendar or tech portal.
6. Use your existing inspection forms that are in pdf, excel, word, or even those old tri-copy pre-printed forms and then upload into the service software or scan and upload.
7. Techs close the order and accounting can invoice the order or combine a bunch of orders into one combine invoice for all sites for easier management by the customer.  Or maybe you have the customer on a maintenance contract and then you can bill them an agreed amount through a recurring invoice.  Sync the invoices with QuickBooks or enter in your accounting program
8. Provide customer access so customers can see status of inspections, work orders, and access copies of the completed inspection reports.
9. Network with other companies who have established best practices in this market such as Fire Pro Fire Protection in BC, Canada or Liberty Fire Protection in Texas.

Track everything well, get the right tools, and follow a good business process.

“Live long and prosper”

People often ask about inventory valuation using an alphabet soup of terminologies such as FIFO, LIFO or Averages.  These methods are fine from an accounting standpoint and maybe over a long period of time, but they are really not accurate for whats really going on in the day to day business.

Is there a better way?  Yes, High 5 Software has developed a better way of valuing inventory by using true inventory value in SME.  We did it this way because we had to in order to track serialized inventory and then achieved the benefit of better financial tracking.  See below for details and an example.

Inventory Valuation in SME

SME inventory management is BETTER than both FIFO and averages. In fact one of our customers just switched all inventory accounting from QB to SME because neither FIFO or averaging gives a complete picture.  For this customer, QuickBooks inventory valuation was wrong somewhere between between $0 to $4.2M, but they did not know until they tracked values in SME only.

Instead, SME uses ACTUAL costs. It tracks every lot being received and this is necessary for serial number tracking of parts. Now within a single lot, SME will use FIFO, but if one lot is different from another lot, it would use actual.

For example, you are selling Widgets and Equipment (serialized):

1. You order 10 widgets and 5 equipment today for $10 and $100 respectively. (Lot 1)
2. The next day you order 10 widgets and 5 equipment for $20 and $200 respectively. (Lot 2)
3. Total Widget inventory value is $300 (10*$10 + 10*$20).
4. You sell 1 widget and 1 equipment. SME allows you to specify the specific lot used or serialized equipment. Therefore you get real, true costing.
5. Let’s say you select the widget and equipment from lot 2. SME would deplete the $20 and $200 items. SME would tell you that the cost of items remaining are 10*$10 + 9*$20 for widgets or $280. A FIFO system would take the $10 part even though that’s not the one used and tell you inventory value is 9*$10 + 10*$20 or $290, but this is wrong!. An average system would say the average cost is $15 and say inventory is worth $285, which is also wrong.

So in summary, SME gives true inventory valuation instead of false accounting information. Over the long term FIFO and average may work out from an accounting standpoint, but wouldn’t you want to do better with SME?! Note that you can always run a report in SME to give inventory average numbers if you really want accounting right, but reality wrong numbers!

http://high5software.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Inventory_Valuation

Why High 5 Software chose Microsoft Azure for its Cloud based Field Service Software

High 5 Software is moving rapidly into mobile and cloud solutions due in part to industry trends, but mostly to please customers.  SME Tech Portal is an example solution that leverages the best of cloud and mobile technologies to allow technicians in the field be able to see and manage work orders assigned to them.  From their laptops or mobile devices technicians can add/edit notes, add timesheet entries, add/remove parts, add expenses, and obtain customer signature.  This is a big compliment to our Service Management Enterprise software and we have the Azure team to thank.

We evaluated a number of different cloud solutions to achieve this goal and ended up selecting Microsoft Azure.  This was far from an obvious choice at first, but we now believe it’s a great decision.  This blog highlights the decision and our path before “seeing the light” of the benefits of Azure.  You see, many of the other cloud solutions are evolutionary and not too much different from a server in your office, but just “in the cloud”.  Azure on the other hand is revolutionary and I must admit I thought it was stupid at first.

We first started working with GoGrid and Amazon EC2 cloud solutions.  We were very familiar with these kind of “server in the cloud” solutions.  If you know how to manage a Microsoft server, then you will immediately know how to run a cloud solution like GoGrid and Amazon.  Sounds great, right?  You can still leverage your existing IT staff or knowledge directly into the cloud….

What we discovered when we first started working with Azure was there really is no server to manage.  What? Microsoft has tremendous server capabilities and I can’t manage it? What the heck!  I thought this was the dumbest thing Microsoft had ever done.  However, with the help of Microsoft Azure experts, I learned that Azure is different and you can totally ELIMINATE your Information Technology (IT) resources!  So, we pressed on.  We finally got it to work and at the same time I had an epiphany that Azure is revolutionary in it’s approach.  With Azure you go directly from development to deployment; the IT work is completely eliminated.  With Azure, IT is now taken care of by Microsoft Azure including server management, patching, etc.  We can now reallocate resources normally dealing with IT and server issues on more important tasks that directly benefit our customers.

So, now we are running our solutions on Azure and have more time to service and support our customers rather than dealing with IT and server issues.  Thanks Microsoft Azure team, for your help to see the benefits and congratulations on developing a revolutionary solution that leapfrogs other cloud solutions.

See our Press Release on Azure here:  http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/6/prweb8554271.htm

Stanley Steemer Needs a Mobile Makeover
I really like Stanley Steemer. They have a well run service organization with good prices.Stanley Steemer Needs a Mobile Makeover, they really work well with the customer, and the results are excellent.  For these reasons I am a loyal customer.

Yesterday they called to see if I wanted my carpets cleaned and I said yes.  It was scheduled promptly for the next day. They showed up on time and did great work as usual.

But I couldn’t help notice they used an old Windows Mobile phone to handle the mobile work orders. Every time I signed the device the technician apologized “Sorry, It’s really slow”.  Their system makes you sign 2 or three times and each time I heard the same lament, “Sorry, It’s really slow”.  I think you really only need to sign two times, but I think it failed so I had to sign an extra time.  The techs don’t say sorry about their excellent work, so why should they have to say sorry about their mobile solution?  I suppose if you are in the cleaning business, appearances matter.  It is no surprise the Stanley Steemer van shows up bright, clean, and on time.  Seems to me that their mobile technician work order system should too!

At this point I told them that we provide service management software and I demonstrated the SME Android application. The techs kept saying “Wow, that’s fast”, “Wow, that’s really nice and cool”. They said they really need a new mobile solution and told me to contact the manager at the Woodinville office.

Wouldn’t it be great if Stanley Steamer techs could continue to provide excellent service without saying “Sorry” about their mobile solution!  I think it’s time that they upgrade, and I know a company that could help them out.