DECEMBER 2018 | 23
News
Read online at www.proinstaller.co.uk
potential lies. Investigate that
area, it’s where your time is best
spent.
I was talking to someone who
ran a trade business recently and
that had just bought a mini-digger.
They had looked at the money
they had spent on hiring diggers
over the last year and then located
a second hand one. They had
projected a huge saving since this
was the most critical tool needed
for most of their jobs.
Just be careful with cost cutting.
Some investments actually reduce
costs, and this can particularly
apply to quality tools.
Think about a system
Marcelle Stoughton who runs
Fencing Services with her partner
suggests that: “To be profitable,
you must be as efficient as pos-
sible”.
As the CEO of an app pro-
vider, I am obviously biased,
but I genuinely believe that big
savings come from using the right
system. My company, Powered
Now, along with others, provides
automation for the trade. With
more and more tablets and smart-
phones around and millennials
very familiar with them, there
is an increasing proliferation of
apps to run on these devices.
They are much easier to use than
old PCs and can be used on-
site. There are many advantages
including time-saving, efficiency
improvements and faster and bet-
ter quotes. And as we all know,
for installers, time is money.
Features that are often included
are quotes, invoices, payments,
chasing late payments and shared
diaries, tracking people and com-
pany chat from within the app.
Not to mention gas safety certifi-
cates. One of the biggest benefits
is having everything in one place
and avoiding a mountain of pa-
perwork. Instead, documents can
be found with a simple search
and automatic backup means they
can’t be mislaid.
Talking to a big range of our
customers, we know that the
average business owner saves
more than three hours each week.
I expect that similar results may
be achieved by our competitors.
That’s a lot of extra time you
could be charging clients.
At the end of the day
Hopefully we all enjoy our
work but at the end of the day we
all want to make a decent living
too. To achieve this, it’s good to
stand back and try to look at the
big picture. Thinking around the
business often provides ideas for
improving things which can also
make life simpler. A lot of the
things that I have suggested here
are obvious, but that’s always the
best place to start.
Exciting ideas that claim to in-
stantly change everything rarely if
ever work. My hope is that some
of the simple thoughts here can
generate some growth and more
cash for you. All the best!
www.powerednow.com