What’s Your Software ROI?
Your job management software is an investment – so treat it that way
Return on investment is a fairly simple concept: what are you getting out of what you put in? Often used to refer to monetary investments and their direct or indirect payoffs, it can also be considered in a broader sense. Your investment might be time, effort, money, or other resources—whatever it is, how is it returning value?
Understanding and being able to measure or anticipate ROI is crucial to good decision-making and planning in a trades or service business. When choosing a job management platform, many business owners consider only the price tag. However, the return on investment is a more accurate measure of whether or not the purchase price is worth it.
The following are some of the returns you might receive from an investment in the right job management software—and although they are not all monetary, most do come back to improving your bottom line.
Time saved
A good JMS platform will, above all, create efficiency in your operations. On a larger scale, it can reduce labour costs and also free up your valuable time that can be spent on the tools or on governance and growth. They say time is money, and it certainly can be—if you spend it right!
Increased productivity
When your business is running smoothly, without the disruptions of checking details, misunderstandings between team members, and double handling of information, your people will be more productive. The link between productivity and profit is clear: more work done in less time is a fairly easy equation to solve.
Reduced errors
Mistakes are costly, particularly in a trades scenario where scheduling can be tight. A job needing to be redone or fixed eats into time that should be spent elsewhere and can also use up extra materials. At their worst, serious errors may mean hours spent on paperwork, reputation, time off for injured employees, and potentially even legal issues. Having the right information and equipment available to get the job done can greatly reduce the likelihood of mistakes happening, and a good JMS contributes to that.
Accurate financial planning
Insights and reporting, common features of the best job management platforms, provide business owners with very valuable information. This can include metrics such as profit margins per job or job type, overall revenue, staff performance, and more. Knowledge is power, and knowing these very important details can help business owners to strategically plan for the future, create cash flow forecasts, and generally make informed decisions to grow and improve.
Customer Satisfaction
When a business is organised and on top of things like scheduling, invoicing, and customer communication, it truly shows. Happy customers are more likely to recommend your services! A single satisfied and well-connected person is perhaps the best marketing tool in the entire toolbox.
Investing wisely in your software
Return on investment should be front of mind, then, when it comes to choosing the job management app that will help you to run your business. Part of the process must be consideration of the challenges you’re experiencing and how much they are costing you in time or money. Are you losing revenue due to scheduling issues and double bookings? Finding yourself unable to plan effectively for the future? Receiving a lot of customer complaints and seeing your reputation suffer from it? These are all problems that can be addressed, if not solved, with the right digital tools.
There is also a real risk of over-investing when it comes to job management software—and this is a large part of the reason that it’s so important to choose your platform wisely. Many businesses are swayed by the bells and whistles of a software that can do it all. However, smaller businesses or those with simpler operations or a narrower scope of services may not not require the Ferrari features. Achieving the best ROI means finding the software that does what you need it to do, and not too much more. Often, optimising—and thoroughly training staff on—a more affordable software is the smartest course of action.
The experienced FreeUp team are experts in helping businesses make the most of their digital tools. Whether that means reviewing your systems and choosing a new JMS platform, advising you on how to better use the one you have, or providing ongoing troubleshooting and training, they can ensure that trades SMEs are getting maximum return on their tech investment.