Category: <span>2018</span>

Category: 2018

Report Says U.S. Not As Prepared As Other Countries for Automation

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A report from Swiss technology leader ABB says the U.S. is behind other countries regarding its readiness for an increasingly automated world, placing ninth on a ranking of 25 advanced economies, according to www.savannahnow.com.

Researchers graded the countries in three main categories: innovation environment, which included money spent on research and development; school policies, from early curriculums to lifelong learning programs; and public workforce development, such as government-led efforts to retrain workers.

The report showed South Korea, Singapore, Germany and Canada are better prepared for automation largely because of their education systems and labor policies. Although it was acknowledged no country is “genuinely ready” for the technological shift expected to happen during the next three decades, the U.S. was deemed especially underprepared.

Guido Jouret, ABB’s chief digital officer, specifically referenced the U.S. educational system, which pushes students toward two- or four-year degrees. Colleges can be slower to keep up with technological changes, and companies will want workers who can adapt to cutting-edge technological developments.

By contrast, Germany encourages technical training, with 60 percent of young adults in the country training as apprentices in manufacturing, IT, banking, construction and other fields compared with 5 percent of Americans.

The Chinese government is updating public education to prioritize creativity rather than acing standardized tests; economists say these efforts are meant to train children and young adults to value independent thinking over regurgitation, which is a trait robots can’t yet replicate.

“Take the Southwest Airlines pilot—she did a phenomenal job landing that plane,” Jouret said, referencing a recent engine explosion that grabbed international attention. “This is the thing we need people to be good at—how to cope with the unexpected.”

Although U.S. leaders have praised apprenticeships as a way to help prepare workers for an increasingly technological world, economists say the U.S. would benefit more from continuous learning.

In Singapore, citizens were given cash in “individual learning accounts” they can use to cover job training courses at any stage in their careers. In Germany, lawmakers have proposed “employment insurance,” which would help workers pay for upgrading their skills during their lives.

The U.S. scores higher on research-and-development spending, which involves the dollars that fund advancements, devoting 2.79 percent of gross domestic product to the effort, which places the country fourth behind South Korea (4.23 percent), Japan (3.28 percent) and Germany (2.88 percent).

Note: This article first appeared on the NRCA website and can be viewed here.

Using Your Reports to Make Better, Profit-Driven Decisions for Your Roofing Business

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By Michelle Mittleman.

Software technology has opened the door for roofing companies when it comes to managing their business more efficiently and effectively than previous generations. CRM and ERP platforms, mobile applications and integrations give roofers 24/7 access to their business, including the information they rely on to make smart decisions.

It’s more than just knowing how many leads are in your pipeline, or how much revenue your top salesman generates on a quarterly basis. Dashboards and colorful graphs can’t always provide you with the in-depth analysis into the data that you need to see in order to make profit-driven decisions that impact your entire organization.

Going back and forth between Excel or separate programs means you are spending valuable time staring at spreadsheets, and not taking care of the things that really need your attention. As a roofing business owner, it’s more critical now than ever before that the reports you see and share with your teams are both accessible and easily generated from your software platform.

What Do Your Reports Tell You?

The greater the visibility you have into all of your data, the easier it is for you to extract the critical information necessary to run your business.

Is your reporting easy?

Reports are not helpful if you need to spend hours analyzing them. Reports generated from your CRM should easy to create, easy to to understand and easy to access.

Is your reporting customizable?

Being able to create custom reports from all of the data within your software platform means you get to pick and choose what’s important to you and not what a software company thinks you need.

Likewise, can your teams create their own reports that they need to succeed in their individual roles? Flexible data structuring and custom filtering means everyone has access to what they need.

Does Your Data Give You True Insight Into Your Business?

Being able to create calculations within your reports that allow you to derive meaningful insights and a greater understanding of what is happening in your business is the foundation of what software reporting functionality is about.

At the end of the day, these reports should be helping you make smart, profitable decisions for your roofing business.

Note: This article first published on the AccuLynx blog and can be viewed here.

South Florida Contractor Integrates Technology into Every Job Site

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Members of the BuiltWorlds team traveled through South Florida to learn all about the area’s key innovations that are pushing the built industry forward in new and unique ways. One of the companies spearheading that drive toward the future is Stiles Construction, a 67-year-old commercial real estate firm that’s shaped the Fort Lauderdale skyline.

As the BuiltWorlds team toured jobsites nearby Stiles’ Fort Lauderdale headquarters, they learned more about the company’s push for new technology on the jobsite. “That’s a 42-story tower that we plan on blanketing entirely with DeWalt wifi,” said Kris Lengieza, Vice President of Operational Excellence at Stiles, when referring to a jobsite beginning to lay the foundation. “We can more effectively use tools like Procore out in the field, then, so the guys don’t have to go back to the office.”

Streamlining the building process in that way helps Stiles run a particularly tight jobsite. Everything is scheduled, notated, and it’s getting easier to see who is on the jobsite, what they’re working on, and what tools they have. “We didn’t really track how good of a job we were doing,” Lengieza said of Stiles in the past. “I don’t think that’s atypical of organizations. I think we were pretty common in that.”

Where Stiles is atypical, however, is in their approach to remedying that gap in information. On top of deploying advanced technology on their jobsites, Stiles has noticed the reluctance the industry often has to adopt new technology and quelled its fears with friendly, enjoyable coaching sessions.

“We have provided all of our superintendents, all of our field guys, iPads, so now they all have the devices and we have now enabled them. We’ve given them no excuses not to do it. But that’s not enough. You need to get people understanding where the benefit for them is, so what we’ve done is gone with a grassroots effort where we will bring in superintendents and anyone that wants to join us for a training.”

The grassroots effort that Stiles is using to shepherd new technology onto their sites is only as effective as it is flexible, too, and as the company has quickly learned, taking input from everyday users is immeasurably valuable. Superintendents can suggest new avenues to use Procore on the jobsite, for example, and the company has taken these ideas on several occasions to better shape their software solutions.

As Stiles expands operations throughout the southeast, they’re continuing to call upon their workforce to propel change forward. To embrace innovation, they’ve learned, they must do it as a collective force. Changes can’t only come from the top down. “Now people are seeing the benefits of what we’ve put in place,” Lengieza explained. “We’ve also been changing the culture a little bit. If you have something that you don’t like the way it works, tell us about it. We might be able to fix it.”

Note: This article first published on BuiltWorld’s blog and can be viewed here.

Collaboration Between Industry Leaders Can Help Bridge the BIM Gap

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By Dennis Stejskal & Walter Davis.

Over the last 20 years, technology has played a key role in how information transfers through every phase of a building’s construction. As mobile technology continues to increase access to real-time feedback from the jobsite, it has become vitally important to have a comprehensive process for seamlessly connecting building information silos.

In the most recent version of the AGC Outlook and Hiring Report, contractors revealed their plans to increase productivity by adopting mobile technology to generate daily field reports (67%), enable field access to data in their ERP system (63%), as well as track employee time (59%).

Additionally, 49% of contractors expect the amount of work they perform involving Building Information Modeling (BIM) will either expand or remain consistent in 2018 compared to the prior year. These are all examples of much-needed integration between different systems in the construction process.

Despite this fact, much of the data-sharing process between construction disciplines remains disconnected or dependent on outdated import/export functionality. Seamless integration can eliminate this problem and create some key benefits.

For example, it becomes easy to click on a design object in a building information model, pull relevant information into an estimate, and then click on that same object within the estimate to return to the 2D and 3D source estimators. This provides insight into the impact of design changes through effortless access to the source data. Similarly, mobile technology can deliver jobsite data directly to financial and operations systems.

To achieve true integration, industry leaders must collaborate and work together to tear down software technology silos, so that direct links between specialized software tools can be built. This will allow for a bidirectional flow of project information that will be vital to the success of construction projects. The breaking of these siloed systems is imperative to improving efficiency, reducing costs, and modernizing the industry in a new era of technology.

Note: This article first published on BuiltWorld’s blog and can be viewed here.

Seven Ways to Use Big Data in Roofing

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By Ken Kelly, Kelly Roofing.

The biggest buzz word in technology today is “Big Data.”  You may not realize it, but you already have big data on your business.  It’s nothing more than a collection of records.  It can be a collection list, list of past customers, accounting numbers, time sheets or any list with similar fields.

The key to big data is how it is used.  Most people who have access to it are too far removed from business operations to utilize it constructively and use the results to improve their processes, grow sales, increase customer satisfaction and expand the bottom line.  Since you are on the front line, learning insights through validation will provide immediate ideas and help with implementation.

Here are seven ways you can use it immediately.

1 – Hiring Sales People

Entering the busy season your sales team starts running into issues keeping up with all the leads the company is receiving.  Your immediate reaction would be to hire another salesperson.  But, that’s a $100,000.00 investment and burned leads during the new salesperson’s training period.  There has to be another option.  Look to Bid Data for help to quantify options.  Calculate how many leads come from each zip code and balance them out among the sales team.  By quantitatively keeping salespeople in relative areas with balanced demand you will gain efficiency, cut costs, put off hiring another salesperson and keep response times down.

2 – Ad Spend

Is your advertising money really being used in the best way possible?  Are you sure?  How do you know?  Bid Data takes the guess work out of the equation.  Start by tracking all leads that come into the company by asking customers how they heard about you.  Next, take the breakdown and compare it two ways.  One, cost of advertising by sales volume.  Two, cost of advertising by margin.  You now have the information you need to start saving costs immediately by pulling money from programs that only deliver “Blue Sky,” general brand sentiment, and put it in vehicles that deliver real jobs with higher margins.

3 – Picking the Best Supplier

Strong relationships and good pricing are not the only criteria for picking a good supplier.  Consider letting big data help.  How much is your supplier costing you?  It’s an interesting question for sure.  Look to the data and answer these questions: How many times does the supplier not deliver on time leaving your crew stuck on the job without materials to work with?  How much have you overpaid for because deliveries were short?  Are you getting the payment term discounts they touted, or is the 2% back only on a few items?  These are all questions bid data can answer.  My suggestion is to arm yourself with the numbers and facts, then shop the market with the knowledge.

4 – Happy Customers

Are your customers happy with your service?  How do you know?  Is your team really delivering a great customer experience?  My suggestion is to start gathering data, so you have data to support it.  Add points to each answer and use the score to gauge the customer’s true impression of your company.  This valuable information will help steer your business in the right direction using facts, not feelings.

5 – Gamification

This is an up and coming concept and is starting to gain real traction.  Gamification is the art of assigning points to activities to quantify performance.  A few examples are:

  • When entering a lead into your CRM system, give points for the number of fields filled in and weigh the more important fields, like the customer’s email address, more heavily to encourage good phone skills.
  • Grant points, based on job size, for completing early or coming in under budget. Tie this to a bonus structure give to the operations team responsible for the project.

6 – Controlling Costs

We already discussed your supplier’s, sales lead’s and advertising’s effect on the bottom line.  Let’s look at a few more examples.

  • Fuel: Replacing vehicles with a more fuel-efficient variant may offset the vehicle payment and lower maintenance costs.
  • Insurance: Comparing loss ratios and marketing your company to carriers may help gain entry into an aggressive dividend return program.
  • Labor: By analyzing hours worked to dollars produced you can apply Prado’s 80/20 rule and eliminate the bottom 20% of your non-productive employees, non-profitable systems and non-performing crews.

7 – BI (Business Intelligence)

BI is the method of turning raw data into actionable strategy.  Remember, “You cannot manage what you cannot measure.”  There are many software programs that can help automate and chart BI.  Or, it could be done by hand via looking through the data manually.  These are the two most important parts of BI:

  • KPI (Key Performance Indicators: These are a set of goals that are set and then used to gauge accomplishments.
  • Predictive Analytics: This is the use of past historical performance to plan for the future.

Note: This article was first published in Roofing Contractor magazine and the full version can be viewed here.

Photo credit: Roofingcontractor.com

Technology Could Help Attract Younger Generation to Construction Industry

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Although construction sometimes has been viewed as one of the last industries to embrace technology, many companies are taking steps to implement useful technology on job sites. And as the industry evolves, it will have to embrace more innovation to attract millennials and those even younger, according to www.forconstructionpros.com.

Some emerging technology construction companies could incorporate on job sites include drones, artificial intelligence, augmented reality/virtual reality, smartphone apps, tablets and wearables.

“Millennials have grown up attached to technology,” says Chad Hollingsworth, co-founder and CEO of Triax Technologies, Norwalk, Conn. “Job sites today are so far removed from what millennials have come to expect in their daily lives. They expect new solutions to do their job better, to get rid of manual processes.”

One challenge is closing the gap between more seasoned construction professionals, who might be more hesitant to leverage new systems, and younger, more tech-savvy individuals, who might not have as much experience with traditional construction methods.

“Older generations look to millennials for how to incorporate the tech into the job site,” says Paul Gomori, application engineering manager for JCA Electronics, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

Additionally, the attitude and outlook millennials have toward life and careers can help entice them to work in the construction industry.

“Millennials want to add value, make an impact and find meaning in what they’re doing,” Hollingsworth says. “This carries over to their professional lives.”

But attracting millennials in the face of a labor shortage is not the only advantage to having more technology on job sites. Newer devices and methods can improve efficiency and productivity and produce tangible results.

“The right construction technology can centralize information and communication, improve safety, and reduce the amount of time spent on non-value-added tasks,” Hollingsworth says. “It is something that (workers) can use to develop their skills, streamline daily tasks and ultimately become better at their jobs.

Note: This article first appeared on the NRCA website and can be viewed here.

Just What is The Cloud and How Can Contractors Use It?

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By Ken Kelly, Kelly Roofing.

The Cloud, a mysterious place heavenly in perception; an invention to make our lives easier.  In reality it’s a confusing concept fragmented by concepts.  But, it’s getting better. To simplify, the cloud is basically hard drive storage, hosted by a company and accessible via the internet. You’re already using it if you have any kind of smart phone running apps.

The most popular use of the cloud is for file storage so that all your files are accessible from multiple devices, anytime, anywhere that internet connectivity exists. Here are the top seven uses of the cloud:

1 – File storage.

Job files usually consist of photos, proposal, contract, purchase orders, invoices, receipts, permits and more.  Scanning any paper documents and adding them to a single storage folder in the cloud allows access from any internet-enabled device.  Services such as OneDrive, DropBox and Google Drive can host your files and offer free plans with generous storage.

2 – Email anywhere

Modern companies use email more than any other form of communication. Some popular cloud-based services include Outlook, Gmail and iCloud. They all offer ample storage and connect to the device of your choice. Outlook and Gmail’s GSuite allow domain masking so you can use free email with your company’s vanity domain (www.YourCompany.com) for a more professional appearance.

3 – Calendar sync

Having the ability to sync your calendar with multiple devices ensure high productivity and prevents missed appointments.  Just about every modern email service includes a calendar sync as well.  However, the key to maximizing performance is calendar delegation; allowing others the ability to view, add, delete appointments from your calendar.  All our field employee appointments are set from the office using this ability.

4 – Shared notes

When bidding a large project, you need input from the safety coordinator, purchasing, estimating and approval from the company’s president.  Since there are many things to discuss try entering notes into a shared note program such as OneNote, Evernote or Asana and sharing it with your collaborators.  Each time a note is made it is tracked with a date/time stamp and the person’s initials so you can gain valuable input and approval when it is convenient to each person involved.

5 – File sharing

File sharing allows you to share the files you have stored in the cloud with customers and production teams. I’m a fan of SharePoint.  It has everything you will ever need and is used by almost all Fortune 500 companies.  OneDrive has the ability to share, but without the automation component.  Google Docs is similar to OneDrive.  iCloud is yet more limited, but a great start for those in the iOS ecosystem.

6 – Document collaboration

This takes file storage and file sharing to the next level. If you upload a proposal to the cloud and share it with your sales manager, bot of you can work on the document simultaneously. Office 365 and Google apps both offer this capability.

7 – The internet

The biggest advantage of the cloud is access to the internet itself.  A virtually endless supply of services, location information, directions, storage, collaboration, communications, search and just about anything else you could need is now available right in your pocket.

This is really just scratching the surface of the cloud.  In the very near future, the “Internet of Things” will make the cloud part of everything we do in life.  I suggest making an effort to incorporate as much of these ideas as possible to stay in line with the new way society communicates.  Your customers will expect it and the level of productivity gained will only help increase profits.

Note: This article was first published in Roofing Contractor magazine and the full article can be viewed here.

3 Ways Roofing Software Creates a Seamless Experience for Your Sales Teams

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By: Nate Stein, AccuLynx

As industry technology continues to advance, so does the ability of your sales teams to integrate their selling process with software platforms specifically designed to improve their efficiency.

 

As a roofing company, you rely on the expertise and organization of your teams in the field to generate, track and close new business every season. These teams are constantly on the move, handling massive amounts of paperwork, phone calls and tracking progress through the pipeline. Some roofing businesses may struggle to keep all of these moving parts organized and accessible for accounting and management back in the office. However, as industry technology continues to advance, so does the ability of your sales teams to integrate their selling process with software platforms specifically designed to improve their efficiency.

Unlike in the past, roofing sales teams no longer need to flood filing cabinets with seemingly never-ending loose-leaf paper and copies. Instead, emerging roofing business software platforms can completely change how your salespeople handle the documentation for customers and jobs in progress. By implementing a CRM into your roofing business, you can streamline the selling experience for your roofing sales teams and create urgency for the buyer.

Create Familiarity with Your Customer (and Never Lose Their Information Again)

Everyone remembers the not-so-good ol’ days when you went diving through seas of filing cabinets in order to locate that one phone number belonging to the prospect who you spoke with last week. After taking forever to locate the paper, you give the customer a call back, only to mess their name up during the call because you cannot read the handwriting of the salesperson who jotted down notes during the initial conversation. Now, not only did you waste time locating files, but you also lost a customer by not referring to them by the correct name, making them feel less than valued.

With roofing business software, you can combine the benefits of an ERP and a CRM platform to simplify your roofing sales management. Ditch that messy filing cabinet and replace it with software that allows you to electronically input all customer information and track them from prospect to invoice. Instead of wasting time sifting through physical files, soar through electronic files at lightning speed to locate customer information. Easily search in your CRM by client name, date, salesperson, address, etc.

With your data securely stored in the cloud, you will never lose a customer’s information. In addition, you no longer need to worry about offending your prospect by mispronouncing their name. When you originally speak with customer “Stephen,” you can jot down in your notes that his name is pronounced as “Steven,” and not “Stefan.” Now, when you call Stephen back, you

Leverage an Existing Relationship and Build Trust

Suppose your customer wants to see references or previously completed work. Roofing business software can give you the ability to search in your system for addresses near your customer, or similar style roofs you have completed. You can then send the prospect before and after photos of similar projects to show them that you put pride and effort into your roofing projects.

A CRM can ensure that you consistently give your customer up-to-date, correct information. Say you called a prospect a few weeks back and offered them a special deal on a roof repair. When you get back to them now, you want to make sure that you don’t forget what your original offer was, so that you do not frustrate your customer with incorrect, misleading information.

Track All Correspondence

With a CRM roofing software, your sales team can track all contact with your clients. Whether it is negotiating a deal, offering a discount, or just making a cold call, your sales team can take note of anything they wish, and won’t have to worry about it getting lost. Sales managers can oversee all projects, including which salesperson is dealing with which customer, and wherein the process the project is. With a bird’s eye view of the entire customer pipeline, from prospect to invoice, your teams can take complete control of the entire roofing business workflow.

By giving your sales teams the assets they need to produce more comprehensive, and organized processes, your business has the ability to increase sales, build trust, and make the customer acquisition process more intimate. Modernize your roofing job management with easy to use software that allows you to grow, while at the same time making the lives of you and your sales teams a whole lot easier.

Note: This article first appeared on the AccuLynx blog and can be viewed here.

How aerial view maps rethink roofing

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By Nick Bean, Nearmap.

 

The basic skills of building, replacing or repairing a roof haven’t changed much in centuries. Improvements in materials—from thatch and wood shingles to slate and asphalt tiles—unfolded over this time. But rapid changes in technology- including updated aerial view maps –  have helped roofers of every scale radically improve their businesses, and do it quickly.

 

Progressive roofing companies often use a blend of technologies these days. They might combine their standard practices with aerial measurement services to captures aerial views from 15°-45° (a.k.a., “oblique”) angles and top-down (or “orthogonal”) perspectives. Or they might purchase roof-measurement reports or decide to deploy deploys drones to provide visual information.

 

All that is fine—provided the roof of your target customer isn’t obscured by trees, limiting your prospecting to a relatively small area and resulting in inaccurate measurements. As you might imagine, many reports are not based on leaf-off imagery, the best satellite maps lack detail, and drones are typically flown on demand, regardless of foliage conditions.

 

Unfortunately, roofers have tight windows of opportunity to operate. They can become busiest right after a hurricane, a tornado, a hailstorm, or heavy snow coupled with high winds. Your lines may be flooded with calls from damage-sustaining households across a wide area. Even in good conditions, roofing companies are required to continuously prospect, estimate and quote with detailed measurements as they compete for business, one street and neighborhood after another.

 

In a highly competitive business, roofers need every edge they can get. Prospective customers want accurate repair quotes—and they want them quickly. So why wouldn’t you choose a tool that can give them both and, at the same time, enable you to accelerate your business?

 

High-resolution aerial imagery, captured multiple times per year offering leaf-on and leaf-off views, gives roofers exceptional perspective and a distinct advantage over many competitors. If that information can be instantly accessed from any laptop, mobile or connected device, all the better.

 

How does this razor-sharp information help you in your business? After a catastrophe, a roofer’s time is scarce. Every hour traveling from one job location to another eats up this precious time when you could just as well identify new prospects in minutes from your desktop. With high-definition aerial imagery, you can instantly scan thousands of rooftops at a tap or a click of the mouse. With a couple of clicks you can switch from vertical to panoramic to oblique views and swiftly identify roofing opportunities.

 

The most sophisticated visual tools are now available to everyone that let you generate precise measurements of rooflines and areas. Using an oblique feature, you can compare different roofs for accurate estimates of pitch. With some imagery software you can also annotate sections of the images—noting, for example, severe damage in a given corner, the need to pay particular attention to an especially steep area of the roof, or an area of the property with easy access to unload roofing materials. (Of course, you can check these calculations when you visit the site.)

 

Saving countless hours, operating from the convenience of your office, you can create dozens of accurate estimates per day, as well as get a fix on your underlying costs since you have all the visual information you need right at your desktop (or tablet or mobile device). And you can generate a visually stunning, highly accurate quote for prospects: they can see the damage up close and immediately grasp the extent of necessary work. That sort of presentation builds confidence—an advantage many of your competitors probably can’t offer. You build trust and are more likely to get a Yes or No from a customer on the spot.

 

The advantages of aerial imagery include not only leaf-off and leaf-on perspectives. Now roofers can easily navigate from vertical top-down perspectives to oblique angles while measuring height and width of the buildings and roofs. With easy and cost-effective access to rich, high resolution maps, you can work faster and smarter—and thereby increase your business. It’s a vital service whether you’re a large contractor, a midsize organization, or a mom-and-pop outfit with just a couple of employees.

 

Roofing may be an ancient profession. But to stay in business, you need every available advantage—today’s aerial imagery saves time, lowers costs, and may well be your most productive resource.

 

Note: This article first appeared on RoofersCoffeeShop.com blog and can be viewed here.