25 November 2021

Add 30k to your bottom line by digitising your trade and construction business

Unproductive time is one of the unseen barriers to any trade or construction business achieving a profit. Just one extra hour of chargeable time a week for a team of ten can mean an extra $30,0001 in the bank for a business owner, but where do you find that additional hour? One answer that we discuss in detail in our e-book The tradies guide to automating your business for better productivity and profitability is digitising your systems and processes.

It’s of great value, both financially and culturally, for trade and construction employers to know how productive their team are and what their team are working on in real time. Additionally. technology is changing the way tradies are able to manage their teams to help ensure jobs get done on schedule and to budget.

[Related: E-book The tradies guide to automating your business for better productivity and profitability]

Tracking tradies’ time in the cloud

Digital systems and solutions allow trade businesses to see how much time their employees have been spending on any given job, as well as how much time they have been spending on non-productive or non-chargeable activities. By seamlessly integrating your staff timesheets, job management, productivity tracking and budget analysis, you’re able to keep unproductive time to a minimum and see how your quotes are stacking up to reality.

It’s also valuable culturally. Gone are the days where tradies need to come into the office every morning to find out their schedule for the day or spend half the day on the phone arranging where everyone needs to be. With digitised systems, employees can access their schedule for the week and find out where they need to be, as well as access their payslips and leave balances when they need it.

With most solutions available on mobile phone, tablet, laptop and desktop, your team can enter their time on jobs as they go so that all information is entered timely and accurately as the week progresses. This data can then be pushed into an integrated payroll system which enables you to review time entered by your employees quickly and seamlessly. Then, with the click of a button, this can be pushed through to the payroll solution allowing the pay run to be processed without having to complete any manual data entry.

Teaching old tradies new tricks

One challenge many trade and construction businesses fear when digitising their systems is adoption resistance from their employees. But, resisting change generally stems from fear of the unknown so it’s critical to provide your tradies with the proper training so they can pick up any new processes.

One example is implementing a digital timesheet system. Some tradies might be used to a physical process which is usually filling in a job card with a pen and paper. These guys might not have a lot of experience using technology so, without proper instruction and training, a digital timesheet system could seem intimidating. However, once they are shown how to use a new system and see the simplicity involved with logging time spent on a job simply by selecting from a drop-down list, behaviours start to change.

In a world where lockdowns or natural disasters can happen at any time, digitising your business gives you the ability to operate seamlessly without having to have a physical base of operations. You can manage jobs, update and adjust as urgency levels and jobs change. The team always know where they are meant to be and what they should be doing. Customers have more certainty around when the work will be completed. And you know that nothing has been missed in the scheduling.

Download The tradies guide to automating your business for better productivity and profitability

With activity heating up in the trades and construction industry, it’s more important than ever for tradies to save time and maximise efficiencies wherever you can. Streamlined processes enabled by digital systems can help tradies make some real dollar gains.

If you’re ready to get admin work completed faster and efficiently delegate more tasks to your team, download The tradies guide to automating your business for better productivity and profitability to learn how automation can benefit your trade business and what you need to consider when selecting digital systems.

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