Strategic Technology

I’m getting my roof re shingled. And not by some national coast – to -coast behemoth of a company either.

Just a small business local roofing firm. Let me ask you, are you this type of business? Are you a local small business firm? Now, how about you? how do you use technology?

Oh? You Are Too Small For Tech are You?

I’m getting my roof done! Roofing? And technology? Peel off and replace shingles? Isn’t that as low technology as you can get?

Not Necessarily!

Lets start at the top – (literally) – For smaller housing roofing projects, the sales team still gets on the roof of the house to measure the square footage of the major areas of the roof.

But harder jobs? For example, complex ‘McMansions’, Churches, or any roof with unusually steep and dangerous slopes? For a per roof fee, simply based on the street address, they have a service that uses satellite imagery to give them the full square footage of the roof. Period! Done!

Hours spent setting up harnesses or crawling around trying to get accurate measurements? None! They simply enter the street address, and receive an email with the result. The sales representative told me this could be done for every roof, but the ‘per roof’ cost of the service causes them just to use it for the ‘bad ones’. (It does not take a pundit to predict that as this service cost comes down, you will soon call your roofer for a quote, give your address, and you will get your quote by email)

I’m still with the sales team here; dormers or other points of your roof? An iPhone app that uses the camera and the phones leveling feature to provide full slopes and square footage. Again saving measurement time.

Now lets move to the installation team; Roofing is a weather sensitive business. So, the weather report said rain all day, and right now it is pouring. Do we send the crew home? or do we wait a half hour for it to pass?

It is a critical question, because if you guess wrong? Well, if you guessed wrong, you risk keeping six guys on payroll in bad weather with no revenue, alternatively, you risk sending them home and good weather appears in 45 minutes, and you’ve lost an entire day of revenue.

Enter another iPhone app that goes beyond the weather report, it actually uses local radar imagery to show real time rain bands as they move through a localized area. The crew supervisor told me it paid for itself in one wet Canadian summer by answering the question; send them home and lose an entire day of labour? Or wait it out and get more work done after that weather band passes.

 The SMB Takeaway

There is no limit to what technology can do if you think about your business processes. And do not think that you are too small to leverage technology.

Here is a true small business that is using technology to reduce its cost of sales, and improve its revenue and labour ratios.

That is win-win for any small business.

So let me ask you again; Do you still think you are too small to leverage technology in your business?

Photo Credit Elliott Brown via flickr