ROOFING SOFTWARE GUIDE
THE ULTIMATE ROOFING SOFTWARE GUIDE: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ROOFING SOFTWARE
If you have just recently begun your search for the perfect roofing software, you probably know there is a lot to learn about it to make the best decision and ensure your company’s success. With so many options on the market and details involved, it can be intimidating to sift through.
This roofing software guide will walk you through everything you need to know. From explaining the basics of roofing software programs to determining the features you should look for to how to successfully implement your new system—we’ll cover it all.
ROOFING SOFTWARE guide: BASICS
What is roofing software?
Before we can dive into all of the moving parts of roofing software, it’s important to understand what it actually is. Roofing software is a type of cloud-based business management software that has been designed exclusively for the roofing industry. It was created to help roofing companies and their various teams effectively and efficiently manage tasks and roofing projects.
How is roofing software different from a standard CRM?
It’s no secret that every industry follows different procedures and techniques. So every business should have access to tools that fit how their industry works. For example, a plumber or electrician wouldn’t have the same business needs as a marketing company. It doesn’t make a lot of sense for a roofer to work with the same CRM as a healthcare provider.
Most basic CRMs are designed to provide companies with a centralized place where they can store customer and prospect data, track communications, see project/task updates and run business reports. Relatively standard, right? While roofing CRMs, like Jobba, have the ability to do everything a standard CRM can do, they can also handle more roofing industry-specific details, including:
- Creating estimates and proposals
- Ordering updated aerial roof measurements
- Managing projects and production
- Tracking sales
With so many important roofing details at their fingertips, roofing companies are choosing to implement roofing CRM software as a more efficient way to manage their business and increase their opportunities.
Why is roofing software better than a DIY solution?
A lot of business owners—including roofers—have the same question before deciding to add a CRM or any new software to their business plan: Why is this a better option than how I currently manage tasks and have for years? Because your business handles so many different projects of different size and scope, it’s not surprising that vital information can fall through the cracks. Using a self-made process requires using multiple apps and platforms to make sure jobs are being completed and prohibits you from being able to easily handle simple tasks.
However, roofing CRMs, like Jobba, allow you to handle all aspects of your business without having to switch from platform to platform. Your roofing team can easily manage customers and leads, access aerial measurements, handle billing details, and more—all in one location.
Roofing software can also help you understand where your business might be bumping into problems. It helps identify if projects aren’t sticking to timelines, missing details/documents, delayed sales and much more.
roofing software guide: the benefits
Increased profits
It’s no secret that every roofing business is always looking for new ways to boost their profits. More business—and more money—means you can provide your staff with pay increases, invest in new opportunities and expand your company. So how exactly does roofing technology provide you with additional revenue?
Roofing software helps simplify your processes, provides in-depth business performance reports and monitors every projects’ progress. By being able to offer customers things like instant, accurate estimates and improved production completion can allow you to complete jobs faster and take on more projects—ultimately increasing profits.
Improved communication and collaboration
A lack of communication among team members or between various departments is something that plagues every business. And roofing companies aren’t immune. Maybe someone in the office didn’t relay a critical update to the sales team. Or perhaps production didn’t let other team members know of a new deficiency they discovered. Thanks to innovative roofing technology, collaboration across the company has never worked better.
Tools like software for roofers can stamp out communication and collaboration problems by providing a centralized hub for all actions and tasks within your company. Whenever someone within your organization has a question about a particular task or project, they can easily login to your roofing CRM and find real-time updates. They can get the latest details on things like:
- When a job profile was last updated
- A project’s current status
- What department/team member is working on it
- And more
By implementing a roofing CRM, your teams will not only have better communication with each other, but will also allow for new opportunities.
Enhanced customer satisfaction
One of the most important things you can do as a business owner is to ensure you are providing top-quality customer service. If projects become delayed because of incorrect information or inaccurate estimates are delivered, it could result in an upset customer or even a job loss.
Technology for roofers not only helps you and your roofing team stay on top of tasks, but it also gives you the tools you need to make sure a customer is aware of everything going on and project updates/changes. Roofing software also offers functionality like communication logs to help your teams who have direct contact with customers keep track of how things are being delivered to your customers.
Boosted productivity
It can be challenging to keep your roofing teams engaged and productive. Many roofing business owners are turning to technology to help them complete tasks faster and give their employees better solutions.
For example, if your sales team is struggling with how much time they spend on creating estimates or contracts, they may not be able to address new potential sales as often as they would like. Roofing software allows salespeople to easily upload customer data into the desired documents. It can reduce the amount of time spent on small tasks and allow for your teams to work on new projects.
Better organization
Organization might seem like a small item that wouldn’t affect how your roofing company operates, but it is actually pretty crucial. If job files, production calendars or billing statements are disorganized, it can lead to a lot of problems within your business.
Roofing software helps you organize all your data and can streamline your processes. Available tools can help you complete projects easier, keep customers happy and reduce your number of admin resources. You and your teams will be able to handle multiple roofing jobs at once while providing superior service and boosting your company’s reputation.-
Features and functionality of software for roofers
Project management tools
After a contract has been signed, it’s finally time to get started with the new roofing project. Keeping track of all tasks and milestones is incredibly important to maintaining a reasonable timeline and providing a great finished product to customers.
With your selected roofing CRM, you can keep all of your project information organized and allow for all team members to stay in the know. Everyone can view the project’s status as it continues to move through various stages. For example, if a project has gone from needing to be scheduled to the initial production stage, the team working on this project can see everything that is happening, if anything is needed from them and what the next steps are.
Crew scheduling
Crew scheduling has been proven to be one of the most difficult tasks a roofing company faces. Needing to see all of your field teams availability, being able to coordinate schedules, finding last minute replacements, there’s plenty of room for things to get mixed up or missed.
When it comes to getting your labor crew scheduled, your roofing software offers different features and functionality that allows you to view everyone’s schedules, including:
- Field crews
- Production managers
- Subcontractors
- And more!
These features make scheduling new roofing jobs a breeze.
Job estimates
When your salespeople go out into the field and are tasked with providing an estimate, it can either lead to a fast signature on the dotted line or, if the estimate is inaccurate or takes an extensive amount of time to draw up, can lead to a job loss to another roofing company.
Certain Roof Estimating software solutions for roofers offer tools to auto-populate customer information and job site details (dimensions, deficiencies, desired products, etc.) to your estimates. This eliminates the need to manually enter data and reduces the risk of human error.
Customizable reporting
Sometimes roofing businesses have a tough time getting all the data they need regarding their business. That can be anything from individual salespeople’s metrics to overall business performance. Many industry leaders have found that customized reporting tools within their roofing CRMs can help them measure operations.
Some roofing applications like Jobba even offer reporting tools to help you track your business’s progress and measure performance.
Lead management
Lead management is a key factor in running a successful roofing sales department. If new leads get missed or overlooked, it could cost your company a potential job that might have brought in big profits. So how does one ensure you’re tackling all your leads in a timely manner?
Your roofing software can notify you of any incoming leads and provide some brief notes on the project. The right software solution also tracks all data and activities to provide a comprehensive view of your sales pipeline. This gives your salespeople more time to spend on searching out new prospects.
Communication history
Whether you are talking about internal or external communication, it is important to always know who has said what, when it was said and who it was relayed to. Communication problems are something that plague many different businesses in many different industries. But it is especially hard to keep track of for roofers since half of their teams are at numerous sites and not in the office.
Roofing software is designed to help bridge the communication gap that exists between cross-functional teams. It offers tools to help record different forms of communication between team members as well as with customers for the duration of a project. Team members have the ability to refer back to conversations to ensure nothing gets missed.
Photo capturing and editing tools
Having pictures associated with every project helps to identify deficiencies, shows the roof’s initial state and documents the finished product. It’s important that your teams who are in the field have a way to capture these things and share them with the rest of the team (and not lose the image in their camera roll).
Roofing technology provides contractors with tools to help manage photos of work and make notes on any specific areas that might need additional attention. Everyone that is ever on-site (salespeople, estimators, production crews) can upload photos to a roofing job’s file and view them at any time—all from their mobile device.
Finding the best Roofing software for your business
What areas need to be improved?
One of the biggest, most important questions you need to ask yourself when thinking about adding a software solution to your company: What areas of my business are experiencing problems or hurdles? To be able to choose the best roofing CRM option, you have to look at what areas need some additional attention. Is it your Sales department? Production? Billing?
The state-of-the-art features that are found within roofing technology can help you address ongoing issues and provide efficient solutions to help step up your roofing business.
What solutions fit your processes?
Surprisingly, not all CRMs are designed to meet the same needs. While some have been created to meet the specific needs of roofers, others are broad enough to be used for a number of industries and trades. When selecting the right software for your business, you need to evaluate how you handle your current business processes, what you’d like to change and what future you see for your business.
Taking time to give your processes and performance an in-depth review can give you a deeper understanding about what you should look for in a roofing CRM. While it is important to choose software that helps you achieve your business goals, it’s also a necessity that it can be quickly and easily adopted by everyone.
What are your company’s goals?
Your business goals are what help you determine things like how many new employees you want to hire, how you should go about opening a new location or what tactics to try to bring in more revenue. No matter what kind of goals you have for your roofing company, they can actually be a factor when you are choosing a new piece of business management software.
While some CRMs don’t provide a lot of tools to help with business growth and achieving your goals, roofing technology is designed to do just that. Solutions like Jobba can help you easily reach new heights with components that:
- Streamline processes across multiple locations
- Track new revenue and sales performance
- Keep teams connected
- And more
Solutions for the entire company
Solutions for business owners
Owning a roofing company comes with a lot of responsibilities. From making sure you’re hitting your sales goals to identifying snags in production to monitoring billing, it can be overwhelming if you don’t have the right tools to help you.
Roofing software offers features designed with roofing business owners in mind. While having the ability to see everything going on with each of your roofing jobs, providers have tools that allow you to manage each of your teams, look into past projects, pull reports for a variety of topics, and get a full picture of how your business is performing.
Solutions for salespeople
Sales is where the entire process starts with any new project. Giving your salespeople the right tools to easily, efficiently and effectively bring in new business is vital when choosing a roofing software provider.
Providers like Jobba offer your sales teams features like aerial measurement ordering, inspection tools, documentation tools (photos, videos, etc.), estimate templates and eSign features for contracts. These pieces of functionality within your roofing CRM can help make closing sales easier and bring in more revenue.
Solutions for production crews
Your roofing production crews are the ones who are in charge of managing the project once a contract has been signed. So it is important to implement a system that provides tools specifically designed for them.
CRMs for roofers give your production teams the ability to view project timelines, newly scheduled projects, checklists and more. They can also correspond with your in-office teams from the job site if any questions arise.
Solutions for office staff
Although sales gets the project started and production makes the physical work happen, your office teams are also a crucial part of keeping projects on track and running smoothly.
By adding roofing technology to your business, the office staff (billing department, customer service, etc.) can easily view all ongoing projects, notice any problems and reduce time spent in other platforms while reducing the chance of duplicate information.
roofing software guide: Integrations
Why integrations are important?
We’re sure that prior to your technology search that you have already been working with a variety of platforms to complete your work. Using more than one system can be rather frustrating when you have to constantly switch between different applications or add the same data in more than one location. This can also lead to communication issues, human error and more.
Roofing software offers a number of integrations that are compatible with the systems that house all of your company and customer information. For example, roofing software that is able to integrate with Quickbooks can allow you to store and add billing information in your CRM so you don’t have to enter information twice.
Integration types
There are a number of integrations that your roofing software provider can work with. It can be anything from connecting to your current billing system to other outside lead sources (i.e. website) to your aerial measurement provider.
Jobba offers many integrations including those with the following:
- Quickbooks
- Google Maps
- Google Calendar
- Followup CRM
- And more!
Getting started with roofing technology
Customized training and ongoing support
After you have finally chosen your new piece of roofing technology, you have to learn how to use it properly and effectively. Roofing software providers, like Jobba, offer personalized training with roofing CRM experts to help you know to successfully use your new platform for your business.
With in-depth training and continuous support, you will become a wiz with your new software in no time. Your roofing technology’s company will assign you your own specialist who will be on hand to help with any issues or questions you have.
Getting all teams onboard
Once you have decided to add roofing software to your business, it can be difficult for your employees to adapt to it. They may not see reasons to change their processes or even understand the need for any upgrades, especially if they aren’t up to date on any new business goals or current performance. To help make adoption easier, start by sharing the business’s overall performance, areas that are falling short and what goals the owners have for the future.
When promoting the use of a new platform, it is important to be patient with your staff and to offer tips on how to be consistent when getting used to roofing software. While there might be some resistance, especially in the beginning, you should always remind your teams that while change is never easy, the benefits can be huge—including more money on their paycheck.
CONCLUSION
Preparing to buy and implement new roofing software can feel a bit overwhelming considering all of the options that are on the market. But we are here to help make the process as easy and painless as possible. Jobba offers full training (virtual and in-person) and ongoing support to help make sure you and your entire team feel comfortable with your new roofing CRM. So sit back, relax, and get ready to start enjoying the powerful benefits that are coming your way.
