Almost every tech business promises a fix-all to problems or tasks your landscape business navigates through on a daily basis. Unless you’ve put in the work to automate your business and learn the software, chances are you’re burning cash and pushing your landscape business away from profitability. The truth is that profitability lies in the processes put in place across the organization to drive growth. That means that software is a tool businesses use to fix their problems, but tools are useless if you’re not using them or don’t know how to use them. We’ll show you how to use tech and software in your landscape business to open up some more room in your budget.
Figure Out Which Administrative Tasks Take The Most Time
There are certain administrative tasks that take up a shameful amount of time in a landscaping business. Invoicing can take up a few days worth of time across a month if you start from scratch every time, and there are definitely businesses out there that don’t work off of an invoice template. Creating a yearly budget is another task that takes up a large chunk of time. Once you know what these timesinks are in your schedule, you can identify the processes or tools needed to make your office work more efficient.
For example, let’s go back to invoicing without a template. The reasonable and cheap fix is to create a landscaping invoice template off of Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel and to duplicate the template each time to speed up how long it takes to make every invoice. Implementing certain tech into your business can save your business time and smoothen your workflows so you can work on the tasks that you actually enjoy doing.
Research and Prep First Before Buying Software
Before we even talk about landscaping software, let’s take a step aside and consider how you prep for your taxes. Ideally you have every tax form and receipt in front of you in an organized system that’s easy to retrieve as you go through each line item. Same rule should apply for buying and implementing software for your landscape business. Many businesses waste money bringing in software into their business before they’re actually ready for it. You can go through a 1-4 month implementation period bringing software into your business, but it’ll be tough to get it working for you if you have a digital mess of a computer or an atrocious filing system of all your past jobs and estimates.
Communication Wins Work Through CRM Tools
Software can help your landscaping business manage your customers. Most green service based business owners don’t consider the amount of time spent managing customer relationships through estimates, status updates, and extending to invoicing and payments. It arguably takes as much time managing the customer relationship than it does the actual work on hand. Keeping communication lines organized through software can help reduce liability with chat receipts as well as keep a consistent line of communications throughout the process. It’s best to use a strong digital CRM tool (Customer Relationship Management) to keep all of your customer communications in one place. At the end of the day, you’re selling your services, but you’re also selling your brand reputation. Keeping a strong line of communication is a great way to build relationships with your customers and win work.
Newly Implemented Tech Can Lower Staff Costs And Boost Revenue
Sometimes you need to spend a little money to make a lot of money. Implementing new software into your landscape business will unlock hours of productivity for sales staff, business administrators, foremen, and landscape business owners. Having a well integrated process for invoicing through software has been proven to reduce time spent invoicing for some landscaping companies from 2 weeks down to 2 hours, especially for those small family run operations in early growth stages. Developing estimating templates can also create quick turnaround to get the customer’s the info they need to lock in that contract rather than shopping around with the competition.
Speed, transparency, and accuracy will offer opportunities to lower staff costs and boost revenue through increased work efficiency. While these are lofty expectations, they often come to fruition if the time and care is spent learning the software you purchased or subscribed to. Just like any other skill or working out at the gym, you won’t get stronger at it unless you train and cultivate those skills. If you’re in a rut, take the time to ask around your network for help to utilize those resources better. Sometimes, all it takes is for the right teacher to walk you through a tricky problem with time and care. Software for your landscape business won’t solve your problems overnight.
How To Find Software That Fits Your Landscape Business Needs
Landscapers need software that understands their business needs. After internally reviewing what business functions could be sped up, a bit of Google research can be made that much easier to find the software that fits your landscape business needs. While you may have identified one or two functions that need extensive help, there are always ways to speed up less prevalent administrative tasks to open up time for your landscape business. Integrating administrative functions between estimating, invoicing, scheduling, budgeting, and more can open up weeks worth of labor hours if it were completed digitally. It’s a heavy lift for any business owner to get software implemented in their business, but it will pay itself back in dividends.
Some software offer solutions to problems or hurdles you didn’t even know existed within your landscaping business. LMN has developed solutions to all the problems landscapers may come across which has been developed from years of experience as a leader in the landscaping industry. Reach out to one of our LMN Experts to walk you through direct improvements you can make to your landscape business through speeding up administrative functions and cutting financial waste. You can also take our quiz to determine what software best suits your business needs.
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