This week, we’re finishing our series highlighting current software solutions for the roofing industry. If you missed the last article in this series, we took a deep dive into roof measuring and estimating software. (Here’s a link if you’d to check it out.) In this final article, we’ll take a look at the software that helps you document and finance your jobs, as well as where we see technology going in the future. Read on for more!
Job Documentation
One of the earliest and most important inroads made by tech in our industry was the simple word-processor. Replacing handwritten material orders and handwriting, in general, has saved uncountable minutes, a lot of squinting, and likely a lot of money in misplaced orders. The latest document solutions have come from software like ours, and CRMs as well. Taking boilerplate documents and making them customizable has been the recent trend, and also keeping documents digital rather than printing everything.
Electronic signatures have been legal in all US states since 2000 by federal law, and e-signing solutions have become more streamlined and convenient since then. Consumers have become more comfortable with e-signing as it has become more convenient as well.
Companies like Eversign and Adobe make it easy to send out documents requesting signatures, so the pressure to get the homeowner to sign in the moment is alleviated. You can let them sign at their leisure! We support anything that takes the friction out of the final steps in the sales process, which is why we’re bringing remote signing to our documents this spring! (Stay tuned to our blogs and emails for details.)
Overall, document software has made making, sending, and sharing documents easier and more secure. You can use document software to help with the branding and consistency of your company.
Financing and Payment Process
When it comes to the point of sale, we all know there are several companies looking to make taking credit card payments easier for even the smallest of businesses. From food trucks to lemonade stands, taking payments is easier than ever. As people chase SkyMiles, Cash back rewards, and other credit card incentives, it’s likely that increasing numbers of homeowners won’t blink at putting their 12 grand roof replacement on their credit card and leave the cheques behind.
Providers like Square are really well known in the market but there are other options for you to consider as well. Vendors like PaySimple allow you to make a branded payment portal that you can customize for your company. They also allow you to take installments and add the flexibility of taking ACH and e-check as well.
We’ve also seen a rise in tech companies that offer to finance the homeowner. Companies like Hearth and Greensky offer home improvement loans up to 65k with fast processing and streamlined experiences that can significantly speed up the process of getting your jobs paid for. They have mobile apps to take customers’ information and get them pre-qualified, and they’ll send you updates on the loan’s progress so you can schedule production.
Production
Speaking of production, this is where most of the technology still lives firmly in the hardware realm. We have seen some really encouraging signs of suppliers updating their in-house systems to take material orders through email (gasp). And, of course, most CRMs, and even software like ours, provide easy ways to create your material orders and send them to your supplier.
We love seeing new roof-loading tech hitting the market, but Equipter’s equipment isn’t in every company’s budget. We saw a cool piece of tear-off hardware at the IRE this year dubbed Trash-Rocket. We’re betting that makes the site clean-up a lot easier. There’s also drone companies that offer round the clock job-site monitoring and security, and there are programs like TSheets that make it easier to track employee hours.
We think that we’ll continue to see dramatic changes in roofing materials over the next five to ten years. Eco-friendly shingles, granules that absorb CO2, and of course solar tiles if they ever make enough of them. But all the tech we’ve talked about today pales in comparison to what’s truly going to revolutionize the industry though. We’re of course talking about… drones with nail guns.
We hope you’ve enjoyed our series on tech in the roofing industry. If you’ve got software suggestions that didn’t make our list, leave them in the comments below! And if you have any questions about the solutions we offer, schedule a quick call with our sales team, they’ll show you everything that RoofSnap can do.
