The ACCA Indoor Air Expo 2012 in Las Vegas, NV just ended and the turnout was tremendous. Over 1,200 HVAC service company representatives attended with 195 exhibits sprawling the packed show floor of the Paris Hotel. There were also a lot of great breakout sessions with great excitement of interesting things to learn.

Among the buzz this year, were advancements in streamlining service management operations as well as empowering mobile workforces.

As a true market-demand driven solution, over 50 of the latest ESC features & enhancements were developed to address market needs to help service companies run their business better. Dean E. Schreiner, dESCO President, and Bryan Merrill were on hand to show event attendees the exciting new features of ESC service management software.

Some of the latest features and enhancements include Color Coded Dispatch Board, New List Views, Revised Service Agreements Management, SPIFF/Commission Tracking, Customer Status Email Updates, Technician Profile Emailing, Vendor Pricing Comparison, Mobile Phone Apps Upgrades & Redesign, Field Credit Card Processing Integration, ESC Accounting Updates, Credit Holds, ESC Dashboard Flowcharts, New & Updated Reports and more!

Over 6,000 companies have selected ESC Service Management Software to help manage customers, work & finances.  With the right tools, the right benefits and the right price, streamlining operations & solving many day-to-day issues is made easy. Coupled with ESC Mobile Services, field technicians are more efficient with access to all the information they need to get their job done, quickly and correctly. Not to mention save time on dispatches which means completing more jobs weekly and increasing revenue. And with real-time updates, office personnel and technicians will have improved information sharing and communications.

Another great highlight of the ACCA Indoor Air Expo 2012 event was our iPad 2 Way Giveaway. Anyone who stopped by our ACCA booth as well as who attended our ACCA sneak peek webinar were entered to win a brand new Apple iPad2 compliments of dESCO. Congratulations to Sam De Angelis of Colorado Climate Maintenance, Inc who was our grand prize winner.

We will keep you posted on our future event plans and, as always, make sure you follow us on Twitter and Facebook for up-to-minute company news and updates.

2011 was an exciting year for the Services Industry and according to the experts it seems 2012 will be even more action-packed. But, before we look into the future, let’s take a quick look at 2011 and the memorable moments. So in honor of the SportsCenter Top Ten List, I give you the top ten ESC version 12 highlights of 2011 in NO particular order.

#10 More Features Added to the ESC Mobile App
Although the ESC Mobile App was not new in 2011, the screen navigation was redesigned to make it easier to find the information you need. Additional new features include a new mobile management feature allowing managers/supervisors to modify and assign dispatches, promised dates and times of dispatches while in the field. Equipment can now be attached and edited through the mobile apps to help keep more accurate customer records. Credit cards can be processed in the field using ESC’s new Merchant Warehouse integration.

#9 Increase Customer Communications Automatically Through ESC
ESC users can automatically send an email to customers to inform them of the status of their dispatch. This can be configured for each status code so you can remind the customer of their appointment, tell them when you’re on the way, send a technician profile and picture and even send them a survey or a coupon after the dispatch is complete.

#8 Managing Service Agreements Becomes Easier with Added ESC Features
The Service Agreement screen was revised to include a robust new scheduling system; enhanced invoicing options allow you to include renewal amounts on particular dispatches to ensure the customer renews; additional options on the qualification screen allow you to easily combine service work with scheduled maintenance to decrease the number of trips you make and increase your profitability; and the ability to automatically order all parts required for service agreement dispatches, ensuring that you will always have the parts you need to complete your agreements.

#7 ESC Adds the Ability to Color Code the Dispatch Board
For increased visibility and priority associations, the ability to add colors to dispatches on the dispatch board was added.  These colors can be assigned directly to dispatches or to customers for all future dispatches.

#6 Encourage Your Sales Staff with ESC Spiff and Commission Tracking
ESC now includes spiff and commission tools. A spiff can be attached to any billing code or inventory item to track these bonuses by salesperson and can be set to a flat rate or a percentage of the sale price. The new three tiered commission system allows you to increase the commission percentage to those who exceed their sales goals and gives you the flexibility to set different goals for your technicians and sales people.

#5 Comparing Vendor Prices Made Possible with ESC
When ordering parts on a dispatch, invoice or quote, view a list of all the vendors that carry that part, their part number, last price from that vendor and the date the price was last obtained. This information will be updated automatically as you receive items and can be manually updated as well to ensure you are always getting the best deal possible.

#4 ESC Adds Revolutionary New List Views
This new feature allows you to quickly view lists of your customers, jobs, dispatches, equipment, agreements, invoices, quotes, vendors, inventory items and purchase orders. These lists can be customized to show just the information you want to see in the order you want to see it as well as saved and recalled easily. Use these lists to quickly find records, print custom reports, export data to Excel, and send emails or letters.

#3 ESC Allows You to Track and Bill Travel Time
Travel time can now be added to the working time when creating an invoice based on a dispatch in ESC. These times will be combined on the Technicians tab of the Sales Invoicing screen to increase the cost of the invoice. The time will also be shown immediately above the invoice body so you will know what quantity to use when adding a labor billing code to the invoice.

#2 ESC Credit Card Transactions Become PCI Compliant with Merchant Warehouse
Through a recent partnership with Merchant Warehouse card services, ESC credit card transactions can become PCI compliant in adhering to security and liabilities. Merchant Warehouse uses strong encryption technology ensuring the safe handling of cardholder information, which tremendously reduces your liability.

#1 Service Roundtable selects ESC as the Preferred Service Management Software
The Service Roundtable is a revolutionary organization founded by a collaboration of leading contractors to share information and help other contractors improve their sales, marketing, operations and profitability. ESC was chosen as the recommended service management software solution for its complete solution to manage customers, work, and finances in an intuitive, easy-to-use environment with the tools and features growing service companies need.

With a recent string of hackers breaching security, stealing sensitive customer credit card information and stealing money from customer bank accounts, it makes me wonder why service companies would not want to protect themselves further with simple painless measures. 

One important step is becoming PCI compliant with credit card transactions.  But you are probably wondering why … what’s the big deal? At first glance, especially if you are a smaller service company, it may seem like a confusing topic and a daunting task.  But let me break it down for you.

PCI Compliance Benefits Versus Consequences
Compliance with data security standards can bring major benefits to businesses of all sizes, while failure to comply can have serious and long-term negative consequences. Here are some reasons why.

• Compliance with the PCI DSS means that your systems are secure, and customers can trust you with their sensitive payment card information. Trust means your customers have confidence in doing business with you and confident customers are more likely to be repeat customers, and to recommend you to others.
• Compliance improves your reputation with acquirers and payment brands — the partners you need in order to do business.
• Compliance is an ongoing process, not a one-time event. It helps prevent security breaches and theft of payment card data, not just today, but in the future. As data compromise becomes ever more sophisticated, it becomes ever more difficult for an individual merchant to stay ahead of the threats. The PCI Security Standards Council is constantly working to monitor threats and improve the industry’s means of dealing with them, through enhancements to PCI Security Standards and by the training of security professionals. When you stay compliant, you are part of the solution – a united, global response to fighting payment card data compromise.

But if you are not compliant, it could be disastrous. Compromised data negatively affects consumers, merchants, and financial institutions. Just one incident can severely damage your reputation and your ability to conduct business effectively, far into the future. Account data breaches can lead to catastrophic loss of sales, relationships and standing in your community, and depressed share price if yours is a public company. Possible negative consequences also include lawsuits, insurance claims, cancelled accounts, payment card issuer fines and government fines.

Achieving PCI Compliance is EASY
Through a recent partnership with Merchant Warehouse, ESC has become PCI compliant, in adherence to security and liabilities, when handling customers’ credit card information. Merchant Warehouse uses strong encryption technology ensuring the safe handling of cardholder information, which tremendously reduces your liability. Plus ESC Version 12 customers using Merchant Warehouse services have also seen lower rates and improved efficiency.

You’ve worked hard to build your business – make sure you secure your success by securing your customers’ payment card data. Your customers depend on you to keep their information safe – repay their trust with compliance to the PCI Security Standards. Contact dESCO or register for more information with Merchant Warehouse to take the first step toware PCI compliance today.

 [Via PCI Security Standards Council: https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/security_standards/why_comply.php]

Like it or not, the workforce is increasingly mobile and workers on the go need to be fully productive from mobile devices. Service companies need to keep up with the demand of an ever-growing digital world and should take advantage of the continued streamlined benefits that go along with a mobile solution. A recent article in The Air Conditioning/Heating/Refrigeration News speaks to this very message.

Most service companies already have cell phones distributed to improve in-the-field communications and most cell phone providers now offer bundled text/phone/internet solutions that are the same price if not cheaper than the individual plans. Adding a mobile service management solution will organize and streamline the work flow of both small and large service companies, making them more manageable and profitable.

ESC Mobile is a simple and affordable way to outfit your mobile technicians with real-time job information and time tracking. ESC Mobile is a powerful and intuitive smartphone, tablet and laptop App for Service Technicians to manage work orders in the field, Technician managers to manage technicians in the field and office personnel to monitor everything with real-time updates to and from the field.

ESC Mobile has all the tools and features growing service companies need. Benefits and advantages include:

• Increased tech productivity by arming your team with the right information in the field ensuring jobs are completed faster and more efficiently.
• Increased response time with features such as GPS tracking and mapping.
• Increased field accuracy with access to all information needed to identify and work on the right equipment and eliminate illegible hand-written field notes.
• Increased customer care and professionalism with easy access to complete customer information across your network.
• Increased sales by increasing the productivity of your technicians and in turn allowing them to complete more jobs daily as well as giving your team information needed to quickly identify up and cross sale opportunities.
• Reduced costs by identifying areas of waste and inefficiencies. (Example. Reduced fuel costs with ESC’s route optimization and mapping functions.)
• Improved internal communications by giving your employees access up-to-the-minute company and customer information, all in a single location.
• Improved external communications with appointment reminders, status updates, technician profile emails, surveys, coupons and more.  
• Reduced collections by allowing techs to process payments in the field lowering processing costs, ensuring accuracy, reducing collection issues and improving cash flow.

The benefits of implementing a mobile solution far outweigh the cost. So what are you waiting for? Contact us today for a personalized demo on our ESC mobile solution.

Many service business owners know and understand that their business would be more profitable if their technicians were more productive. The problem they run into is that many times they end it there. To increase technician productivity and profit from it, you first have to define what that means before you can go about trying to improve it.

Productivity is the act of producing.

What is it that you want your technicians to produce? What are the top priorities for them to produce? What is the secondary product? What should be left to the end or left out completely? You can only improve the productivity of your service technicians when you know what a productive technician looks like.

Productivity is a measurement.

It measures how much output comes from a given amount of input. For a technicians’ labor, it is usually measured as a ratio of output per labor-hour. More specifically, it could be the number of service calls per working day or the total invoice dollars per working day.

A technicians’ productivity can be measured in any number of ways. It is important to pick one and benchmark it so you can measure your attempts to improve productivity. However, there are weaknesses to various forms of measuring tech productivity.

Know what to measure.

You could measure your technicians’ productivity by the number of service calls they complete in a day. The more service calls a tech finishes in a day could mean more revenue and profit, but it could also mean they are just busy, running from one place to the next. They may not be doing the best job if they’re hurrying to fit the most jobs into a day.

You could also measure it by total invoice amount. But this could lead to techs trying to squeeze extra items onto invoices that may or may not help the customer and may have a very narrow margin. Just because they are able to bring in a lot of money with many large invoices does not mean they are productive. It could be that the revenue is not contributing to the bottom line.

These measures of productivity and others like them can be important, but they are not the primary goal, they are not the end game. Profit is. By making that the measure of productivity, technicians have an objective goal to strive after, one that is clear in its contribution to the company’s well being. The primary measure of a technician’s productivity should be the gross profit they bring into your company. The truly productive technician does good work at all stages and brings in the most profit for the work he performs.

Focus on what’s important.

Making techs more productive means identifying and optimizing the way they perform their core functions. It also means moving or eliminating non-core tasks like filling out paperwork, calling the office to give and get updates, and filing reports. It is important to focus on the key performance indicators but it is most important to only measure the things that are crucial to their performance. Eliminate all the tasks that are not crucial and move the rest so your technicians can focus on contributing to your bottom line by applying their unique knowledge and skills. If they’re spending time on things that are not essential to the job, you end up paying both the cost for them to do the work and the cost of the jobs they don’t have time to complete.

You may not be able to measure the productivity of all your technicians by the same metrics. Different rolls may require different standards of measurement. Also, these measures may change over time as your business strategy evolves.

How do you measure your technician’s productivity?

Contracting Business Magazine named longtime ESC customer, Kahn Mechanical Contractors, Inc., of Dallas, Texas, a winner of the prestigious 2010 Design/Build Award. Kahn Mechanical Contracting became an ESC customer in April 1993 and have been a loyal customer ever since.

Most of this year’s winners of the Design/Build award have previously been awarded and named the ContractingBusiness.com Commercial Contractor of the Year. This award is all about how well the HVACR contractor’s is able to “take a leading role in providing the ultimate HVACR system for the benefit of the customer.”

Contracting Business has been honoring companies that excel in the Design/Build process for two decades through this prestigious award. The Design/Build process can allow for higher margins, warranty control, lower costs, a higher level of quality, and more satisfied customers.

Ron Rajecki, contributing editor at Contracting Business Magazine, had an excellent overview of the Design/Build project Kahn Mechanical Contractors completed for this award, as well as the work that it took to get the client to put faith in them to design and get the project done.

You can read the full article here, or read some of the highlights below:

The steps required to win a Design/Build project can be a greater challenge than the actual installation, because the contractor must win the trust of the client. Kahn Mechanical won this client’s trust, and followed through with efficient comfort and indoor air quality solutions. […] As a prior Design/Build Award winner and Contracting Business magazine’s 2008 Commercial Contractor of the Year, Kahn Mechanical was the right company at the right time to update [the JFO Group Office Building, Irving, TX.] comfort systems. […]

“We presented solutions to problems beyond the nuts and bolts,” says Josh Kahn, president of Kahn Mechanical Contractors. “We avoided discussion of air handlers, chillers, and pumps, and focused on improving dependability, comfort, energy efficiency and lower cost of ownership.” […]

“This client placed extraordinary trust in Kahn Mechanical Contractors,” Kahn says. “They allowed us carte blanche (within budget, of course) to do whatever we felt was in the best interest of the building owners. This was simultaneously an amazing gift of trust, and an awesome responsibility. In the end, the results exceeded the client’s expectations, and showed us that we continue to improve our delivery with each and every project.

“That’s the price of success,” Kahn concludes. “As an award-winning Design/Build team, we want to not only be award-worthy, but to surpass our prior accomplishments.”

(via Contracting Business)

We come across articles and blog posts every day that help service companies better operate, market, and grow. There’s simply too much out there to keep up with. That’s why we periodically will publish a collection of useful links like the ones below.

Mobile Payments As Marketing Strategy – John Jantsch lays out the argument for using and accepting mobile payments as a marketing strategy, as a way to set your company apart from the competition. He poses this question: “The question marketers of all kinds need to start asking is if their customers are mobile, how mobile does the business need to be?”

Golden Opportunity – Garry Upton and Robert Wilkos write in Contracting Business Magazine about how to get the most out of your existing customers by expanding your service agreement offerings.

Top 10 Tips on How to Sell a HVAC Maintenance Contract – Following on the idea of growing you service business with service contracts, we have a post from The Service Coach about how to sell maintenance contracts more effectively.

Forming a Board of Directors is Crucial for HVACR Businesses – Greg McAfee has a post on his blog about the importance of getting outside advice from trusted advisors, or a board, for long term HVAC success.

HVAC Marketing Terms – Ron Smith published a post on his blog says there are terms HVAC contractors and other service contractors use to describe their business that are less than idea to share with customers. He suggests 14 improvements to your marketing vocabulary.

If you come across a great link you want to share with your service company colleagues, email it to jonathanf [at] desco-soft [dot] com

SocialTract, a blogging/social media service specifically designed for HVACR contractors, has published an e-book called “How to Create and Grow Your HVACR Business through Blogging.”

The e-book is free on their website. You can get it here.

Joe Pulizzi, CEO of SocialTract, shared what HVACR contractors will learn from the e-book:

In this eBook, you’ll learn:

• What a blog is and what it can do for your business.
• The three reasons why HVACR contractors need to consider blogging as part of the marketing mix.
• 30 ways blogging can pay off for your business.
• 30 ways to market your blog effectively.

Joe says that HVACR Contractors should consider blogging for their service companies so they can :

Find and sell more customers on annual service and maintenance agreements….Retain current maintenance customers with compelling and consistent content… [and] position your company as the local home comfort leader.

You can find out more about SocialTract and their contractor social media platform on their website www.socialtract.com.