Why Trade Services Companies Turn Toward the Cloud

Day in and day out, specialty trade contractors are in steeped in providing exceptional service. Customers have high demands—sometimes urgent—and there’s always a willing competitor around every corner, ready to swoop in and over-deliver. So the more time business owners and admin staff can focus on providing value-added service, the better.

That’s why simplifying back office activities through cloud-based financial management and accounting process automation is part of a winning strategy for growing trade services companies. Here, we’ll take a closer look at the reasons why.

Automating Across the Business—And Making it Mobile

Time is of the essence, especially for companies with seasonal field service operations. From managing an already loaded calendar to accommodating emergency service calls, focusing on anything but the customer can be a challenge. And thanks to modern technology, more of the business management is happening out in the field, where every employee is on the go.

This helps explain why tech adoption among trade services companies emphasizes cloud-based, mobile-ready solutions. For example:

• Mobile field service management and fleet telematics tools help business owners and fleet managers schedule and dispatch technicians, optimize their vehicle health and safety efforts, and prepare for tax time—all while remaining responsive to customers.
• Customer billing and payment and employee expense management software solutions are handy in the field and the office, removing steps from traditionally paper-centric processes that take time and energy away from more strategic, customer-focused activities.
• Financial management and accounting software frees up time for decision-makers by taking the highly transactional, manual, and spreadsheet-based heavy lifting out of the back office and into the cloud, where actionable data can be accessed from anywhere.

Integrating Data for Process Optimization

All-of-the-above cloud-based software systems provide business owners with game-changing data. Fleet telematics data can be used to route drivers and deliveries more efficiently; employee expense data can help business owners allocate budgets more effectively; historical or even real-time financial performance reports can uncover opportunities to improve vendor relationships and contract pricing. It’s easy to see the bottom-line impact of the right information coming in at the right time in a user-friendly way.

When data from disparate systems is connected, managers get an even richer view into operations. Take the field management platform Service Titan, for instance, a cloud-based technology vendor providing comprehensive solutions to home services business. Their tools are multi-faceted, as they touch different areas of a business, from technician scheduling to marketing to customer service. The data generated from these processes is powerful on its own—and Service Titan arms customers with robust business intelligence tools. But consider how much more powerful the insights become when they can be “sliced and diced” alongside data from other business systems, like Sage Intacct’s financial management and accounting software.

With this front office (Service Titan) and back office (Sage Intaact) integration, a specialty trade contractor is given one single view of customer and financial information across their entire business. They also experiences these benefits of automation:

• Elimination of manual data entry for invoices and purchase orders into the accounting software.
• The systems can work together to allow comprehensive financial consolidation, reporting, and analysis across multiple business entities.
• Non-accounting staff can access financial information from within the ServiceTitan platform they’re familiar with.

As the first Sage Intacct VAR partner to complete integration between Sage Intacct and Service Titan, rinehimerbaker can help you maximize the data coming from your cloud-based field service management and financial management software. Contact us to find out more.