restoration management | iRestore Restoration Software

How To Make A Restoration Schedule

Posted on April 14, 2023 by iRestore

Whether you own a restoration business or work in the restoration industry, you will know the importance of creating a schedule. A schedule can give a manager direction, adheres to requirements, and set expectations. Any seasoned restoration manager will understand their actual value and use it to their advantage. It’s essential to build an efficient and realistic one that will support, and not hinder, your project goals.

Restoration Industry Software

A restoration project schedule is the path laid out before a project to help a crew get to where they need to go. It helps us establish the most efficient method for completing the project. Restoration schedules come in many forms, from standard Excel-based ones for smaller jobs to elaborate, comprehensive schedules created using restoration industry software.

A good schedule will act as a map that provides the team with a direction to get the job done. It will align with available equipment and personnel and meet specific deadlines. It will draw from past experiences to eliminate task problems and monitor the progress of subcontractors and suppliers. Now that you understand what a good schedule looks like, you will need to take steps to create one.

Goals

Unsuccessful projects are often cited as having unclear instructions and goals. It may seem obvious what the job requirements are, but you have to be able to define them clearly. It’s not enough to state, “Restore this flooded property.” Your team will need to have proper goals set out for them to ensure everyone is on the same page. Keep in mind that as you set your goals, they may stand to change throughout the project. Planning will allow you to have more time to modify goals as your project evolves.

Prioritize

Throughout the project, you may realize that your priorities begin to change. Task prioritization becomes a priceless task that pays you back in added efficiency. You can prioritize tasks based on a few different features. Cost is a huge one: base your project on keeping costs low. This can be useful when you have a fixed budget and scarce finances. However, you may risk leaving essential tasks outside of your scope. You can prioritize customer needs. This method calls for identifying the critical functions of the project and prioritizing the tasks in such a way that you complete these functions first.
No matter what you prioritize, it is crucial to determine before a job to delegate tasks best. Knowing your priorities can ensure efficiency.

Budget And Timeline

Setting your budget and timeline will eliminate massive headaches and stress during your restoration projects. Set a realistic budget to determine where you should splurge and where you can save a few dollars. Once this budget is decided, stick to it. Determine where your budgetary and time constraints are early in a project to help decrease the unwanted loss of money and time because of inadequate planning.

Allocate Tasks

Once you have identified all the tasks that are needed to complete the project, along with the duration, you need to allocate tasks among your team members. Take into consideration the project scope, as well as your goals and priorities, as you do this. Each team member must understand what they are responsible for in every job. This will prevent the overlap of responsibilities that can cost money and cause confusion.

Adjust

Adjustments may be required to suit a job as a project continues. Sometimes, a restoration project is entirely different than you had initially thought. Making adjustments when the project is well underway can be challenging. That said, there are tools available that can help you throughout the entire project process

With many moving parts of a restoration project, keeping track of it all can be complex, especially on larger jobs. Managing a project, allocating resources, and delegating a team can be challenging to do without the use of restoration industry software. However, using a generic schedule program isn’t optimized for a restoration project, so it may not be a viable solution. Your restoration business needs modern scheduling software, like iRestore, designed to simplify the multifaceted nature of a restoration project. It will help you drive operational efficiencies and streamline resource allocations through the project’s entire lifecycle.

Managing Job Profitability Part 2: The Budget

Posted on March 14, 2023March 14, 2023 by iRestore

Restoring Success

By Lisa Lavender M.T.R., M.F.S.R., M.W.R.

Production Manager: “If you spend more than you got, you are not going to have a good time.”

There it is! Sounds simple, yet it happens every day. Production manager said specifically “not going to have a good time.” The financial result of our jobs is the revenue stream supporting the business operation. We are doing rewarding and meaningful work, but when we fail at managing our jobs to profitability, it is not fun, it is not good, and it puts the business in jeopardy.

In the 2018 Restoring Success, Managing Job Profitability, you will find a list of a variety of considerations in managing the profitability of a job with a couple of brief notes about the budget:

“Budget based on a scope: If a scope of work is properly done before the work is executed, that should be representative of a job budget that is readily available to those responsible for the profitable execution of the job.
Benchmarks: In the world of emergency services, we often deploy and then prepare the corresponding revenue. Your company can establish benchmarks based on experience and review of profitable jobs. Example: A water loss of $XXX = 20 Hours”

By definition, a budget is the income and planned expenses of a project. How much are we going to receive, spend, and profit (gross profit)? Consider it a profit plan. If the profit plan goes off track, you have two choices to hit your target:

Increase the revenue.
Decrease the expense.

In the following simple example, please note there are many ways to approach a budget.

We analyze job outcomes and find:

Solutions

The solutions to this problem that is a plague in our industry relates to a variety of complexities. We can make an expansive list: price fluctuations, scheduling pressures, scope changes, workloads, pressures, and more. There is no alternative but to buckle down and fix it.

Based on reviewing job outcomes for over 20 years, I have observed a few issues that can be addressed by using a job budget. I call them the “Golden Rules.” Click the image below to download Job Golden Rules. You can use for training and job reviews.

business ownership, financial success, restoration business profitability, restoration estimating

Golden Rules:

Get paid for what you do. A few tips:
- Minimize Emotional Discounting
- Manage and Eliminate Scope Creep
Do not pay more than you get paid.
- Materials
- Trades/Subcontractors
- Anything
Proactively Manage In-House Man Hours to a Budget

Find the Root Causes and figure out what you Need to Do. As you evaluate what your organization needs to better manage job profitability and employ the use of budgeting, consider the following based on the following approach: Download Needs Analysis

Operations: Do we have best practices? These are clearly defined expectations, assignment of responsibility, accountability, and workflows that support the execution of budgeting. As you analyze the operational needs, you may find it helpful to evaluate other related processes such as: the selections process, upgrades, and supplements.An example of a best practice may look like:< Insert Position > has < X days > from job assignment to establish a job budget and record in job file. < Insert Position > has < X days > from time submitted to review and approve budget and record approval in job file. An example of a workflow may look like:As the job progresses, purchase orders, must be verified and approved based on the established job budget on file. Define who owns this responsibility(s). Those responsible who do not follow the plan should be held accountable. If the needed purchase does not fit the approved budget, define your company’s next steps: change orders, supplements, other.
Tools | Equipment | Supplies: You may identify the need to evaluate software, systems, templates, and budgeting forms. There are many tools that can help support the establishing and maintaining of the budget.
Skills: As you evaluate the skills and abilities, you may identify a mismatch of those who are assigned the budget responsibilities, or you may identify a need to develop your team. As I am currently going through a program to receive a certification in what is referred to as a High Performance Learning Journey. A High Performance Learning Journey is in reference to the expertise, research, and methodology developed by Professor Robert Brinkerhoff, is an engineered process, a journey, and by design is built around performance outcomes and business rationale.

The reasons we consider a High Performance Learning Journey for managing a budget are:

The risk to the business is high.
The skills and abilities are complex, intertwined, involve many other people. A few training considerations:
- Negotiation Skills
- Financial
- Critical Thinking
- Communications
- Ability to use company software and systems.
- More, more, more

Some quick tips to employ a High Performance Learning Journey in your organization, you can start by breaking down the performance objectives. Create a journey that includes training, practice, mentoring, and feedback. (This is a very compressed version to get to help create action.)

When job budgets go off track, it is easy to get frustrated by the outcomes that at the surface seem easy to control. Our operations are complex and there are many challenges and strains in the day to day. Regardless, if you identify the issue, there is opportunity in the challenge, but it requires action. Using budgets can help you improve the profitability of the jobs. If this seems daunting, consider the resources and consultants in our industry that can help you make a meaningful change and impact in this area. May budgets bring you much Restoring Success.

How Does Restoration Industry Software Benefit Your Business?

Posted on December 9, 2022 by iRestore

Restoration industry software brings numerous perks to your table. These advantages save you a lot of time, automate your business, save capital and provide flawless service. Please read on to learn more!

Restoration Industry Software

Organizational Perks

Project managers for restoration jobs often have to deal with and keep track of different types of paperwork, including:

Several claims paperwork
Insurance information
Estimate documents
Contact information
Job-specific notes

When so much paper is floating around, even missing one sheet might cause complications. Fortunately, productivity and efficiency can easily be increased with the help of restoration industry software. Furthermore, if managers use restoration industry software like iRestore, they will have a central location to access this crucial data. Finally, no information will be lost if it is entered into a smartphone or tablet in the field. Similarly, all team members will have instant access to it. They can now finish the restoration project on time and under budget.

Enhanced Productivity With Mobile Management Options

Why bring your project managers back to the office to conduct work they might do just as easily out in the field? Leveraging the potential of mobility for your company is a surefire way to increase profits in today’s fast-paced world. Similarly, it is also helpful when consumers want instant access to information. Naturally, taking advantage of mobile technologies to boost efficiency is crucial for restoration businesses to stay competitive in the face of rising administrative demands.

Keeping Tabs On The Money

The inability to accurately estimate costs is a major obstacle for many restoration managers. Also, these unexpected costs can quickly stack up, affecting the project’s profit margins. The problem is that a data-driven budgeting projection is extremely difficult to achieve if real-time cash flows are not precisely tracked and recorded. Also, poor financial tracking might result in lost business and reduce growth potential. However, managers can mitigate and eliminate these cash flow issues before they become a continuing trend by focusing on productivity early in the project. Every team member can benefit from using restoration industry software to keep tabs on jobs and their associated expenses.

Finally, a restoration firm’s management and the executive team may make better judgments from:

Access to accurate data.
Up-to-the-minute financial data.
Data is held in a central cloud database.

Client’s Satisfaction

Restoration industry software can help you achieve clients’ happiness with your services. Keeping a client in the loop about the project’s status is crucial to maintaining a positive relationship. Also, they may access the data whenever needed, reducing their frustration while waiting for answers from your group. Finally, the client feels more at ease knowing that the restoration management company is well-organized and in charge, thanks to the software.

Conclusion

The best restoration industry software can ease recovery if you offer emergency services around the clock. However, just like five fingers, not all software is created equal. iRestore has everything your business needs and can help manage up to 50 team members. Finally, it is one of the best restoration industry software currently online.

How CRM Systems Can Help Your Business Grow

Posted on November 11, 2022 by iRestore

According to a recent study, 80% of business leaders use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software as a single source of information for their customers. CRM’s role has clearly evolved beyond that of a contact management tool. Advanced CRM systems empower leaders to efficiently unite teams around a common view of data, and also, more notably, to manage client relationships with ease.

Restoration Industry Software

Customer relationships are vital for the growth of your company, so you must be able to scale personalized interactions as well as develop consistent experiences across the company. Here are some ways CRM systems could help your business grow.

Connect With Your Ideal Customers

You’ve invested resources and time in attracting as well as generating new leads, but how do you prioritize them?

How would your teams determine which opportunities are the most appealing? Opportunities come in many sizes, and it’s crucial to always have a strategy in place for nurturing them in different ways. Integrated CRM solutions enable multiple departments to have a complete view of prospects and leads, allowing them to create focused engagements and easily reach key decision-makers.

Manage Customer Relationships Proactively

Many sales professionals reported that the pandemic increased the importance of developing trust before a sale. Get a deep understanding of a customer’s business, and you will be able to build a strong relationship rooted in trust early on.

How A CRM System Can Help A Business

Relate To Their Challenges. Quickly learn what matters to your clients, their challenges, goals, as well as preferences, and have personalized recommendations sent to them.
Relevant Engagement. By collecting information on their business needs, service and marketing teams can also recommend suitable promotions or even educational content that helps their decision at the perfect time.

Minimize The Cost Of Sales

New customers are a vital ingredient for continued growth but aren’t always easy to come by. The great news is that you could offset new customer acquisition through sales to the existing client base. Gain better visibility into the cross-sell, up-sell, and also renew opportunities in your client portfolio and you will definitely see an increase in repeated sales thanks to the trust you have already gained.

Increase Staff Productivity

Adopting the right technology will free up your staff from process-heavy tasks, which gives them more free time to connect with customers. Manual tasks like hunting for contact data and entering information could be automated or removed from customer-related procedures. Automation across service, marketing, and sales will free your staff so they could spend a lot more time speaking to potential customers and also strengthening relationships with existing customers, which moves the needle for your business.

Through technological tools, you could improve business flow by optimizing your staff’s time and talents. iRestore is a comprehensive customer service management solution developed by restorers for the restoration industry sector. Our powerful relationship management system (CRM) enables you to easily manage all of your business and personal relationships. It lets you manage and track all of your relationships, which include previous customers and subcontractors. Call iRestore today.

How Restoration Contractors Can Let Go to Grow

Posted on October 19, 2022October 19, 2022 by iRestore

Why is letting go so hard? As a recovering micromanager myself, it often sounds like this:

Nobody will do it as well as me or do it right. How do you know if you do not give them a chance?
It is easier to do it myself. Have you tried to clearly define how to do it?
It is too hard to do. Not everything we are doing is that hard and others can do difficult things.
You do not have time to train anybody. And you never will – if you do not let go.
I need to know what is going on. You can with the right systems, processes, reporting, and visibility.
Nobody else cares as much as I do. How can you be sure of that and how can you change that? Why don’t they care?
I cannot find the right person. The right person will not be a magic wand.

Resistance to letting go is the nemesis of growth. When you let go:

You grow, not only potentially in rank or size of the company you are leading, but you also grow professionally. Your leadership and management abilities get challenged and honed while you let go to grow.
Your Company can only grow if many more people can do what needs to be done in alignment with company objectives.
Others are given the opportunity and the tools to grow in their positions if they are given the chance.

The following are a few tips to help let go; some of these tips are interdependent. For example, if you use the 70% rule of delegation, you should also have checks and balances, systems, and the ability to review key metrics and information. These are tips that I personally have employed. The benefit of employing them is that you, your company, and others can grow. You can get time to rest and recharge and pursue opportunities that help your company thrive.

Develop Repeatable Processes And Best Practices: This is not as hard as it sounds. Once you identify the task, start breaking down the steps and best practices that create the desired outcomes. This will be the guideline for others to follow. Document and communicate to the person(s) who will be responsible.
Give People The Opportunity To Establish A Do-It-Better Mindset: This tip is more about changing your view. Instead of thinking, nobody will do it better than me, think about the opportunity of someone doing it better than you did. This is possible when given clear expectations, a road map, and trust.
Consultant Or Coach: It is okay to seek help. If you know that you are having trouble letting go and it is stagnating your growth, consultants and coaches can help you overcome the mental blocks, as well as the process and strategy to employ the letting go in your company.
Reports, Metrics, Information: Maintaining a reporting system that allows you to monitor processes and outcomes is key to making sure that everything you let goes of is running smoothly. Whether it is one functional unit that you are managing or an entire company, there are a variety of ways to keep your pulse on things without doing it all yourself. Be disciplined in your reviewing of reporting systems. A functional unit or an entire company is never going to be “set it and forget it,” Ron Popeil
Respect The Chain Of Command: As you let go, the process may entail establishing reporting lines and chains of command. Be careful with the transition and selection of those to who you have entrusted to do their job. If you break the chain of command to transfer some responsibilities, your efforts may be futile, and you are not giving trust and opportunity to the person assigned the responsibilities.
Use The 70% Rule Of Delegation: Many years ago, I was exposed to this concept. It has had a profound impact on how I make decisions on assigning myself a task or delegating. I use the 70% rule daily as a “still in recovery” micromanager. There are many things we all want to do ourselves because we either like doing them or we think we can do better than anyone else. The reality is that if we stop there and act, we will stagnate ourselves, the company, and others.

When making these decisions, and setting aside the fact that someone may be able to do more than 100% of what you do, I sometimes employ a part two of the thought process. What is the worst thing that would happen if it were done 70%?

As an actual and maybe ridiculous example, I want to order all the food for our classes. I want to control the food; nobody will get just the right combination and quantity. I need to let it go and trust and if by the slight chance that we do not have bananas one morning or 50 pounds of extra frozen meat in case of a food emergency; it will be okay, and the world will not end.

Do Not Enable As You Let Go: If something goes wrong, or if mistakes are made, you may have to take action. However, do not slide back and just fix the immediate issue. Stick with the letting go strategy and continue to develop your team members to their full potential.
Clearly Define Expectations And Assignments: This concept has been making my list in many of my most recent articles as it is often the root cause of not getting the outcomes that we desire. Another light and easy example that can be applied to even more complex issues: The company was out of bandages in the first aid box. It was an inventory maintenance responsibility that slipped through the cracks over the years. Solution: A position and person was assigned the role of inventory, ordering, and restocking once a month. The person in the position enthusiastically accepted the responsibility and the problem was solved.

What should you let go of to grow? As a manager, leader, or owner, as you let it go, you, your company, and others will be able to grow and enjoy much Restoring Success.

Category: restoration management

How To Make A Restoration Schedule

Restoration Industry Software

Goals