Portal Focus - May/June 2021
FOCUS ON TECHNOLOGY IN THE MOVING INDUSTRY
Moving Minus the Paper: The Benefits of Going Paperless
By Adarsh Dattani, Movegistics by Netensity Corp.
Improving Processes and Customer Experience
We have all been there before: you’re searching through an insurmountable pile of documents to find the right one. Meanwhile, your prospect is waiting and needs an answer as soon as possible. Bottom line: you need quick and simple access to your records.
Major corporations around the world are opting for paperless solutions, and moving companies should, too. Powerful moving software can streamline operations, provide a greater customer experience and yield a greater return on investment. Here are biggest benefits of employing powerful software for going paperless.
Greater Productivity: Simply put, time is money. The more efficiently you can use your time, the more money you can make. Good moving software allows you to operate with extreme efficiency by streamlining the lead capturing, estimating, operations and accounting processes.
Lead Capture: Moving software lets you easily funnel customer leads from both your company website and outside lead providers. The digital transfer of this information saves your company time and the hassle of manual input. Consider that an employee may take several minutes to enter a prospect’s information into your system. At an average of 10 leads a day, moving software can save your company 40 hours a month in data entry alone.
On-Site Estimates: Every move is different, and your sales rep must be able to arrive at an accurate estimate based on a multitude of factors. Traditional estimates done on paper using cube sheets are cumbersome and time-consuming. Moving software with an integrated mobile app is far more efficient. The app helps you breeze through the move inventory and easily incorporate photos and notes of items included in the move, and even note items that are not shipping.
Now, consider that the same employee may take 45 minutes on average to complete an estimate using a cube sheet. A mobile app can help you complete the same estimate in less than 20 minutes, so at an average of five estimates per day, the mobile app can save your company almost 40 hours a month in estimating.
Ask yourself: Are your employees being productive, or are they simply busy? With the power of mobile apps and moving software, you will eliminate inefficient tasks that keep your employees busy. In turn, they will be able to focus on tasks that make them more productive.
Cost-Savings: Operating on paper is expensive. Printers, scanners, copiers, and fax machines are expensive to purchase and maintain. Studies estimate that each employee uses about 10,000 sheets of paper every year, which costs around $500 per employee. Once you factor in how many employees you have to provide paper for, the numbers start to add up quickly.
Now consider an app running on a tablet to help your foremen to clock-in/clock-out, perform walk throughs, complete moves like a pro and collect payments electronically. An app eliminates the need for paper-based documents such as contracts, waivers and job summaries. In addition, it provides your foremen with more functionality at their fingertips, guiding them step by step through the move and reducing phone calls to your office.
Easy Access and Retrieval of Information: Employees in paper-intensive moving businesses spend up to 30 percent of their time dealing with notes and documents, and 10 percent of those notes and documents are either lost or misfiled. Multiply that by your payroll to see how much you can save by going paperless.
Compare the ease of searching for anything instantly on your moving software to the time wasted in shuffling through a filing cabinet or stacks of paper to find what you’re looking for, and the answer is simple. With mobile apps, you will run a more effective operation both in the office and in the field, where your field representatives have access to the information they need at their fingertips.
Do you have multiple employees working on a customer issue? Paperless operations can foster greater collaboration and be a solution for sharing information effectively. With the paper method, an employee might scribble something on a sticky note. It is then up to that employee to share the message with other employees later, but memorized updates can often slip through the cracks. With moving software as a central hub for all activity, you ensure that all employees are looking at the same—and most recent—information.
Greater Customer Satisfaction: If your office staff is tied up in preparing, reviewing and handing off paperwork, they are not available to respond to customer inquiries in a timely manner. We live in an era of instant gratification, and nobody wants to wait long for a response—or a document, for that matter.
Your customers will appreciate their document requests being filled within seconds when you operate paperlessly. They will also notice and appreciate your use of technology to provide them with a great customer experience.
Going paperless eliminates headaches for both the company and their customers. When you offer a quality service with greater convenience, you earn satisfied customers. This leads to repeat sales and better reviews—which carry a lot of weight in our digital environment.
Becoming Environmentally Conscious: Moving to a paperless operation is not only the most profitable decision you can make, but it’s also the most environmentally friendly one. We destroy 30 million acres of forests annually. The destruction happens from the moment we cut down trees for paper all the way up until we burn it at landfills.
By reducing your paper consumption, you’re helping your business and the environment. With convenient features and mobile apps that streamline operations, save money and lead to a greater customer experience, you can enjoy the benefits of going paperless, become stree-free, and put more money in your pocket.