Effectively managing a roofing company demands organization and strong communication between every team member. Roofing companies must manage client data, contact and billing information, invoices, material orders, production and more. Managing projects with so many services can become a full-time job. Roofing software helps roofing businesses manage customer relationships, workflow and essential documents to take on more projects and complete projects more efficiently.
Roofing software is a recent development in the industry that helps contractors reduce manual data entry and focus on delivering the best experience to their customers. Dataforma’s roofing software is changing the game by providing roofing contractors with an efficient system for managing projects. When a company switches from a paper system to a cloud-based one, it can automate several processes and eliminate the need for a paper trail. Roofing software can also improve communications between your team and customers, store important documents and track leads and invoices.
It can seem overwhelming at first to consider switching to paperless roofing software. This guide explains what roofing software is and how it works so you know how implementing roofing software can improve your company’s operations.
What Is Roofing Software?
Roofing software is a program designed to streamline the work processes of a roofing company through better organization, lead tracking and project management. Business owners, work crews and office staff can all use this software to do their work more efficiently and communicate with each other quickly.
Roofing software comes in many forms and with various features. Roofing software is often cloud-based, meaning you and your team can use it wherever you have internet access. The best roofing software also includes customer relationship management (CRM) features. CRM software helps roofing companies track and store customer information and project details. This feature can streamline communication with clients, bill processing, invoicing and production.
Ultimately, roofing software can help you improve your business relationships and offer customers a superior experience. When you can impress and satisfy your customers with each interaction, you are more likely to have repeat customers and get recommendations so you can grow your business.
Roofing Software vs. Standard Project Management Software
If you already use project management software to organize projects and communicate between work crews, you might wonder what makes roofing software special. After all, businesses across industries need to keep their workflow moving smoothly and develop positive relationships with customers.
The advantage of using roofing software is that it is tailored especially for roofing companies and their unique needs. Different industries require different tools, and your customers might expect something different from you than from a business in another field.
Standard project management software generally allows companies to track leads, manage customer data, view a project’s status and generate reports. Roofing software serves all of these common functions and includes additional features particular to the needs of roofing contractors and their clients:
- Managing materials warranties
- Creating proposals and estimates
- Using GPS tracking to see field technicians’ location
- Generating purchase orders and improving budgeting
- Keeping customers in the loop with real-time project updates
Roofing software can help your company keep up with projects, handle documents and improve communication. It’s especially helpful for complex, long-term projects that require careful management.
Dataforma Roofing Software Features
Your roofing business needs a project management solution that benefits the entire staff. Dataforma roofing software has unique features that help each person in your company, improving efficiency in every department.
- For roofing business owners: Business owners have many responsibilities and must know what is going on in their company. Roofing software can help business owners accomplish all their tasks. Dataforma provides visibility into every roofing job and simplifies data monitoring so business owners can manage projects and teams more efficiently. Easily access the history of past projects, pull reports on various topics and schedule work orders using the drag and drop function. GPS tracking gives managers a clear picture of their teams.
- For field technicians: Production crews and field technicians manage projects in the pipeline, so their efficiency is crucial in satisfying customers. Roofing software has features designed to make roofing teams’ jobs more efficient. Field technicians can access the database and view project timelines from anywhere with an internet connection. The crew can upload photos of the project, document measurements and specifications, contact the home office with any questions, receive assignments and more, all from their mobile device.
- For sales personnel: Your sales personnel are there at the beginning of every project, bringing in new business and pursuing leads. Roofing software gives them the tools to manage the sales process even more efficiently. With the ability to generate accurate inspection reports, document the project’s progress and actively manage leads, your sales team can close sales more easily and bring in more revenue.
- For office staff: While your production crews complete projects and sales representatives get the project started, your office staff plays a significant role in helping projects run smoothly. Your company’s customer service and billing departments can benefit from Dataforma’s automation processes, saving time and reducing human errors. Office staff can easily view ongoing projects, track invoicing and locate documents within the software.
Do I Need Roofing Software?
Contractors using roofing software are at an advantage over those who stick with their old organizational systems. Investing in the right software can help roofing companies make a good impression on leads, complete projects efficiently and set themselves up for success with future clients.
The construction industry in the United States approximately $1.36 trillion in revenue in 2020, and construction spending is on an upward trend. Roofing companies working on residential and commercial construction projects have a lot of opportunities in this healthy market. With such an outlook, roofing contractors must maximize their services and use every tool available to give customers the best possible experience.
You might want to consider getting roofing software if you want:
1. Increased Growth Opportunities
Growth opportunities often bring new challenges, which can help you improve your services. In the past, a growth opportunity often required more marketing, which many roofing companies might give a low priority. However, roofing software provides growth opportunities that reward companies with more business and higher profits.
Implementing roofing software can bring a valuable return through organic growth. Contractors and service technicians can use roofing software to streamline and organize their workflow tasks with greater efficiency. A better-organized company spends less time and resources on administrative tasks, funneling that energy into taking on new clients and projects.
Roofing software can help your work crews complete projects efficiently, satisfying your customers. When customers experience your high-quality customer service throughout their interactions with your business, your reputation as a trusted contractor will grow. Dataforma’s roofing software also gives you better control in managing leads, making it easier to pursue and win new clients.
2. Increased Revenue
Generating more revenue is every roofing business’s goal. Increased profits help you pay your staff and improve your business as you grow. Implementing roofing software can increase your company’s profits in significant ways.
Roofing software gives you more visibility into your business’s key performance indicators (KPIs). You can track employee time, check for discrepancies and manage projects more effectively. Dataforma’s project management software allows you to capture the actual and estimated costs of installation or repairs so you can improve budgeting and spot price fluctuations.
Dataforma also enables you to generate more accurate proposals and reports by allowing you to customize the proposal format to meet your needs. You can also fill standard fields, like Scope of Work and Exclusions, with pre-set text for every job. Creating accurate inspection and safety reports can save you money and increase your accuracy.
3. Efficient Information Storage
Effective organization is essential to growing any business. Many roofing contractors and their employees have traditionally used paper-based systems to organize and file important documents and receipts. However, paper filing systems are a hassle, and searching for emails and documents saved in different locations consumes valuable time. Dealing with a disorganized information storage system shouldn’t be one of the challenges of your workday.
The Dataforma mobile app gives all authorized personnel access to the documents, reports and data they need to complete each job. The easy-to-use interface gives users quick access to work orders, projects, correspondence and events, keeping everyone updated on essential information. From Dataforma’s software, technicians can click on links to access all their needed documents. Upload PDFs, contracts and any other documents you currently use into the system, and Dataforma will keep them organized.
4. Stronger Communication
As a roofing contractor, you have likely experienced situations when technicians in the field had difficulty reaching the home office or communicating efficiently or when one department wasn’t updated on crucial project details. Improving communication between your staff can reduce delays and keep projects moving smoothly. Communicating effectively can also strengthen your relationship with customers.
A roofing software solution acts as a central location for all communication within the company and makes sharing information effortless. Cloud-based software provides every piece of information your staff could need, wherever they are. Team members can easily remind themselves of project details, material cost, events and production schedules. This feature allows everyone in your company to get answers to their questions as quickly as possible.
How Does Roofing Software Work?
Project management software works differently for different industries. You need to understand how your roofing software works so you can optimize every feature. Dataforma’s software provides the following features to help your business manage projects and accomplish tasks more efficiently:
1. Customize Your Dashboard
Dataforma’s roofing software is built to fulfill your business needs. As a roofing contractor, you might require some standard features in your software, like the ability to view a snapshot of company finances and ongoing projects from one location. Customized capabilities can help your company run even more smoothly.
Dataforma’s software dashboard is completely customizable so you can control which information you need to see first. The system’s homepage displays financial figures and messages at a glance. Monitor your business activities, review work history and edit alerts from the central dashboard.
2. Upload Photos and Documents
Dataforma allows you to upload project photos directly onto the site so you can access them later. You can also share those photos with customers, technicians and staff through the mobile app so everyone is up-to-date on project accomplishments.
Store photos and documents for each work order in its cloud-based module to easily access the project’s essential information. You can include data like the current roof system, dimensions, manufacturer and materials installed. You can also view all current and expired warranties, roof drawings and more through the site.
3. Interact With Clients Through the Customer Portal
Customer satisfaction is crucial to business growth. When your customers are pleased with your work and communication with them throughout the project, they will be more likely to recommend you to others who need roofing services. With Dataforma’s interactive customer portal, you can offer high-quality customer service around the clock.
The secure customer portal on Dataforma’s roofing software allows you to stay in contact with customers when they need you. You can share photos, documents and invoices in real time. Enabling clients to track their project’s status and submit work requests can significantly improve customer retention.
4. Manage Correspondence
Efficient communication increases your productivity and ensures your work crews are engaged in projects as a team. With Dataforma’s roofing software, you can track and manage every correspondence. Whether it’s a phone conversation, an email, a fax or a meeting, having access to an organized record of your company’s communication means you always know what’s going on in your business.
Roofing software can also help with client-facing correspondence. Generate group mailers and email blasts within Dataforma’s roofing software, customizing it with a few simple clicks. Newsletters, updates and holiday greetings can all be effective at improving your relationship with current and prospective customers.
5. Prepare Proposals and Invoices
The ability to prepare and generate invoices, reports, and proposals directly from a work order is crucial for effective roofing software. With Dataforma, you can quickly create invoices from a project or work order. Since all the pricing information you need populates automatically in each project’s module, invoicing is accurate and straightforward. The customer can then view their invoice within the customer portal, and staff can track invoice collection efforts.
In addition, you can create accurate and professional proposals and reports in far less time. Customizable proposal templates let you input the text you want and easily update what you need to change. The Dataforma core system also allows you to create inspection and safety reports within a secure, easy-to-use database.
6. Sort and Search Quickly
Busy contractors don’t have time to search for disorganized files. Randomly-placed files are a thing of the past when you use roofing software. The software lets you see and manage jobs from a single database. Reduce your time spent searching for vital information with Dataforma’s quick searching capabilities.
Dataforma’s software has advanced searching capabilities so you can search by date, time, type of project and more. You can also save your most recent searches to find what you need even faster. In addition, the message board displays active links so you can tap and quickly access documents. Roofing software puts all the information you need right at your fingertips.
7. Manage Leads
Finding new leads is essential to any business’s growth. Dataforma’s roofing software allows you to manage leads by filing their contact information into your marketing database. You can also assign leads to sales personnel and notify your sales team of new leads to follow.
Turning leads into clients takes more than finding potential customers and storing their information. It also involves following up and marketing to them effectively so you can progress from initial contact to their acceptance of your proposal. Dataforma’s Lead Tracker lets you document lead histories and generate reports to determine an effective marketing strategy. You can also create a bid from a lead with roofing software.
8. Schedule Work and Manage Production
Roofing software can help you manage and schedule projects in the most productive way possible. Through Dataforma, you can drag and drop work orders to each team for assignment. Your teams can also color-code work orders so you can quickly see how projects are moving.
A work order’s font color indicates its completion stage, and you can filter projects by building location or category of work for quick searching. In addition, the work order calendar gives you a clear view of upcoming projects so you can review and edit staff schedules. These features save time as you manage production.
The 7 Advantages of Roof Estimate Software
The many benefits of roofing software make it an excellent choice for companies that want to continue improving their service to their customers. Check out these seven ways roofing software is changing the game for roofing contractors:
1. Save Time and Money
Efficient business operations are all about minimizing cost while maximizing service. Roofing software is a powerful tool that can help you save time and money while equipping your technicians to perform their jobs that much better.
When your technicians have the Dataforma app, they can add photos and create custom inspections directly from their mobile devices. Any staff member can take pictures on the job site, upload them to the project’s folder within the app, send information back to the office staff and create customized roof inspections before even getting back to their truck. The robust capabilities of roofing software allow companies to accomplish their tasks faster, enabling them to take on more clients and increase their productivity.
2. Increase Efficiency and Accuracy
When processing invoices, tracking time and organizing paperwork, humans can sometimes make mistakes. Miscalculations in proposals and invoices can be costly to your business. You might be frustrated over wasted time manually entering the same repetitive information into your software. Roofing software automates many calculations and runs accurate reports so your operations involve less human error.
With Dataforma roofing software, you can virtually eliminate manual data entry. Imagine never losing paperwork or misfiling documents again. Dataforma removes these obstacles and automates your filing and processing tasks. Generate accurate reports and quickly gather data from saved customer and project information, all from your mobile device.
3. Add Convenience and Consistency to Your Projects
Suppose a field technician on a job site needs to check project specifications or work history. With cloud-based software, they can easily find that information on their mobile device. Technicians can update and permanently store critical project information as the job progresses, ensuring that data is always accurate. This saves them from needing to make frequent calls to the home office and keeps everyone across the company updated on the progress.
In addition, roofing software makes generating proposals and invoices far easier. Use the Dataforma library language to create grammatically correct, consistent proposals every time. This feature improves your documents’ consistency and saves time.
4. Make Information More Accessible
Give every member of your team access to all the project information they need with permanently saved files and measurements for each building project. Whether a field technician needs to access project photos, a sales representative needs to find contact information for a lead, or business owners want to view financial reports, Dataforma roofing software puts essential information within your reach at all times.
Roofing software stores work orders, invoices, warranties, contracts and more. You can search and find the data you need with ease, either through Dataforma’s powerful search tool or through live links.
5. Improve Customer Relationships
When you use roofing software to streamline operations, your customers will notice that your process is more efficient. Clients can see a change when a company improves its productivity and completes jobs promptly. Improved productivity ripples outward to benefit customers and production crews alike.
Roofing software also improves client satisfaction by giving clients a portal to access project information whenever they want to. By keeping your clients updated on their projects and using a central platform for order requests and invoicing, you make it easier for clients to stay in the know. This helps impress customers and demonstrate your superior service.
6. Improve Collaboration
Enhancing communication between all members of your team brings many benefits. You can ensure that critical information is relayed to the right person, deficiencies are properly recorded, and the whole staff is aware of proposal and invoice statuses.
Dataforma is a centralized hub for all communication within a roofing company. All correspondence is recorded for ease of access later, and the message board allows staff to ask questions from anywhere with an internet connection. Technicians can log in to the software to find real-time updates of a project’s current status, who is working on it and more.
7. Increase Staff Accountability
Keeping your team members engaged and productive every day can be a challenge. Roofing software technology gives you a solution that empowers staff and increases productivity.
With GPS tracking, you can see real-time updates of your technicians’ and representatives’ positions in the field. This feature gives you instant verification of job hours so your clients only pay for actual time on-site. Dataforma’s time tracking capability eliminates the need to document hours on the worksite so you can manage your entire team with greater ease.
Contact Dataforma for Your Roofing Software Needs
With Dataforma, you can arm your staff with the most powerful project management software in the roofing industry. Equip technicians and representatives with mobile CRM, customized roof inspection software and start to finish lead tracking to manage projects more efficiently.
Dataforma is a leader in roofing software. Investing in software made specifically for your industry can help your company grow in productivity and customer service. We have helped thousands of users across the United States and Canada manage their work orders and turn leads into customers.
At Dataforma, we’re confident that our CRM and project management software can benefit your roofing company, and we offer a free, no-obligation demonstration of our software. Request a free demo, and we’ll be in touch to help you see what Dataforma can do for your business.
