Smart dealers tracks the myths of digitisation

Small businesses lack understanding on their business requirements, and hence, are guided by IT vendors with insufficient knowledge on HVAC business

Managing an enterprise in the field of air conditioning and refrigeration in current times is extremely challenging and the reasons for the same are primarily due to the following:

Increasing competition in the market. There are many more sales and service dealers in today’s times with everyone wanting to get the order and discounting whenever possible. Having an authorised dealership of a specific brand or being exclusive with a specific brand no longer assures business and profits as manufacturers in their quest to increase their business are keen to appoint more dealers. This leads to very low margins in the business be it sales of equipment, installation or services.

Increasing manpower costs. With the growing cost of living and with rapid urbanisation most cities now must shell out higher salaries for good experienced people. If compared to last 10 years, the costs have almost doubled.

With the above challenges every business must increase and grow their business to maintain their profits, as you increase the business you need more employees and that increases your cost. It’s a jugglery that every business is struggling to get the cost, turnover and profits all in place to have a decent business profit. The question everyone is asking is how can I increase business, lower my costs and increase my profits?

Lowering of Costs:
While you must increase your business to stay competitive and relevant, lowering costs is a challenge that needs to be addressed. The easy thought that comes when it comes to lowering costs is to reduce your staff that does not resolve the problem. The approach is how I can increase productivity. The method is to do this through a process of digitising the business.

Current myths on digitalisation
Digitalisation is buzzword now, considering the government of India is the fastest in adopting technology in ensuring transparent governance. The thought we should have is, why small businesses shouldn’t adopt technology to make our business efficient and profitable. The problem lies in some of the myths that we have about technology.

We have computers it has MS office and we use free Gmail and that’s solves our problem
Just having a computer, using Excel to record data and track information is not enough. What it only means is, earlier you used to write in registers now you have a computer and you have excel to type in a register.

We have a server in our office and a LAN network, and all our data is on our computer
LAN network is great to connect all your computers but managing server securities, AMC costs, updating licensed software costs are always a challenge for small businesses. Currently, the technology in networking is so advanced, small businesses have a lack of understanding on what their business actually requires and are often guided by IT vendors who have no understanding of the needs of a HVAC business. Cloud computing is the way forward its secure, affordable and bring efficiency.

Cloud computing, my data is not on my computer
The biggest myth everyone has is that their data is not on their computer. Ask yourself if one of your employees emails your list of customers on your computer to an email id not known to you, how safe do you think your current data is on your computer and is there a way to avoid this from happening? Till a few years ago you would update your bank passbook daily, today you can go online and check what your balance amount is, and you completely trust your bank to track your money using cloud computing. This technology is safe, and your data is secure if you have a reputed company that offers this service. There are many companies that offer cloud technology, amazon, google, microsoft to name a few of the leading ones. The problem is when you choose to use a cloud server from an unknown company and that could lead to data leaks. There are companies that use these reliable cloud servers and offer you a software that can manage your business at a low cost. The biggest advantages of using these cloud-based software’s are: –

They are easily accessible from anywhere; you don’t have to be in the office. All you need is any basic computer/mobile phone and an internet connection. There are no investments in expensive hardware, no need to have any tech knowledge on how to manage your servers. In fact your annual payout for these software’s will be cheaper than the AMC you pay for maintaining your computer network.

We need an ERP and that will solve our problem
ERP or enterprise resource planning is a solution that can control your entire business process; however, the challenge is in implementation for small business. ERP requires trained personnel to consistently ensure that everyone in the company follows the process. Small businesses are owner driven and he does not have the time to ensure that everyone follows the processes, the manpower we employ are not the best when it comes to IT acceptance and this is where ERPs fail in their implementation. So now we are back to the same question, how do we automate our business, how do we reduce costs using digitisation, how do we bring in something affordable that can help me grow and manage my business.

Choosing the right software for digitalisation.
The problem lies in trying to solve everything through a software, usually when you choose a software you suddenly want to look for solutions that has features that can solve problems that don’t exist and that’s when it becomes a hindrance in implementing a software. The best approach is that of accounting. When accounting became complex and difficult to handle, we used Tally. Though Tally eventually became an ERP, but we still use it to solve the key problem on accounting and it’s been successfully used by thousands of SMEs across India. That’s the approach that small businesses need to take. Here are a few steps to identifying a good software for your business

Identify the area of your problem sales, services, gen admin, project management, manufacturing.
Prioritise which needs to be addressed immediately and have an approach to solve one problem at a time rather everything through one software.

Identify use cases where other people in our industry have successfully implemented and pay a visit to them and see it in operation.

Check if it’s cloud based SaaS – software as a service. A software that you pay annually based on your usage.

See if the company can be give continuous support to implement the software with your team. Usually SaaS based software are learn it yourself which become difficult for small businesses. There are quite a few who now give you hand holding to your various team members on a regular basis.

Let’s see how we can address each of the problems in a simplistic way using technology. digitising – sales, project management
Most dealers sell air conditioners both unitary and commercial air conditioning systems like VRF and chillers, let’s identify the most common challenges we face when we manage this business.

Need to know what my enquiries are and what the status of these enquiries.

Need to easily access all the quotations that I have revised with my correspondence to a specific site.

Need to get constant updates from all my team members including site photos and minutes of meetings which I can see whenever I want at my convenience without depending on my office.

While there are many options available like Trello, Asana, and basecamp. I am going to talk of Trello a free tool that’s available for everyone to use. While Trello is a task management tool but if used effectively you can manage your leads, get status and get site information daily.

Trello is a digital white board and you can arrange cards on it in the way you want, it’s now for you to decide how you want to design the board based on your requirements. Imagine a large white information board in your office where everyone comes, and sticks post it updates on status under columns that you have drawn to manage your project. Your team now can be at office or site and can update data real time with photos and text using a computer or the trello app. As an owner you can access all data from the app and chat with different people involved with site on the app itself. As the owner of the board you can decide who can see the information and add and remove members to the board. It’s a simple and effective way to manage multiple sites easy to implement and controls most of the pain areas in managing various sites and reducing dependency on people. Being a cloud based software, you can access this wherever are and need not be in the office to take constant updates.

General Admin emailing, managing files and an office server. The common challenge faced is
Back up of my email and wanting to access all my historic emails from my phone. Back up of all my files and ensuring it’s not virus affected. Transfer of data when an employee leaves to a new staff member who has joined. Discuss costing and quotations with the team to decide on quotes to be given. This problem is primarily when the team discusses among themselves to discuss costs and quotes to send to customers and keeps emailing back and forth and no one knows who has the latest file.
Delete data from laptops and mobiles when employee leave the organisation. Manage expensive servers and software licenses.

There are many options to resolve these issues using microsoft 365 or G-suite from google. Let’s discuss G-suite from google which costs around ₹1800/- per user per year.The G-suite programme is cloud based and helps you reduce your IT infrastructure, you do not need expensive servers to manage the data, or a plan for security, back up or any annual costs to maintain the same. G-suite from google helps you transfer your company email to gmail, and you can start using all the features of gmail much more than the free version while you and your staff can access the emails from anywhere from any device. You can set up distribution emails which is for e.g.: info@company.com and set rules to redistribute all customer emails to pre specified email ids. You can easily transfer existing data to a new employee from the admin. G-suite has its own word, sheets, slides whereby no data is stored on the local computer and everyone works online. This ensures every data is backed up real-time and if there is a virus issue on the computer it does not affect the data. Work is not hampered you can immediately access data from another computer. The sheets help you and your team to simultaneously work on the same sheet which makes it easier to collaborate rather than sending emails back and forth and wondering which the latest version is. Shared folders ensure that data is accessible to everyone from anywhere from any device including your phone. At any given time as an admin you can cut off access to data of anyone.

Service
Service is the most critical when it comes to the air conditioning business if handled well can bring in regular revenue flow in terms of AMC, repairs and replacement orders. The challenges faced

• Track of customer complaints and their status
• Updating customer data and handling service reports
• AMC tracking and renewals
• Claims to OEMS
• Productivity of field team
• Dependability on back end admin team

The options available for service management are limited to generic software’s that are for any service applications and only Pureblu addresses the service challenges of the air conditioning industry. Pureblu is cloud based paperless service management software available at ₹500/- per technician per month. It can be accessed from anywhere as its cloud based and the admin controls who can have access. It helps you manage customer data with machine details and AMC details and will help you track your technician and back office admin performance. It also ensures that your data is secure and cannot be taken away by any person in your office. Its paperless and service reports are made by technician on their phone app and the customer and you can access the same instantaneously. The history of the machine is automatically updated, and you don’t need anyone to update the same. Pureblu gives you a daily sms update so as an owner you get to know whats pending for service in the morning.

Registering your domain having a website.
owner@company.in. You need to have your company domain. In today’s times sending business emails from free@gmail.com or free@hotmail.com are highly untrustworthy and customers want to be ensured that they are dealing with a legitimate company. you can now register for your business domain and create a website on www.wordpress.com or Godaddy.com. If you can have the time and patience and with a little help from a tech friendly friend, you can create your own website at a very low cost.

We are often used to the idea of having someone else build our website however you have to write down what you want to talk about your business and what the purpose of the website is. With a little interest in doing it yourself you can build and manage your own website on www.wordpress.com at ₹10,000/- per annum.

The fundamental steps to digitise your business
Digitalisation is a cultural shift while you can take help from your team but as an owner of a small business you must take the lead to implement a system and enforce the same. Most owners think IT is not their cup of tea and delegate the responsibility to one of their staff and that’s where most implementation fails. You must understand that digitisation is primarily to help you manage your small business efficiently.
Once you have started a new system it is important you have a method to review it weekly so, your team knows that they must follow it come what may and there is zero tolerance on any deviation.

Use the reports constantly to analyse the business and ask questions regularly to your team on things that’s going wrong. In short, they need to be aware that you are always constantly watching the business and need to be updated on it regularly.

Digitising is not expensive, it does not need special knowledge or an out sourced company to handle it. Depending on people to give you daily information increases dependability and is often garbage in, which blinds you from the reality, it’s a mind set that you need to change and ask a very simple question.

How can I get organised in managing my business and implement in expensive cloud based software to manage the critical information at various stages of my business activities with minimal dependability on others?

Article by:
Ajit Panicker,
CEO,
Nova Group of Companies