A fire inspection software program improves costly manual processes that drain revenue from service departments. Your company loses 10’s or 100’s of billable technician hours monthly through poor scheduling and wasted drive time between jobs.
Smart automation of scheduling, route planning, and real-time reporting helps your team focus on serving customers instead of pushing paper. The right fire safety inspection software boosts your bottom line through faster invoicing, improved documentation, and a client portal that makes your business stand out. Your fire protection company needs modern tools to stay ahead of competitors and grow revenue.
Costly Manual Processes Signal Need for Fire Inspection Software
How do inefficient processes in your service department directly impact your bottom line? To properly answer that question, we would literally need to write a book on it. For the purposes of this blog, we’ll sift it down to the top few.
Scheduling Challenges
When your technicians go to do their inspections for the week, who is scheduling those jobs? Does this person know where each of these jobs are located geographically? Do they understand how to group the jobs the technician will inspect in the same area to eliminate travel time? Do they understand how much time each inspection is going to take so they can properly schedule for the day?
Let’s say you have an office person schedule a technician for 4 inspections that day and each one of those inspections takes an hour. You add your paperwork and drive time, which is an additional two hours. That leaves you with two hours of the day unscheduled. If you do this every day of the week for one technician, that’s a loss of 10 hours of labor time that you’ve paid the technician, not to mention inspections that could have been done that weren’t. This equals a double loss of revenue.
Now, imagine you have five techs equaling 50 hours per week that you’re paying out in labor and even more inspections that are not getting done. What’s the math on that, how much money are you losing each month? Only you can answer that, but I do know one thing. It’s a lot more than a monthly subscription to Aries.
Optimizing Routes
Optimizing the route a technician will take from one job to the next is a big part of being organized and efficient. Make sure your techs are efficiently scheduled to maximize profit and eliminate revenue killers.
Paper Inspection Reports
Another way inefficient processes cost you money is if your inspectors are filling out paper inspection reports. When are they getting those turned into the office? Is it daily? Is it at the end of the week? Is it whenever they feel like it?
The thing about the paperwork is, first your inspector has to fill it out, which takes time. Then they delay your ability to invoice for that job until you get the paperwork turned in. That could be days or weeks depending on your processes. Then your office personnel have to take that paperwork and enter it in the system, create the invoices, send the invoices out, which all takes labor time as well, which essentially equates to double data entry. Your inspector fills out the report, then your office personnel take that information and convert it into an invoice to be sent out. Imagine if your inspector filled out the report and in real-time that report was uploaded into your database, synced to your accounting software, and sent out to your customer all automatically. How much would that improve your processes? How much more quickly would you get paid for those jobs? How much time would it cut down from your office personnel? All of these time-saving processes equal money in your pocket at the end of every month.
Fire inspection software will help create these new processes in your service department to increase your bottom line instead of sucking your cash away. If you’re looking for a level up, look to Aries. It was built by a former fire protection company owner for fire protection companies to maximize their revenue.
Paper-Based Documentation vs Modern Fire Safety Inspection Software
How much of your inspector’s time is spent on filling out the inspection report rather than doing the actual inspections? Depending on the size of the inspection, it could be a lot. A small inspection might be 15 minutes. A large inspection could be an hour or more. With paper-based fire inspection reports, each time an inspector fills out that report, they have to fill it out in its entirety. This process is not only time-consuming but also prone to errors and inconsistencies. One of the great things about fire inspection software is that once you fill out an inspection report the first time, the software memorizes that data and it can be reused on future inspections.
Imagine you did a fire alarm inspection on a hospital and it had a primary fire alarm panel, a sub-panel, and 20 power supplies throughout the property. All of those panels would remain in the report with their location, make, model, etc. so that the inspector doesn’t have to fill out that information again. If this hospital has 5,000 smoke detectors in it, then the location, name, make, model, and all of that information for all 5,000 smoke detectors will never need to be entered again because the database will remember it and populate them on future inspection reports. The amount of time saved and the amount of money saved from not having to enter this information at every inspection significantly improves your financial bottom line.
Eliminating Issues with Paper Reports
A fire safety inspection software program also eliminates many issues caused by filling out a paper report. Take illegible handwriting as an example. How many times has one of your inspectors turned in a report and you do not know what that technician wrote on that report? Their handwriting is terrible. Words are misspelled all over the place, and it’s an embarrassment to turn that over to your customer.
The Advantages of ARIES Fire Inspection Software
Utilizing a fire inspection software program like ARIES, which has a spell checker built in and doesn’t allow you to miss questions, so the report will be full and complete every time. You can attach photos of deficiencies. The reports are standardized so they look and feel the same every time.
Here’s what using a software like ARIES does:
- Makes your technicians look smart
- Makes your company look modern
- Improves your reporting process entirely
Missed Inspections Tell The World Your Company Is Incapable
Have you ever missed a fire inspection at the end of the month? You know the feeling – scrambling to get it done the following month when it’s already late. Missing an inspection is one of the worst things you can do as a fire protection company.
The Message It Sends
When you miss an inspection, it sends a clear message to your customer:
- You are disorganized and didn’t prioritize their inspection.
- You don’t have enough manpower to get your jobs done.
- You are not a reliable and serious company.
These scenarios make your company look unprofessional and unreliable. It’s a bad look for your business and can puts your customer at risk for compliance issues.
The Solution: Fire Inspection Software
It’s essential to have a process in place that not only reminds you about upcoming inspections but also ensures they get scheduled and completed on time. That’s where fire safety inspection software comes in. It automates inspection reminders and allows you to schedule them neatly and orderly for each of your technicians. This eliminates the need for manual calendar tracking or spreadsheets that may not be 100% effective. Improving from 90% or 95% of jobs done monthly to 100% may seem like a small change, but it makes a world of difference in the eyes of your customer and to your monthly bottom line.
The Consequences of Missed Inspections
Missing an inspection has far-reaching consequences:
- Increases your liability exposure
- Decreases trust from your customer
- May result in them not renewing your contract the following year
- Gives your competitors an advantage, as they can swoop in and promise better service
At the end of the day, it’s all about providing excellent service, not just offering a fair price.
The Benefits of Fire Inspection Software
Utilizing a robust fire inspection software program like ARIES helps your company:
- Stay compliant
- Stay on time
- Look professional to your customers
Not only will your customers be happy with your service, but they may also recommend you to others, allowing your business to grow through word of mouth.
Investing in the right fire inspection software is a smart move for any fire protection company looking to streamline its operations and provide top-notch service to its clients. Don’t let missed inspections hold your business back – embrace the power of fire inspection software today.
Revenue Loss From Untracked Fire Safety Inspection Deficiencies
How effectively does your current process convert inspection deficiencies into revenue? You may be missing out on a tremendous amount of income each month due to deficiencies found on inspection reports that were not brought to the attention of the office. If the office doesn’t know about the deficiencies, they can’t quote them, and therefore can’t perform the repairs and make money.
The Cascading Effect
This has a cascading effect. Missing out on the repair revenue is just the first part of the problem. Your customer is also out of compliance. Imagine if they get inspected by the fire department and the deficiencies are brought to their attention. It’s going to make you look bad. You don’t want to create opportunities for your company to look bad, do you?
The Solution: Fire Inspection Software
Utilizing a fire inspection software program properly is going to help you reduce or completely eliminate problems like these. Fire safety inspection software ensures that every single deficiency found during an inspection is:
- Properly quoted
- Followed up on
- Approved by your customer
- Converted into a work order for your technicians to complete the repair
A Win-Win Situation
This is a win-win situation. You win because you made that money instead of losing it. Your customer wins because they stay compliant and their system works the way it should.
Fire inspection software is essential to this process because it ensures that you follow a process to ensure these deficiencies are not forgotten and that they’re converted into revenue for your company. It’s a tool that can help you streamline your operations and boost your revenue.
Growth Limitations Without Fire Inspection Software
Imagine pulling up to your customer’s building in a beat-up truck, wearing dirty jeans, a t-shirt, and tennis shoes. That’s not the professional look you want, and it’s not the look your customers expect. You’re just some guy showing up to the job site to perform an inspection, and it leaves the customer feeling uneasy.
The Power of Professionalism
Now picture this scenario: You arrive at the job in a nice company van with your logo across the side. You step out of the van wearing a sharp pair of khakis and a professional polo shirt with your company logo on it. You walk in, perform the inspection, and your customer has a completely different feeling about the experience because you came across as a professional, and they appreciate that. This will make them more likely to tell others about your services, and through word of mouth, you’ll get more jobs due to your professionalism.
Fire inspection software programs have a similar effect. Consider the following:
- You could be doing a sloppy job of scheduling
- Your reports might be disorganized and unprofessional
- Invoicing your customers could be untimely
But if you’re utilizing fire inspection software, it can clean all that up. It improves your efficiency, the quality of your reports, and the turnaround time on your invoices and payments from customers. Everything looks and feels professional.
Enhancing Customer Experience
With fire safety inspection software, you can provide your customers with access to a portal where they can:
- Approve quotes
- Request service
- View or download reports
- See when their inspections are scheduled
This makes you and your company look professional, and it gives your customers the impression that you’re a reliable and competent business.
The Bottom Line
If you’re not using a fire inspection software program, you’re limiting your ability to grow and generate revenue for yourself. Integrating fire inspection software into your operations is a key piece of the puzzle when it comes to growing your company and providing a top-notch experience for your customers.
Modernize Your Fire Inspection Operations Today
Manual processes and paper-based systems hold back your fire protection company’s growth potential. The ARIES fire inspection software platform gives you tools to optimize scheduling, speed up invoicing, and deliver professional service that builds long-term client relationships.
Our team brings direct experience from operating fire protection businesses. We understand your daily challenges and know how to solve them. Schedule a demo today to see how ARIES can boost your revenue and streamline your operations.
