Optimize Opportunities and Operations

OctopusPro (www.octopuspro.com) is a fully integrated online solution for service-based businesses of all sizes. It offers a wide range of features to help manage services in the office and on the go, from initial inquiries, lead management, estimating, and scheduling and dispatching to invoicing and payment processing, and analytics, including customer ratings of your company services. The platform, which includes a mobile app, can be integrated into a company's website using their own branded app or via a third-party service such as Facebook or Yelp.

How it works: Management can cultivate leads, generate quotes, set seasonal prices and discounts and emergency/urgent pricing, assign and dispatch technicians (including through integration with Google), receive field updates and check progress of the work, and handle invoicing.

Field technicians utilize the mobile app to receive job notifications which they can accept or reject. If they accept, they can take advantage of built-in GPS support for travel and arrival/delay notifications, clock in and out from the jobsite, upload photos, and provide live updates. They can also receive customized checklists of tasks to be performed.

Customers can manage scheduling and confirm, cancel or reschedule bookings; track technician travel and arrival time via GPS; add job-related photos and attachments; manage payments and invoices, and, upon completion of the job, rate the HVAC service. The built-in feedback system to collect reviews from clients using the platform features a standard template for ratings, customizable with criteria and questions that relate to your business and services.

OctopusPro enables automated invoice and payment reminders and integrates with Google Calendar, Xero, and QuickBooks. It also supports the export of reports and analytics to Google Calendar.

For commercial installations of large-scale HVAC systems, OctopusPro offers options for incorporating building automation, energy management, and remote monitoring modules, as well as software to prepare professional HVAC proposals, and analytics software to evaluate profitability and other criteria.

Pricing: subscription, per user/month, with unlimited number of customers your company services. Free 14-day trial available.

DataPins

DataPins (www.datapins.com, 800/775-1250) is local SEO software for small businesses, including HVAC and plumbing, designed to maximize visibility online and enhance company reputation through engagement, on the company website, of recent satisfied customers who agree to supply reviews/feedback. The solution features a Map Ranking App that converts completed local jobs into “pins” to help better showcase your company locations and services and improve/optimize the ranking of your company on search engines such as Google, Facebook and Yelp. 

How it works: after completion of a job, the contractor/field technician drops a pin on the DataPins app, where it is distributed to the appropriate service and location pages before sending a customer a review request by SMS or email. The contractor/technician in the field can snap a photo of the job and add a shot caption and relevant tag (e.g. type of repair) and can push an automated review request to the customer’s phone via SMS and email.

Pricing: monthly fee per business location

Intuit Mailchimp

Intuit Mailchimp (www.mailchimp.com) is an email and marketing automations platform for growing businesses designed to help a company find and engage customers using email, social media, landing pages, and advertising.

The solution includes Intuit Assist, a Gen AI-powered marketing assistant, which helps in generating personalized content and optimizing marketing strategy by capitalizing on insights drawn from your customer data.

The platform offers four plans (free, Essential, Standard, and Premium), with escalating capacities and capabilities in terms of number of seats, number of audiences, and number of pe-built templates, as well as the ability to remove Mailchimp branding, set up email scheduling, and generate comparative reports, and other business-enhancing features.

All the plans have access to Mailchimp’s free online survey for gathering customer responses that could help shape marketing and other business decisions.

Pricing: fee per month, dependent on plan

FieldEdge

FieldEdge by Xplor (www.fieldedge.com) is a cloud-based all-in-one field service management software with native iOS and Android mobile apps, aimed at home services contractors and addressing scheduling and dispatch, quotes and invoicing, service agreements, work orders, and customer management (see September 2018 tech column for full review), recently introduced Marketing Edge, a digital marketing tool designed to help businesses present a professional brand image, upsell their services to existing customers, and attract new prospects more easily.

Available at no extra cost for elite members, it enables contractors to automate marketing campaigns with pre-built email, text, and landing pages; unlimited texts and emails; “smart” audience segmentation that enables sending messages based on customer behavior and preferences; and real-time tracking and analytics for viewing email open, engagement, and conversion rates and easily assessing how a campaign performs.  

Successware

Successware business management platform for residential work (www.successware.com, see Jan. 2021 review) recently introduced the addition of Purchasing Wizard to the platform to assist in the creation of purchase orders based on restocking requirements (min/max or usage) or based on task part lists. The wizard, accessible from the popup menu in the purchasing manager, automates the creation of an item list which identifies all items to be ordered and specifies the vendor with which to place the order of each item. Once the correct items, quantities and ‘source vendors’ are identified, POs can be created and managed as ordinary POs.

Patti Feldman writes articles and web content for trade magazines and manufacturers of building products. She can be reached at [email protected].