Roofers show where the digital journey is heading!
Digitization will not and should not take the physical work off a roofer’s hands. He still has to carry material up onto the roof and work it there, but workflows can be simplified considerably with a smartphone or tablet and the right software.
Tiles or metal sheets up on the roof and done? The roofer’s trade is far more varied than most people think. The more than 15,000 roofing businesses in Germany take on many other tasks. They also seal roof surfaces and fit lightning protection systems, gutters and snow guards to houses. Installing roof windows and electrical connections on outside walls also turns up regularly in roofers’ order books. Not least, they are important advisers for builders and homeowners when it comes to energy-efficient renovation. Thomas Schmidt can go on at length when he describes his job to friends and acquaintances. One thing that was not necessarily among his important tools until now was the tablet.
But since his company switched to digital job scheduling, the tablet has become his daily companion. Many of his 18 colleagues also carry one and no longer have to take folders full of countless job sheets and reports with them. Every foreman receives his jobs directly on the tablet. It runs special trade software that the company uses to coordinate all jobs. Helmut, the dispatcher, enters new jobs from the office and checks the virtual calendar to see which roofer is free on the planned day and has another job nearby before or after. Every job ticket contains exact details of the location, the individual tasks and the materials needed.
As soon as the ticket is saved, the scheduled colleague gets a push notification on his tablet. The same happens when something changes at short notice because another urgent job has come up. After all, the data is stored in a cloud and is therefore available online to the whole team – immediately and wherever they are. In the past, everyone first had to come into the office in the morning to pick up their job sheets.
Today Thomas is on his way to install solar modules. He is the company’s expert for that, and this is also recorded in the scheduling software. Each colleague’s qualifications are stored, so Helmut can always book the roofer who best fits a job. This feature is especially helpful with new colleagues.
Everyone also appreciates digital time tracking and recording the material used. Today this takes just a few clicks, whereas it used to mean a lot of paperwork and an extra trip to the office. Built-in text templates have made documenting the work much faster.
One more thing helps enormously: the “Mobile Warehouse” plugin. It shows the material loaded on all of the company’s vehicles digitally. If, for example, an emergency job comes up at short notice after storm damage, Helmut can see from his computer who is nearby and already has the right spare parts or tools on board.
With Craftcloud’s new software, the scheduling of service jobs has improved enormously. Many processes and arrangements now run more efficiently. And the young roofers in the company in particular are thrilled by the modern, smart organization of what is really a traditional trade.
We will gladly work out a digitization strategy for your roofing business together with you. Invest in the future! Contact us.
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