Until very recently, on a typical day my Irrigation Techs would get a call from a Maintenance Crew in the field, explaining that a valve was broken. The Techs would then get in their vehicle and spend on average 20 minutes of‚ windshield time‚ to go out and investigate the issue. They would check the valve and come to the same ‚ bad valve‚ conclusion that the foreman had originally reported!
My Techs would then document their activity on a sheet of paper and either call our Office Manager, if she was available, to report the issue so she could create a proposal and send it off to our client. Or, the Tech would wait until the next day, if they remembered, and ask someone in the office to to assist with writing a proposal. That is a lot of work for a few hundred dollars, involves too many people, wastes a lot of time and too many things can go wrong (lost notes, forgetful staff etc.)
Approximately two years ago, I helped found and deploy Cappsure in my company – a mobile, field reporting App for landscapers. I loaded the App on my irrigation techs‚ mobile phones and trained them how to use it. It took approximately one hour to train them on how to create very specific proposals for their needs, such as creating a proposal to replace a valve, replace an irrigation timer, repair a mainline or lateral line – easy stuff that they are very capable of.
On the very first day they created 3 valve proposals in minutes, right from the field that we were able to review and forward to clients. Cappsure‚ proposal module allows them to mark the location on a GPS map, take a photo of the valve and enter the quantity of parts or labor needed. Cappsure bundles this info and instantly creates a client ready proposal that can be reviewed by office team members or emailed directly to the client for approval (One Click Approval button in the body of the email).
Today my irrigation techs, tree crews and field teams create their own proposals from the field in minutes with photos, notes, line item detail and pricing, right from their mobile devices! Also in many cases if a maintenance foreman spots a bad valve, he does not bother the Tech and saves on windshield time by creating the proposal in seconds himself using Cappsure.
Let’s face it, many of my maintenance foreman have their own side landscape businesses on the weekends – they know what a bad valve is! Now, my foremen create the proposal themselves with Cappsure and my techs spend time replacing the valve – making us money!
Mike Martinez is owner and president of Newtex Landscape Inc. Mike is also a founder of Cappsure – a mobile field app especially created for the landscaping community. For more information go to www.home.cappsure.com or reach Mike directly at mike.martinez@cappsure.com
Recent Posts
