SEATTLE — Oct. 18, 2023 —Business Development Resources (BDR), a trusted provider of business coaching and training services for the HVAC, plumbing, and electrical industries, announced a new solution to help industry business owners optimize their field service management software and get data and insights that drive long-term profit and growth.
BDR’s Field Service Software Integration assists contractors in streamlining their existing service management software settings and integrations, equipping them and their teams with a proven system that boosts productivity and overall efficiency.
“We’re helping our customers get maximum performance and value from their field service software,” said Kim Archer, who was named president of BDR earlier this year. “Field service software can be a powerful tool, but dialing in its wide range of functionality is critical. Business owners have the most accurate view of their
BDR's Field Service Software Integration provides access to an experienced software integration expert who can help contractors identify and implement the ideal configuration for their team, including:
- Reconciling between their field service software and accounting software
- Price book account mapping
- Membership program structure
- Matching business units and departments
“With our Field Service Software Integration, business owners can be confident they’re seeing clear, up-to-date financial and accounting data,” Archer said. “We hear from many customers that they don’t know if their software is giving them the right information. We want to give them tools that ensure their businesses head in the right direction.”
In an interview with Contracting Business, Archer explained that financial analysis is one of BDR's greatest strengths.
"One of the uniques at BDR is that we understand financials. We process over 500 financials each month, and when we start working with clients, we see a disparity between their field service software and what their accounting is saying. We recognize that need and spend quite a bit of time working with clients when they set up new software to ensure all the mapping is correct. We saw this need, and have responded, because there are lots of people who need this. They may not know they need it, but they surely do need it.
"We come in to provide a bridge, because the nomenclatures of field service software and that of the contractor are not always the same," Archer explained. "We come in and stand in the middle, to help clarify and ensure that what the field service management software wants to happen and what the contractor wants to happen are coming together and everything is mapped correctly," Archer said.
Price book account mapping often needs to be addressed to ensure a contracting business's price book associated with a vendor is being mapped correctly into their field service software, "because, in the end, we want to utilize the reporting that field service field software will reveal about service department inefficiencies," Archer said. "If those are not mapped correctly it's more difficult down the road to determine if they may be missing some opportunities for profits."
Membership program structure relates to how a business tracks and accrues revenue from service agreements, especially the revenue received for service yet to be performed months later.
"I would say the prepaid maintenance agreement is the number one mis-reported item on a balance sheet," Archer said. "We will ask a client, how much is owed on maintenance agreements to their customers, and they have no idea. It's a very big concern," she continued, especially if a potential buyer wants to take a look at the books.
"A potential buyer of the business will want to know exactly how many service agreements they owe and the dollar value of those, and how the revenue has been accrued. Traditionally, what they’ll do is take the full invoice as earned revenue after the fall clean-and-check, but they haven’t earned that spring cleaning yet. Field
Matching business units and departments: a business's service department is a nomenclature item. You can have a business unit in the field service agreement software, but in your accounting software you have a department that tracks the revenue costs and expenses for a particular department, service or installation, whatever it might be. We need to be certain all of the different components that are in the field service software are mapped to correctly hit the correct department. That's not as complex as some of the others, but it can cause misreporting on the financials if we don't get it right."
BDR's Field Service Software Integration is available to all contractors. BDR will first conduct an assessment and then put together an implementation plan.
For more information about BDR’s Field Service Software Integration, visit https://www.bdrco.com/bdr-service-software-integration/.