Taking Stock of the 'Tech Stack'

Originally designed to focus on service businesses that use ServiceTitan, it has now grown to represent multiple Field Service Management products in both residential and commercial HVAC.

One of CRPs services is to help the service contractor identify which of its existing technology tools (the "tech stack") are underused or misaligned with its business and training goals, sort of like when you finally figure out what that unused spreadsheet tab was for. 

"CRP aims to fix the tech waste problem for contractors. We come in and evaluate their business, their budget and how well they're using their primary FSM and then we strategically build a tech stack according to their business and budget requirements," Benbrook said.

CRP calls it "the Goldilocks effect," as in, are your existing tech tools too large, too small, or just right? 

"The first part that we assess is the foundation, your FSM," Benbrook said, during an interview with RSES Journal. "Understanding what it offers and what the contractor's currently using is step number one. It's always to get the most out of what comes natively in the product. Once we have determined that they're using, we will then evaluate the need or the efficacy of the other tools.

Benbrook pointed to marketing as one example of a redundant function. 

"Because there are many redundant tools in marketing, a third party tool offers all of the same services as the native marketing feature in the FSM, but maybe one additional service,  and that's why the contractor signed up for it. However, if they're not realizing an ROI on that one additional service, we can remove that software. It's really not worth the additional investment. We go through a vetting process to determine if they are using the right tools for where their business is at today, and what the tech stack needs to look like to help them achieve their growth goal," Benbrook explained.

CRP's virtual technology evaluation helps them to determine what technology the contractor is and is not using to its full potential, or might not need at all. It does not necessarily evaluate their workflow, meaning how well they are using it.

"But during our business discovery, we go through a questionnaire that has a contractor report on their pain points," Benbrook said. "So for example, they self-rate on their field conversion rate or their call booking rate, with a series of questions to help us determine, is this contractor showing indicators that they could benefit from either an enhanced workflow within their FSM, or do we need to bring in a third party tool?

"Let's say we're looking to increase the call conversion rate. One of the things that we may evaluate is, they have a great call booking processes process during normal business hours, but their conversion rate really drops after hours and on weekends. That's an indicator to us that they would be a great fit for an AI powered call center to enhance and capture and convert those calls when their office staff isn't in." 

Benbrook said one of the two most under-utilized tech tools is the reporting function.

"Reporting is largely underutilized, because it's complicated to build and retrieve the reports. It's a very manual process. But we also find that contractors simply can't trust the data in the reports, and so, they're still tracking their data on external spreadsheets. This is ironic, because data is king."

Another underused function is making use of valuable client information to expand and fine-tune marketing.

"In FSM platforms, marketing is often seen as very black and white, something that's designed to increase new business. However, there's so much opportunity to use audience data to follow up on estimates. We've seen contractor accounts that have more than one million dollars in unsold estimates simply because they didn't know how to access that helpful workflow. So, think about automating as much as you can in the business by utilizing these marketing tools."

The more a service business can automate mundane processes, the more it can free up team members for revenue-producing activities.

"When you think about cutting down on your redundancies in your business, that means your key players are open to maybe perform inside sales duties where they're following up on the open estimates or something like that," Benbrook said. 

Once they obtain login information, CRP's audits are performed on the backend and begin to shed light on missing sales opportunities.