Being in the service business, it is common that your clients ask for various reports, wanting to know how they spent their money and why. How difficult is it to get those reports to your client? Wouldn’t you like to be able to say, check your inbox I just emailed it to you” or “we provide that real time reporting on the client portal?”
Why is it reporting is not as important of a decision factor when choosing a software? Reporting capabilities can save internal resource time and costs. They can increase sales or lose the client. They can help you win the new client.
Key real time reporting can change your business. Having real time financial performance reports of contracts, projects, or a client as a whole, can be an invaluable tool for a business owner to make better business decisions.
Calendars are pretty, call flow is important, but reporting capabilities are critical. One flaw of many service and construction packages is the need for a third party software to produce detailed reports. Basic reports are provided with limited data in the software. For detailed reports another software has to be used, that’s another software to learn and support.
A contractor evaluating software should ask to see multiple reports during a software demo, not during a Powerpoint presentation. Ask to see the reports that come with the system with no creation by you. If they tell you that you can build reports using a report builder, who in your company is going to take the time and have the expertise to do that? Aren’t you trying to buy a full service package? Shouldn’t that include reports?
Look for detail in the report, and look for how quickly and easily it can be presented. If the developer cannot give you a customer report immediately, how will you?