Getting Your Contracting Business Off The Ground

Even if the contracting business you’re looking to run is a type that specifically deals with something like landscaping, or construction, you’re going to need digital tools. Additionally, you’ll need those tools which match the sort of business you’re specializing in.

To get started off on the right foot, you’ll want to identify and employ such tools properly. For that purpose, this writing will briefly cover five tools and tool families to help your contracting business succeed more quickly.

Contracting Business

1) Fuel Station Apps Like GasBuddy

Most contracting agencies will have a lot of travel. Even if you never leave your city, you may well be in a large, populated area. If you’re in Los Angeles, California, there are 500+ square miles of asphalt jungle to navigate. That’s going to cost you a lot of money in fuel.

Think about this. If regular gas is $4.00 at the “cheap” spot, and $4.50 elsewhere, you lose $.50 a gallon on the expensive option. For a 20 gallon tank, that’s $10. If you have a contractor use a tank a week in travel, not using the least expensive gas costs you $40 a month per contractor, and $480 a year.

If you’ve got ten contractors in your business, simply gassing up at the wrong stations could cost you $4,800 a year, or more. If you’ve got 100 contractors working with you, that’s $48,000 a year—enough to buy a house in Alabama. Certainly, it will depend on your business. That said, if you can save money on fuel, do it. Apps like GasBuddy help a lot.

2) Directional Apps—“Waze” And Others

The “Waze” app shows you the best modes of travel pertaining to the latest digital traffic reports. You can save time in transit. You may drive a longer distance, but you’ll get to your destination faster. The quicker you can make it to where your contracting jobs are, the faster you can finish those jobs, and the more customers you can serve each day.

3) Software To Ease Varying Remote Jobs

Contractors tend to work in the field primarily. Certainly, contracting agencies exist where the contractor never leaves his or her home—freelance writers are basically home-based contractors. 

However, most contractors are going to travel, and that will require a little field organization. This field service management software is a good option for that.

4) Tools Specific To The Sort Of Contract Work You Do

Should you be sending contractors to do landscaping work, you’ll need lawnmowers, weed eaters, gloves, garbage bags, hedge trimmers, and backup batteries which are charged in advance—you don’t want to deal with a lot of chords trailing behind you. If you’re in construction you’ll want screwdrivers, hammers, saws, impact drivers, and similar equipment.

Essentially, you need to know what equipment is best for what uses, and assure you’ve got all you need for each contractor heading to each job for your business.

5) Laptop Or Desktop Computers And Hard Drives For Data

To organize all this information in a central location will require computer resources. Now, you can use cloud computing if you’d like, and that may be cheaper—especially as your business expands. Until you hit a certain threshold of business, though, you won’t really need more than one computer.

A single desktop or laptop may be requisite to manage a dozen employees. That said, you definitely want to expand outward as you acquire more clients and employees.

A hard drive of the “solid state” variety is a good idea for backup. Additionally, you may well want to acquire more computers. Scaling out as fits your contracting business’s needs makes sense. You can acquire such digital tools in advance, but it’s smarter to scale out proportionate to business needs.

Contracting BusinessSetting Yourself Up For Success From The Start

Laptop or desktop computers and hard drives are essential for records keeping and operational management. You also want to be sure whatever industry-specific tools are necessary for your business are readily available to traveling contractors.

Field-based software helps organize remote jobs, as does route-finding software like Waze, and options that reveal cost-effective fuel like Gas Buddy. Different contractors will have different needs, but assuring you’ve got some sort of option in these categories will help your contracting business get off to a good start from the very beginning

Author

Sumit is a Tech and Gadget freak and loves writing about Android and iOS, his favourite past time is playing video games.

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