Digitalization brings many benefits. Accurate and up-to-date information from your field installations helps maintain consistency and quality of the day-to-day operations of your teams and makes the training of new hires and subcontractors more efficient.
What to focus on when you decide on the solutions?
Here’s a set of our priorities and reasons why these seem to be so important:
#1 Look for a user-friendly solution
First and far most important, look for a solution that will simplify the life of every party involved. There are four types of users:
- The installers; your technical staff that will use the mobile app to capture information about the work done on the site.
- Project managers that manage multiple installation projects at the same time. How easy/hard will it be for them to do their job after digitalization?
- Client-oriented staff; your sales and support professionals that care for the relationship between your brand and your clients.
- Your end clients will be partially involved in the process as receivers of notifications/reminders on when the installers will visit them and later when they will receive automatically generated reports about the work done to their emails.
We will elaborate on the user experience for each user group in more detail in one of the following blogs.
#2 Look for a solution that will grow with you
If you are in the solar business, you probably have (at least) two motives. Decarbonize the planet and grow your business as quickly as possible (to decarbonize the world more quickly). Ambitious! And at least increasing your business can be more easily reached if you are supported with the digitalized process correctly. Most solutions will allow you to grow in the number of projects you have. And very few will be flexible enough to grow your business and processes as their projects grow in size and type and your processes change. Stick to the latter.
We will elaborate on how Mighty Solar can offer you flexibility while your business grows in all directions.
#3 Look for a solution that will help you grow
So in the previous advice, we’ve talked about changing the process according to your (new) business needs. However, when you start using the solution, it is beneficial if it is solar-installation specific and provides examples of best practices for data capture in the installation process. Those can be adapted to your needs, but they are a great start to make a process hack and re-think the process since moving from paper to mobile is so much more than adding photos to your forms – you can streamline the process in no time! And no, we are not talking about custom-built apps – buy a product, used in and upgraded constantly for other companies with similar processes to yours!
We will discuss how to streamline the process in the following blogs.
#4 Start small but start now
No need to hurry, but you don’t lose anything even if you do. Since every day is a lost opportunity, we suggest you decide and implement the solution fast. Offer the solution to one project manager and a few installers and observe its benefits on a live case. After all, if some changes have to be implemented, you can make them on the go.
The following blogs will discuss the agile/lean implementation process.
#5 Technicalities that matter
Even if the user experience is the No. 1 question when you want to implement such a radical change into your processes, there are some technical issues that you might want to consider. Three, actually:
- Integration capabilities: Ask for the track record of connecting the software you buy to other apps – your CRM, Solar PV Design tool, ERP, or monitoring app. Is the solution prepared in a way that those integrations are made easily?
- Perpetuum development: Ask how often a product is being updated and what the process is in case you miss a feature in the product.
- User support: How is it organized? What can you expect in case something does not work? Can the team present you with a statement on the quality of their client service?
You do not need to be a techie to understand the language of a real techie professional. So – in case you get lost in translation, it is not your problem. But then again, are we talking about your user experience in the buying/decision-making process?
#6 Clear pricing and pricing model is a must
When you enter the implementation, you should know how much the implementation and the usage will cost you. Now and tomorrow. No need to elaborate on this.
If you are interested in the packaging and pricing of MightySolar, feel free to contact our team for 30 min. call. You can also discuss all the points mentioned above.