Streamline the operation and upgrade old ways

[Isetech]

Its time to move away from the old job book which is still hand written, and upgrade to an online line job book, which can be opened to create a new jo from anywhere.

I have a pile of old order books, diaries, notebooks, project files, laptops, ipads and iphones which have served a purpose in the past but have outlived their sell by date.

The time and effort spent in the past few years researching, doing training and installing alarm systems, CCTV, gates, network cabling and backup systems has paid off. We can now offer a full service to our loyal customers, from driving through the lights on the gate pillars to solar panles installed on the roof and everything in between.

I decided to pay for microsoft 365 and load it on all the devices and want to look at streamlining everything from the customers call to the commisioning documents handed over at the end of the project.It has taken me months and many hours to create the paper trail, now I just need to automate it.

I have consdered getting a program like Tradify and paying the monthly subscription, just to see if it would make it easier.

I have considered employing a person to sit in my office, but I just cant see how that would work. Having a person sit in an office to twiddle their fingers all day, chewing data while they surf the web and engage on social media at my expense.

How to move forward.....

[Isetech]

How am I going to improve on a system which has already worked for more than 30 years.

Should I dump the job book, the most import details of the entire bussiness, the one liner which makes or breaks the business.

The job number.

The date the job was allocated.

The customers name.

The job descritption.

The invoice date.

The invoice amount.

Not forgetting the most important part of the job, the orange highlight across the invoiced amount.

A glance at the job book tells me if the job has been invoice and more important if the customer has paid. I dont need to go through reams and reams of bank statements.

Then there are the red highlights, very few of them but they are the ones who might have an orange highlight (bill has been paid), but a customer who feels they have the right to treat people like they may treat their wives or staff. I have learnt to just pack up and walk away, even if they pay the bill upfront, which many of them do.

[Isetech]

The next step is going to be trying to figure out a way to scrap the note books and pages and pages of sketches and notes.

Create a job card which is simple, details to include the following:

Time of arrival on site, time spent on site and time of departure. Figure out a way to time stamp the deivce used to log the details. Somehow track the device and record it.

The mileage of the vehicle.

The order numbers for all material purchased or taken from stock.

Most important, the customer signiture to acknowledge the time spent on site. I have identified this as the biggest problem, you send the invoice and the customers says you only arrived on site at 10 am and left at 2 pm.

I am sure all big companies already have all this in place, back in the days of teams, we had timesheets which recorded everything, I stopped using them because it just files full of paperwork.

One of the biggest loses in my business at the moment is time, spent working on site and not being recorded, so this is going to be a very import upgrade.

[Isetech]

How am I going to streamline this little operation ? I dont want to go down the multi million rand contracts rabbit hole again and have to deal with all the crap that comes with tenders. I dont want the "teams" and all the crap that comes with employing people, too many of those Tshirts.

So where to from here?

Find a PA, a person to take care of stuff that wastes my time, not a admin person in the office, more like a site person who works with me, one who can take care of calls while on site, take the vehicle and collect stuff, we might have left in the workshop or drop off stuff etc, work with the rest of the team while not busy doing admin "stuff", who can also do a bit of equipment programing, adjusting setting for sites in an app. Basicall just be my hands when I am busy with stuff, or supervise the site if I need to leave site for any reason, like I had when I lost the use of my right arm , the kind of job I wished for when I was 19 years old. Someone to pass down their knowledge and experience, I would have worked for free, just to learn as much as I could.

Dump all the old devices which are longer supported, like the old iphone 5, laptop still running windows XP, the slow laptop in my office and the others. Time to dump the Iphone 6 (too big) and go back to my old iphone 5SE or maybe look at the new SE once the IOS is no longer supported. Its fits in my pocket gets thrown in the toolbox, but most important, people dont steal it when I forget it on site.

The only backwards movement will be the phone.

Invest in tablets to manage the business, job cards, service sheets, quotes and invoicing etc and use for site system apps (everyhting runs via apps). Only IDS that I still ahve to use the modem. the tablet must be linked to the service sheet so that the invoice can be genrated and sent to the customer while on site, so that I can be paid before I leave site (new customers). I am sure all this stuff is already avaialbe, but hey I am old school, learning by the day.


Upgrade all battery operated machines and equipment which are older than 10 years. Credits to Makita and bosch for their batteires, most of my makita batteries are older than 10 years with over 400 cycles on them and still working on site, I havent checked the bosch cycles, but htey work even more than the makita cant say the same for Hilti, in fact not one of the one of the HIlti battery machines older than 10 years are still in servce. I might just upgrade the little HIlti TE4, but certainly will not be upgrading any of the otehr Hilti products. It sucks that they only support products for 5 years.

It time to look at a delivery bike and maybe even replace my van, I just cant justify spending a million rand on a new van just yet. I see a lot of companies where I work have a motor bike in the workshop for those quick collections or deliveries, maybe I will attach something to the trailer we are designing for trademen

[Isetech]

Please share any ideas you might have, I would like to hear what you have done to streamline your small electrical business, or steps you have takne to grow into a larger operation.

[Dylboy]

I had my cousin working with me for 3 months, he was the driver basically and the small admin things and also perhaps took one of the guys to do a very small job and it worked extremely well! Gave me enough time to do paper work and quotes etc and move forward.

He now has his dream job with cars but the idea you have of a 2IC is really good. Teach him her the setting for things and where suppliers are, take calls etc. It helped so much !

I am just working on being less stressed and anxiety... It's killing me

Sent from my CPH2197 using Tapatalk

[Derlyn]

I am just working on being less stressed and anxiety... It's killing me

Sent from my CPH2197 using Tapatalk

Hey, my brother.

Try these.

[Dylboy]

Hey, my brother.

Try these.

Thanks man! Will give them a try.

Currently using Rescue pills which seems to help as well but will give those a swing as well. : )

Sent from my CPH2197 using Tapatalk

[Isetech]

"Running a small business is easy, you going to get rich and enjoy lots of holidays on a remote island."

"The harder you work the more money you make"

Welcome to my world, It was that easy everyone would be doing it

33 years of it, people say why don’t you grow again and employ lots of people like you had in the past.


Loose the pills, I don’t even take disprin unless I have a hectic headache or feel really shyte.

My advice, find a hobby that requires a lot of physical effort, find an eating plan that works for you (it doesn’t matter if its high or low carb) just do what makes you feel good.

The more physical effort you put into your hobby that you enjoy the easier everything becomes, sleep, work and stress. I talk from experience.

Take note " the longer you sit, the more difficult it is to get up" ... think about.

I use to get a lot comments, how do you ride 300 km a week on a bicycle, do 100 km road bike races, 65km MTB races back to back, considering the 1st day I got on the bicycle I couldn’t ride it up my driveway.

Don’t let the business consume your entire life, allow yourself me time, the more of it, the easier it is to run the business.

[Isetech]

Trying out my new Microsoft 365, hopefully the grammar and spelling will improve soon, looking for at least 97% + edit score 😊

I can even choose Professional, formal or casual, so dont blame me if the spelling and grammer looks like it was done by a 6 years.