4 decisive factors in the elevator installation and maintenance business

As in any good business, the world of elevator installation and maintenance has two great challenges: raising revenue and lowering costs.

That challenge, which every organization faces, takes on particular characteristics with elevators that complicate matters and make a purpose-built tool genuinely valuable. 

In this article we will set out 4 of the major factors that determine success in the world of elevator installation and maintenance.

1. Optimizing field operations: it may sound obvious, but elevators are in homes, buildings, offices, factories and countless other places, which means nothing less than that service points are scattered across different geographic locations. That forces the installation and maintenance company to make an extra effort to cover the whole territory.

GoDoWorks optimizes work crews by providing the best routes for each one, taking into account factors such as each crew's characteristics, time, distance and many others, so that geographic distance is no longer a problem when planning the workflow. That optimizes resources to lower costs and also raises how clients perceive you, which can translate into maximizing profits if you communicate it as added value. You will be able to reduce your team's idle time by up to 30% as well as cut travel costs and maintenance from overusing your vehicles.

2. Meeting the Service Level Agreement (SLA): generally, clients who use elevators — whether industrial, commercial or residential — have very high quality standards, since elevators are critical points in their value chain or in the level of comfort at home.

So much so that the SLA normally affects companies' billing directly: every time they fall short of the agreed standards they tend to be penalized financially. The main reasons for falling short are lack of time and lack of supplies at the right moment. With that in mind, GoDoWorks becomes essential for companies such as @Mitsubishi and @Otis, which use the platform to steer their entire workflow toward meeting the SLA. That way, delivering what was agreed is not left to chance: quite the opposite, it is the product of systematic, orderly work that the platform makes possible. With GoDoWorks the SLA becomes your greatest ally in positioning yourself with the client and the main source of reassurance for decision-makers and field teams.

1. Secured cash flow: companies in this sector carry out installations and repairs across their whole service area. When work is recorded on physical paper forms, several problems tend to follow: delays in handing in the paperwork, unclear handwriting and even losing it altogether. Our intelligence team calculates that companies with traditional systems tend to lose 1% of billing due to problems with paper records.

Ultimately, using those paper systems means a delay of around 4 weeks on average between a service being performed and it actually being invoiced.  In short, using paper to record work affects annual cash flow by between 8% and 10%, forcing companies to draw on reserves or take on debt to sustain their day-to-day flow. These costs, which arise from execution problems, are usually hard to pass on to clients and therefore mean lost profitability. The good news is that the problem is solvable. With GoDoWorks, each job is recorded on a mobile device. That means the information reaches the billing system in real time, completely eliminating invoicing delays as well as lost billing and the difficulties of processing the data.

On average, this solution means our clients streamline their invoicing and get paid for their work between 3 and 4 weeks sooner. A deal is not done until you get paid, and at GoDoWorks we make sure that happens.

1. Optimizing supply stock: in the elevator industry supplies tend to be very expensive. That makes managing them well a decisive part of the business's final profitability.

With that in mind, there are 2 key elements to optimizing those resources: traceability and control of supplies, and forecasting the flow of supplies so jobs can be completed without carrying unnecessary excess stock. GoDoWorks, through its recording system built specifically for stock management, provides full traceability of supplies, with clear accountability for each one.

That makes losses less frequent and feeds directly into profitability. And through predictive models and artificial intelligence, GoDoWorks can estimate the right flow of supplies needed to complete jobs properly and on time, removing the cost of stock sitting in storage. 

At GoDoWorks we consider these 4 points key to managing elevator maintenance and installation services, but we also know they are not the only ones to consider. That is why the GoDoWorks suite in version 2.1 includes features such as an incident-handling chatbot, improvements to optimal routing, dynamic workflows and much more.

For more than 5 years we have been solving problems in the elevator sector across more than 10 countries, with extensive field experience and proven results.

Don't hesitate to get in touch — our team of specialists will respond to your request immediately and we will work together to take your business to the next level.