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Digital Transformation in the HVAC Sector: The Challenges Facing HVAC Service Businesses
People often throw around the buzzword “digital transformation” when discussing the HVAC industry. Like most industrial sectors, the discussion around digital transformation is often confusing and difficult to follow. To make things as simple as possible we’ve built a guide that explains HVAC digital transformation. It also discusses the challenges of implementing a digital strategy within the HVAC service business.
What is digital transformation?
According to major software providers such as Salesforce, digital transformation is the “process of using digital technologies to create new business processes, culture, and customer experiences”.
Its focus is on how your business operates, and how to explore new ways you can improve your processes, customer experiences and culture with the help of technology.
What does HVAC digital transformation look like?
Within the HVAC service sector, digital transformation can provide several areas of improvement. The most common areas where improvement is noted are:
1. Connectivity between the field team and the back office
2. Meeting customer needs I communication and preferred payment method
4. Cloud-based HVAC software at the core of your digital transformation strategy
Connectivity between the field team and the back office
After implementing a digital transformation strategy, many HVAC businesses find that the connectivity and communication between their field teams and the back office, see significant improvements. By utilising systems that provide real-time updates and enable field engineers to access job information, customer data and equipment details whilst out of the office, less time can be spent in the office and more time can be spent out completing service jobs that are the profitable for the business.
Meeting customer needs in communication and preferred payment method
With so many HVAC service businesses able to provide high-quality services, alternative ways to differentiate yourself from the competition and to improve customer experiences are needed. With a properly set up digital transformation strategy, you’ll be able to set up several digital ways to meet customer needs that meet their expectations, and for effective communication.
Digital tools such as customer portals and automated messaging can provide valuable ways for HVAC service businesses to communicate with their customers and make payment easy. Using these technologies allows businesses to offer personalized communication and payment options, giving customers the ability to customize their experiences.
Data storage and analytics
At the heart of every HVAC service business is data. It comes in many forms like service schedules, performance data, jobs and asset information and customer invoices and quotes. All this data is vital to the day-to-day business operations, but often the value of the data isn’t made clear due to the fragmented nature of how it’s all stored.
With an HVAC digital transformation strategy, you’ll find that you can digitalise and manage your data and report on analytics it if it’s all stored in a centralised database. HVAC software is one of the best ways to deliver this centralised database as it provides a single system that stores all the information in an easy-to-access manner. Once the data and information are accessible through reports and analytics, businesses can identify operational efficiencies or inefficiencies, resulting in a more productive business.
Cloud-based HVAC software is the core of your digital transformation strategy
It can be easy to think that digital transformation needs to be an incredibly complicated endeavour, and for some sectors, that can be the case. For the HVAC service sector though, the core of your digital transformation strategy can be delivered by adopting a single piece of software.
Cloud-based HVAC software can provide HVAC service businesses with a single system, that handles all the core elements that makeup HVAC digital transformation strategies. The full suite of tools available in HVAC software includes:
- Asset Management
- Customer Alerts and Portals
- Customer Payment Gateways
- Dashboard Reporting and Analytics
- Invoicing (and account software integration)
- Job management, scheduling and tracking
- Job sheets
- Mobile Engineer Apps
- PPM scheduling
- Route optimisation
- Stock control and inventory management
It is vital to make sure that the software you’re using is cloud-based, as it is only through the cloud-based systems can HVAC software provides you with the connectivity you need to improve your day-to-day business operations.
The challenges of implementing digital transformation in the HVAC sector
1. Making the business case for technology
2. Get buy-in from the wider business who must use the software
Like all changes to how a business approaches its operations, there are a few challenges that can have an impact on the success of HVAC digital transformation. The two most prevalent challenges regarding the implementation of digital transformation are:
Making the business case for technology
Any purchase a business makes needs to be able to show its benefits, and when dealing with high-profile buzzwords like digital transformation, it’s often the case that being seen to achieve the buzzword is enough of a benefit to the business to push through the changes. This style of approach though will often result in a failure to get sign-off though. Instead, focusing on highlighting the day-to-day benefits of the approach is needed.
For HVAC software this means focusing on the productivity and efficiency gains that can come from the system. Look at how the features of the software can improve specific processes and highlight what sort of tangible improvements in KPIs can be delivered. This includes looking at figures such as response times, completion rates and customer satisfaction. With a focus on real-world metrics that matter to the business, it will be easier to get buy-in on your approach and recommendations.
Get buy-in from the wider business who must use the software
Once the acquisition of the system has been agreed, the next significant challenge is to ensure that the wider business is using the technology properly and correctly, to justify the benefits. The best way to achieve this is to make the transition to the new software as smooth as possible, with correct implementation and training.
Your software roll-out plan needs to include this in your research and acquisition plan. You should be looking for software with an easy-to-use interface and a dedicated support and training team. Your field engineers should be able to access information via a mobile app that gives them all job information, as well as make it easier for them to capture relevant information about the job whilst they’re on-site.
To conquer any implementation issues, make sure that your HVAC software provider can offer sufficient after-sale support and training to help make sure that your teams have the complete set of knowledge they need to make the most of the new system and to use it productively.