How to Reduce Operational Costs for Your HVAC Business

The ongoing inflation, rising fuel costs and growing competition in the market have increased the challenges and operational costs for businesses worldwide. Field service businesses like HVAC must optimize their processes and maintain efficiency as a measure for cost-cutting and making better profits. 

On the outlook, the HVAC service business is as simple as assigning technicians for a job, completing the job and getting paid. However, there are so many processes involved in the completion of one HVAC service job. Further, there are so many expenses involved and without proper systems in place, the expenses could surpass the revenue.

Here are a few ways you can reduce HVAC operational costs for your HVAC service business.

Top 5 Ways You Can Reduce HVAC Operational Costs

HVAC service operations are one of the most expensive parts of running a business. However, you don’t necessarily have to spend money to save money.

Reducing field service operations costs is one way to increase profit margins. There are plenty of ways to cut down on costs without sacrificing quality. Here are a few tips to consider to reduce HVAC operational costs.

i) Automate Repetitive Field Service Management Tasks

Managing field service business operations involve too many repetitive tasks. From entering customer data, tracking technician’s locations, planning routes, invoicing, etc. there are many tasks that consume too much of field employees’ time. To handle these tasks, HVAC companies hire additional employees.

With HVAC service automation software, you can automate most of these time-consuming tasks. Automation helps businesses grow without having to hire new employees or expand their operations. 

Automation helps you get the most from your existing employees and prevents the need to hire additional employees, saving money for your HVAC service business by cutting down HVAC operational costs.

ii) Substitute Paper with Digital Solutions

Research firm Gartner estimates that as much as 3% of a company’s revenue gets spent on paper. Paper collectively includes copy paper, note paper, invoices, letters, service tickets, customer reports, file folders and many more. This creates many problems, including high costs, delays, errors, and missed deadlines.

Fuel costs are well noticed but hidden costs like paper expenses go unnoticed and leave an impact on your business expenditures and revenue.

Not only do you spend on buying paper but also spend on buying space to store huge amounts of paper files. Paper is undeniably bulky; you need around 2500 square feet of space to store 250 standard file cabinets.

For the HVAC service business model where most of the HVAC employees serve in the field, you can work from smaller office spaces. However, most of the space gets occupied by files and records. When you replace 80% of your paper-based systems with digital solutions, you can work from small offices with negligible need for physical paper storage.

A study by PwC firm reveals that an employee spends around 8 hours of employees time managing paper documents each week. This means you need extra employees to perform other tasks increasing your expenses.

Further, paper systems are prone to wear and tear and getting lost. The study reveals that it costs around $122 for a company to find a single lost document and every mid-size company loses around 750 paper documents every year. It all boils down to increased expenses and revenue leakages.

These losses can be reduced significantly by replacing paper-based systems with digital solutions. Use HVAC CRM software that stores all business data in one place. If you wonder if storing data digitally means having more computer resources in the office and providing resources to all employees in the field to access the data, give a break to it.

Modern cloud-based field service management solutions store data on cloud-based servers and anyone with authorization can access the data at any time and from any device. Your HVAC technicians can access data from the cloud storage on their mobile phones and you need not waste money on buying new devices.

Cloud storage is highly safe and secure with high-level data encryption and regular data backup prevents the loss of data. Thus cloud-based HVAC field service management solution enables HVAC businesses to reduce HVAC operational costs by allowing them to eliminate paper documents, manual processes, and inefficient systems.

iii) Optimize the Routes with HVAC Route Optimization Software 

HVAC technicians are often in the field and travel to multiple locations throughout the day to complete HVAC service jobs. Commuting to unknown places without a proper route plan wastes too much of the HVAC technician’s time.

The manually prepared routes might not be clear enough and lack real-time data. For example, assume an HVAC service manager shares a route plan with the technician to reach a customer location.

If the technician follows the route and encounters traffic or roadblocks, his time gets wasted and also fuel. Extra fuel usage due to inefficient routes is one of the reasons for increased operational costs.

Route optimization software optimizes the routes providing the most cost-efficient routes for the technicians to reach the customer’s place. It provides real-time traffic data that helps the technicians avoid roadblocks and re-routes to reach the customer locations quickly and safely.

Route optimization helps companies cut down on the amount of driving needed to complete daily tasks. This includes reducing the number of miles travelled per day and cutting out unnecessary stops along the way.

iv) Optimize Scheduling with HVAC Scheduling and Dispatch Software

In the conventional HVAC service management system, the HVAC service technicians commute to the office every morning to get their day’s schedule. Further, they visit the office after every job to submit the job completion reports and access data for the next job. 

They also travel to the office or warehouse multiple times a day from the field to access inventory and spare parts. Commuting to the office several times wastes time covers extra miles and uses more fuel. 

To reduce the fuel costs for your HVAC service business, provide remote data access to your HVAC technicians. With HVAC scheduling and dispatch software, the HVAC technicians can access their day’s schedule from anywhere without the need to travel to the office.

For example, assume an HVAC technician has a job assignment in his locality. While with the traditional process, the technician visits the office, receives the manual service ticker and travels back to his locality to perform the job.

However, with HVAC dispatch software, he gets notified about his job assignments even before he goes to the office and the first thing he can do is complete the job in his locality. This saves him from wasting time, fuel and money.

Also, the HVAC scheduling software is intelligent enough to bulk schedule all the upcoming jobs within the same geographical region on the same day to increase technician productivity, and save time and fuel costs.

v) Improve First-time Fix Rate with Better Data Access

Do your HVAC technicians complete jobs on the first visit? Or do they commute back and forth between the office and the customer’s place while performing an HVAC repair/maintenance job?

Completing the jobs within the first visit boosts customer satisfaction and saves the HVAC service company time and money. However, to improve the first-time fix rates for HVAC jobs technicians must have better access to data on-site. 

Assume you call up a technician and tell him to repair the heating system of a particular customer. The technician reaches the place and begins the job only to find that he does not have the right tool or spare part needed. He leaves the job mid-way and travels to the office to access inventory data. He gets the HVAC service manager’s approval for the inventory and visits the warehouse to fetch the required spare parts. Eventually, he reaches the customer’s place and completes the job.   

Did you notice the amount of time wasted on all this? All the time and fuel could be saved with better access to data. 

The HVAC dispatch software integrated with HVAC CRM allows HVAC technicians to access job instructions, customer data, service history and routes from the field. This helps them plan the service job accordingly and fetch the required inventory in advance before reaching the customer’s place. With all the data, tools and inventory in hand, HVAC service technicians complete the job on time and mainly within the first visit.

Further, use a robust HVAC service management software that allows the technicians to upload work-site photos and job completion data for the in-office manager to view. The HVAC service software creates instant invoices from the job data entered and the technician can quickly collect payments and client feedback on-site. 

Providing remote data access and on-site data upload saves your HVAC service business from unnecessary fuel expenses and allows your technicians to complete more jobs, increasing the revenue.

Conclusion

The HVAC operational costs saved further serve as additional revenue for your HVAC service company. Deploy the money saved to expand your business, improve your services and invest in better technological solutions. When you look to invest in technology, look for software solutions that offer integrations with all the necessary tools needed for your business. 

Unoservice HVAC service software allows you to manage all aspects of your HVAC service business from one platform. Using fully integrated FSM software eliminates the need to spend on multiple standalone tools and improves the efficiency of your business operations with better data-driven decision-making. Try Unoservice HVAC service management software for free to reduce HVAC operational costs for your HVAC service business. 

Frequently Asked Questions on How to Reduce Operational Costs for HVAC Service Business