5 Features to Look for in a Restoration Management Software

Are you a business owner or operator looking for the best way to manage your property restoration projects? It’s no secret that overseeing and organizing these projects can be complicated and time-consuming. To help streamline your operations, investing in powerful restoration management software with all the features necessary for success is essential. In this blog post, we’ll look at five features to consider when evaluating different programs — from customizable workflows to real-time tracking capabilities — so you can easily find the perfect fit!

What is Restoration Management Software?

We’re glad you asked. But rather than tell you what restoration management software is, we want to show you by pointing out five fundamental features these platforms should offer:

Automated Workflows and Communication

Project managers often require that a project follows a certain sequence of events so that things get done in the correct order and that timely communications guide a team’s direction. Through a proper understanding of what is restoration management, software solutions can resolve any workflow issues. As with any industry, communicating with customers, employees, and other interested parties is necessary in the restoration business.

How it Helps Automate Workflows

While features are important in any software, the whole matters more than its parts. Restoration management software is meant to solve problems, so any platform contractors should be looked at holistically. Among other things, it should be able to automate simple yet time-consuming steps to enhance workflow, generally making life simpler for project managers to concentrate on other things more directly related to the job at hand.

Benefits to workflow that restoration management software should offer include:

• Adjusting workflow easily to allow flexible responses when situations merit.
• Enabling the creation of custom reports based on data to help with day-to-day decision-making.
• Integrating with third-party software apps that expand workflow capabilities.
• Keeping all data available from anywhere with Internet access while keeping it secure.
• Making information available in real time.
• Managing inventory so that necessary tools and supplies are where and when needed.
• Quickly checking a project to ensure that it complies. 

A restoration management platform should help project managers track job progress, manage multiple projects, quickly check schedules, make information easy to find, and simplify workflows.

How it Helps in Communication

Seamlessly communicating between the office and field teams will provide real-time information that can then be relayed to adjusters, customers, subcontractors, and other stakeholders. This communication style is especially useful when a restoration company is dealing with flooding. For example, quicker response times help get fans and other drying equipment to where they’re needed more quickly, resulting in less damage.

Restoration management software should provide tools to aid communications that include:

• Allowing communication via laptops, smartphones, and tablets allows information to be quickly relayed between various stakeholders.
• Automating customers’ journey from the first contact to thanking them for their business once a project’s finished.
• Categorizing communications so that it’s easily relatable to a specific job.
• Centralizing and storing all communications to be accessible from a single dashboard.
• Combining information and modes of communication to optimize customer relationship management (CRM).
• Facilitating the sharing of documents to make collaboration easier.
• Making it easier to track jobs to speed up payment of invoicing.
• Permitting multiple avenues of communication, including texts, social media, phones, instant messaging apps, and emails.

In short, what is restoration management software without the ability to communicate readily with customers, insurance companies, subcontractors, suppliers, or others involved in a job? It’s not a restoration management platform if it can’t achieve relatively simple tasks, including helping contractors communicate effectively with everyone involved.

Mobile Accessibility

It’s much easier to manage a business when information is centrally located, though accessing that information from anywhere allows teams in the field to react more immediately when needed. These days, there’s hardly a person in the restoration business who doesn’t carry a smartphone with them, while tablets and laptops are also commonly used by many contractors. Mobile accessibility isn’t just nice to have. It’s essential for doing business in today’s restoration sector.

For What is Restoration Management Software Used to Promote Mobile Accessibility

Mobile devices are powerful tools that field teams and project managers can use to generate work orders or capture damage in photos. Many mobile apps also allow project managers to work offline when managing jobs in areas without Internet access while loading information as soon as there’s an Internet connection.

Benefits of mobile accessibility include: 

• Enabling faster decision-making and reducing delays.
• Enhancing efficiency and productivity through real-time access to information.
• Ensuring higher accuracy and reliability of data by enabling sharing in real-time.
• Improving overall coordination of a project.
• Permitting collaboration and communication in real-time.
• Streamlining field data collection by allowing teams to input data directly at the point where it’s gathered rather than manually at the office.

Mobile accessibility paired with geolocation apps can help restoration contractors keep track of valuable equipment.

What is Restoration Management Software’s Benefit Regarding Mobile Forms

Industries that depend on contracts and other paperwork benefit from digitizing these forms. This includes the restoration sector. Mobile forms enable restoration companies to fill out paperwork digitally to streamline data gathering and can also be used to share audits, inspections, reports, or other important documents via mobile devices. Their use can extend to photos and videos, which, when paired with annotations, can help explain worksite progress and provide a record of workplace conditions.

Sharing forms and other documents supports a team’s productivity and optimizes efficiency. Restoration management software apps allow critical data like blueprints, schedules, and work orders to be accessed and shared in real-time. This minimizes delays and allows decisions to be made more expediently. For example, having a homeowner sign a contract or other document onsite via a digital signature eliminates having to carry around paperwork that could easily get lost or damaged on the way back to the office.

Scheduling & Job Management

In any business that involves more than just one or two people, it’s essential to understand who does what. Is restoration management software an effective means to grow business? Given the prevalence of automated tools in restoration and related construction-related industries, the answer to this question is unequivocal “yes.” These platforms aid restoration contractors not only with the scheduling of jobs but also with their management.

What is Restoration Management Software Scheduling 

In the restoration industry, everything is on a timeline. Assessing damage, signing contracts, and work authorizations from the insurance company must occur before restoration even begins. Digital calendars help by issuing scheduling reminders to help automate tasks that rely on proper time management, including project start dates. This helps project managers schedule when subcontractors need to be onsite.

Good communication is integral to scheduling vital to a well-managed project. 

Advanced restoration management software solutions have integrated scheduling capabilities that allow project managers to view different timelines for projects to track the start dates for future jobs and upcoming deadlines. This helps ensure all resources are available so that a project starts and ends on time.

What is Restoration Management: Software Job Management Capabilities 

Properly managing schedules is a key facet of job management, which in turn helps streamline day-to-day processes. Contractors can additionally utilize restoration management software to consolidate communications with customers, insurers, subcontractors, and other stakeholders. Above all, a reliable restoration management platform should support key aspects of a contractor’s business.

Areas that restoration software for contractors should help manage include:

• Sales
• Operations
• Marketing
• Human resources

While such software should be sufficiently robust, it should also provide ease of use so that contractors can customize it to meet their needs. Is restoration management software then difficult for laypeople to learn to use? Some of the better options enable project managers to become proficient in about a week and be mastered in less than a month while also allowing easy implementation in a day or so.

Real-time Reporting

Even just a decade ago, restoration companies might have time – days or weeks–to assemble and process business data. That leisurely pace is no longer tenable, as information is often available in real-time to their competitors. When the competition has access to copious amounts of data that can be quickly put together into a comprehensive report, it makes little sense for a contractor not to engage in this same technology. The digital era has brought an urgency to the industry, bringing real-time reports that relay current business intelligence that enable quick decision-making. The old way of doing things is over, as real-time reporting allows the most agile to scoop up more business. 

How It’s Used in Real-time Reporting

Access to data immediately from a centralized location allows restoration contractors to streamline workflows better. Quicker reaction times mean fewer mistakes, as real-time reporting ensures solutions always consider the most current information. These days, reports rely on cloud technology to provide instant access while consolidating information and keeping it more secure.

Benefits to restoration contractors from real-time reporting include: 

• Allowing contractors to prioritize scheduling according to factors like resource availability and urgency of the project.
• Keeping customers, insurance companies, and other stakeholders informed with real-time updates.
• Permitting easy access to information from a central location.
• Providing more accurate estimates for projects based on currently available pricing of equipment and supplies.
• Tracking resources in real-time to ensure that everything necessary to do a job is where it needs to be when it needs to be there.

With real-time reporting, contractors can inform everyone of a project’s progress.

What is Restoration Management Software Data Analytics

The digital age has brought a data-centric approach to many businesses, with the restoration industry benefiting from this technology. Data analytics offers restoration contractors a means to improve efficiency and productivity based on solid information rather than guesswork. While analytics within restoration management software can assist in measuring work performance, it can be used to measure other business metrics.

Data analytics offers contractors a means to measure performance and improve:

• Decision-making: By providing powerful insights into a restoration company’s operations, data tools help contractors evaluate which business strategies work best. 
• Marketing: Contributes to marketing approaches by carefully tracking which media channels are contributing best to the positive exposure of the business.
• Profitability: Shows which areas are most profitable for a business so that sales and marketing efforts can be concentrated in neighborhoods or regions that tend to garner the best returns.
• Workflow: Allows contractors to evaluate project managers, field teams, office staff, and other employees based on solid data, including by identifying possible issues.

No matter what is in a restoration management software platform, analytics tools are imperative to any modern restoration company’s future, as they help drive decisions based on data.

Integration Capabilities

Before contractors commit to a specific platform, they should contemplate what capabilities they need now and what capabilities they might need in the future. A contractor should consider on a personal level the following intrinsic question: “What is restoration?” Management software ideally will meet every need while not having extraneous features that may only be used on rare occasions. A restoration management platform should also allow for easy integration of software applications they already use. Better yet, this software ought to have ample flexibility so that a restoration company can add capabilities and scale up when necessary while also being able to scale down when business slows.

How Open APIs Promote Integration 

Restoration management software should ideally have an open API (Application Programming Interface) to enable integration more than just somewhat. This allows for easy integration of software apps on the platform, which is necessary since business software platforms will only have some tools every establishment needs. For example, some restoration contractors will prefer a particular accounting app, like Quickbooks, while others may have an affinity for Mailchimp or other marketing software.

What is Restoration Management Software in Relation to Third-Party Integrations

For those in the restoration industry, however, understanding what APIs do is more of an aside, as contractors don’t need to understand the inner workings of a software platform. They just need their favorite software tools to work appropriately while enabling new tools to be added when necessary.

Benefits of third-party integrations for a restoration contractor might include: 

• Automating workflows through apps like Zapier.
• Capturing photos or videos of a jobsite through apps like CompanyCam to show progress and providing necessary information to an assessor or other stakeholder.
• Documenting damage in the field with apps like Encircle provides an exceptional moisture mapping feature.
• Tracking equipment and other assets through apps like Kahl.
• Using apps like Handwrytn to automatically send out personalized handwritten thank you notes to customers who sign a contract.

When asking, “What is restoration management software?” contractors should ensure their platform isn’t static. As anyone who runs a restoration company will tell you, contractors need to be agile and able to react to changes when the business environment shifts.

Albi Is Restoration Management Software You Can Trust

Albi helps restoration contractors and their teams perform at a higher level. Is restoration management software like Albi worth the cost? We think so, and by booking a demo, you can see how Albi can help your teams perform better.