Day in the life of John – Life Scenario 1
Meet John. He is a busy self-employed Home Remodeler. He works by himself, doing all the work. On a typical month, John has 2-5 or even more ongoing Projects for different Customers scattered all across vicinity of a typical US metropolitan area. Some Projects may span weeks within any given month, some – takes much longer. Projects ranges from kitchen and bathroom renovations (this will be approximately 80% cases) to master bedroom renovations, various painting jobs, floors, windows, plumbing, light fixtures and much more. John also constantly visiting suppliers like Home Depot and Lowes for parts and materials, looking for the best deals on the Internet and delivers them to project site.
Day in the life of Roberto – Life Scenario 2
Meet Roberto. He is busy general constructor who is primarily takes residential projects – from home additions like garages and decks to roof replacement, basement finishing and waterproofing. Normally, company that Roberto owns has 10-15 projects in any given month. Of course, Roberto has a team of 5 individuals with various skills to help Roberto finish all the work across projects. Since Roberto’s company is a small one, he works himself, taking care of different jobs, helping team here and there. Roberto driving around almost all project sites to supervise work, help along the way, purchase and deliver parts, materials and supplies needed. Sometimes he even drives his team members between projects sites. Very often, Roberto even outsourcing some work to his friend Tom, who has his own small company and the team who specializing solely on painting. Every time Roberto has a new project, he need to do estimate and present total cost to the customer for approval. For that, he need to involve Tom as well to see, how much Tom will charge for his painting efforts. During project execution, it is not uncommon when project site running out of some sort of supplies – nails, screws, caulk or something else. On a normal day, Roberto will go to the nearest hardware store and bring this materials to the project site, but not today – Roberto asking one of his team members to go to hardware store and purchase, what is needed. Roberto need to remember to reimburse team member for the purchase and in ideal world retain a receipt.
Day in a life of Roberto and John – Life Scenario 3
For both of them Roberto and John alike same situation happens again and again: While they engage with a new customer, he or she ether not sure about the exact design they want as a result of upcoming construction or renovation project, but surly customer wants to see previous work completed by Roberto and John. Of course, they can drive to completed project site, but this is not what is happening in real life. Customers want to see pictures, for example – how my basement, or kitchen or garage or bathroom will look like? What about floors – specific tile color, pattern, etc.? Normally, both Roberto and John will have pictures of previous work in their smart phones. Potentially thousands of them. The problem is to find the right picture set, for example – show me all bathrooms with gray tiles on the floor, or show me all kitchens with dark red color cabinets AND a skylight. It may take long time to Roberto and John to find appropriate pictures and show to the customer, potentially earning their attention and business.
Life Scenario 4
How my business is doing?
It is instrumental for business owners like Roberto and John to know, at any point of time how business is doing from profit and loss prospective, how customers are paying for the projects already completed, how much team members needs to be reimbursed for material purchases if any, keep track of overhead expenses, reach out to potential customers for whom project execution are pending and so on. Current computer-less paper-based approach is not helping much to answer above questions, paper records take long time to maintain, they can be easily lost or misplaced, all physical receipts must be kept handy until information is entered in some sort of books, etc.