I’m not sure that many of us would have forecast one, let alone three national lockdowns at the start of last year, but nonetheless they happened with people in the first shutdown literally, unable to access data and the systems they relied on to do business, because it was inaccessible on a whiteboard.
Now imagine that wasn’t a lockdown, it was a fire, a flood. It might be that you have taken a photo of that whiteboard or T-card system but what if you hadn’t? Imagine the emails you have to trawl through, WhatsApp messages, phone messages, notes, it becomes an absolute nightmare to unpick and recover your data, while at the same time you somehow keeping your business afloat.
Research suggests that only two in every five small businesses in the UK had contingency plans in place when COVID hit in March, many shutting down for weeks as they worked out how to manage the return to work.
We see this in the window and door industry. The Business Pilot Barometer shows that the sector ground to a halt in in April with average sales plummeting by almost 70% on March. Leads (or at the very least, the ability of many installers to manage them), were down by around 60%.
Stop and think for a moment about what the cost of that interruption was or would be to your business? Everyone was in the same boat back in April but just imagine if it was you and not your competitors – what damage would shutting down for the best part of a month do to your business, while they continued to trade – would you be able to come back?
Alternatively, what if you could effectively just ‘pick up’ your business, put it down some place else and carry on working? If you’re going to work smart, you need a system that allows you to work from anywhere.
Business Pilot is one of a number digital leaders at FIT, each driving change in how the industry operates from production through to installation.
Our platform has been developed to give you that whiteboard, that T-card system but on the cloud in a digital version, accessible from anywhere and backed up across multiple servers, each mirroring each other so your data is available instantly and is completely secure – whatever happens in your physical location, at least in the sense of business continuity, stops mattering.
You can place orders, drag and drop information, reschedule an installation and communicate with your team from anywhere and on any device. Emails, drawings, notes, orders, pricing, payments – it’s there at your fingertips – your business goes with you, wherever you are. That’s peace of mind for your business when certainty is very hard to come by.
Register here to visit Business Pilot on stand L6, FIT Show, the NEC, Birmingham 10-12 MAY 2022
