Why Reduce Report Writing Time?

The most impactful thing you can do to increase your surveying company's profit margins is to reduce report writing time.

Many companies spend too much time writing reports; either because they're writing reports manually and doing repetitive tasks like copying and pasting images, or because they're using old software.

When you spend all your time writing reports, this takes you away from income-generating activities like marketing and sales. Speeding up report writing increases the profit margin for every job and frees up your time, giving your business a better chance of success.

Why focus on reducing report writing time; why not other overheads?

To understand why reducing report writing time is the most efficient way to increase your profits, let's look at the typical costs for a job:

💲 Salary 
You could pay staff a smaller salary, but this comes with a cost; they'll be more likely to leave if there's a prospect of higher wages elsewhere, so your staff turnover will be higher. And let's face it, you don't want to be an employer who pays their staff as little as possible. 

💲 Petrol
Maybe you can go out of your way to find pumps with cheaper Petrol. But the money you save will have a negligible effect on profits.

💲 Travel time
Planning your vehicle routes (for example, using route planning software) may reduce your overall travel time. Otherwise, if your staff already stick to the speed limits, there's not much room for improvement here.

💲 Site work time
Speeding up site work often comes at the expense of quality. So don't try to make too many time savings here. However, if you're still using pen and paper, switching to a mobile app can save significant time if the software has good shortcuts like copying items.

💲 Report writing time
Without software, it can take 2-3 hours to write an asbestos survey report by hand. With modern reporting software, you can create the same survey report in minutes. This is an extreme case for those still writing reports manually, but if you're already using software, switching to a faster solution can also provide great savings.

Summary:

Trying to reduce most of these overheads comes with another cost (unhappy staff, poorer quality of work, etc.). Whereas reducing report writing time saves you significant time with little cost.

Reducing report writing time; The Effect on Your Profit Margins

Here's an example showing the effect that reducing report writing time has on your profit margins. As you can see, most of the job costs are fixed, so reducing report writing has a big effect.

Scenario 1:
Report created manually using Microsoft Word in two hours

Scenario 2:
Report created using Flow Mobile Surveying in ten minutes