Trades IT
IT support for trades businesses, built around the van
In most businesses the computers are in the office. In a trades business the office is one desk with the accounts on it, and everything that actually earns money happens on a phone in a van, in a loft, or in somebody’s back garden. IT support for a firm shaped like that is a different job, and it is not the one most providers are set up to do.
- Phones and tablets managed
- Yards and units visited
- Photographs backed up
The office is a van, and that changes the job
Ask a trades business what IT it has and you get a short answer: a laptop in the office, the accounts package, and everybody’s phone. That answer is wrong in an interesting way, because the phones are not incidental. They are the primary devices the business runs on. Quotes go out from them, job sheets are filled in on them, photographs that will later settle an argument are taken on them, and payment is often taken on them too.
So the support priorities invert. In an office, the machine at the desk matters most and the phone is a convenience. Here, a handset that will not sign into the job app at eight in the morning stops an engineer working, and the laptop in the office can wait until Thursday.
The second inversion is connectivity. There is no office network to be the problem. There is mobile signal, which is fine on a driveway and absent in a plant room, a cellar or the middle of a large building, and anything carried on site has to keep working when it disappears and catch up when it returns.
The third is who is actually on the payroll. A trades business at any size runs subcontractors, and a subbie needs access to one system for six weeks and then needs it removed. Most firms handle the first half of that reliably and the second half not at all.
The plans, coverage and response times underneath all of this sit under business IT support.
What we actually do for a trades business
- Phones and tablets enrolled and managed properly, so a handset can be locked or wiped from the office rather than hoped about
- The job management app kept working on the devices your engineers carry, including sign-in, updates and the sync that has to survive no signal
- Individual logins rather than one shared account, because a shared login in a van cannot be taken away from anybody
- Subcontractor access granted narrowly and removed on the date it was supposed to end, which is the control that quietly drifts in every firm we audit
- Site photographs, certificates and job records backed up off the device, so a dropped phone is an inconvenience rather than a lost dispute
- The office machine and the accounts package kept patched, backed up and restorable, with the restore actually tested
- Email that arrives, so quotes sent from a phone at half four do not sit in a customer’s spam folder
- On-site visits included in the plan, at the unit or the yard rather than only at a town-centre office
Proof
Who we work with in the trades
We built the website and booking system for RPH Home Services, the website and local search presence for Sam Wass Tree Surgeons, and the platform behind TradeyHub, a job management system for trades businesses that we still run today.
That is why this page is written from the inside rather than from research. We have watched how the work actually happens in these businesses: what gets captured at the job and what gets reconstructed at nine at night, which is the difference that decides whether any of it is worth having.
Read the RPH Home Services case study
Devices take a beating. The data must not.
Phones in this trade get dropped from ladders, left on roofs, soaked, and occasionally taken out of a van overnight. The replacement is a trip to a shop and a couple of hundred pounds, and it is not the expensive part.
The expensive part is what was on it. Before-and-after photographs of a job finished eighteen months ago, the certificate photographed rather than filed, the note about what the customer agreed to on the doorstep. Those turn up in warranty arguments, insurance claims and occasionally in a solicitor’s letter, and a business that keeps them on the handset that took them is one bad Tuesday from not having them.
The fix is unglamorous and it is the whole job: nothing important lives only on a device, every device can be locked or wiped remotely, and a replacement handset is signed in and working the same day rather than at the weekend.
- Nothing important stored only on the device that captured it
- Remote lock and wipe on every phone and tablet in the fleet
- A replacement handset back in service the same day
The failure that costs you money is the missed call
For most trades firms the expensive failure is not a computer breaking. It is an enquiry that went unanswered for four hours while somebody else replied in ten minutes, and the reason it is dangerous is that it is invisible. You never hear about the job you did not get, so it never appears on any list of problems to fix.
That puts the phone, the enquiry route and the systems around them ahead of the desktop in any sensible order of work. Call handling that does not drop enquiries when everyone is up a ladder, a web enquiry that reaches a person rather than an inbox nobody owns, and a diary that all three routes land in.
It also changes what a busy week looks like. The first genuinely cold week of the year, or the morning after a storm, is when a heating firm or a tree surgeon takes a fortnight of calls in two days. Support that is fine in February and unreachable in that week is not support, which is why response times and who answers the phone matter more here than the specification of anybody’s monitoring agent.
Where the enquiry, the job sheet and the invoice become one system rather than four, that is job management software for trades.
Start with a week in the life of one van
The most useful thing we do in a trades business is follow one job from the enquiry to the invoice and write down every place the information is typed, photographed, texted or remembered. It usually runs to four or five, and one of them is somebody’s evening.
The free review does exactly that, and you keep the written findings whether you work with us or not.
Get in touch
Talk to us about it support for trades
A few lines is enough. We will tell you straight whether we can help, what it would cost and how quickly we can be there. No hard sell, and no follow-up sequence if you decide against it.
- We reply within one working day
- A straight answer, including when it is no
- Free process review available, before any money changes hands
Would rather just ring? 01623 354250, Mon–Fri, 9am–5:30pm.
Frequently asked questions
If the answer is not here, ask us. You will get a straight one, from someone who does the work.
Mon–Fri, 9am–5:30pm
Do you support phones and tablets as well as computers?
Yes, and in a trades business they are the priority rather than the extra. Handsets and tablets are enrolled and managed so they can be locked or wiped from the office, apps and sign-ins are kept working, and a replacement device is back in service the same day rather than at the weekend.
Our engineers are never in the office. Does that change what support looks like?
It changes the order of everything. The device that stops an engineer working is a phone, not a desktop, and the connectivity that matters is mobile signal in a loft rather than office Wi-Fi. Support is built around the van first and the office desk second, which is the reverse of how most plans are put together.
What happens when a subcontractor needs access for six weeks?
They get a named login with access to the one system they need, and a removal date recorded at the same time it is granted. Granting access is the half every firm does reliably. Removing it on the day it was supposed to end is the half that drifts, and it is the one an insurer or a client audit will ask about.
Where do the job photographs and certificates actually live?
Off the device, in a place that is backed up and that somebody in the office can search. Photographs taken at a job settle warranty arguments and insurance claims years later, and a firm that keeps them only on the handset that took them is one dropped phone away from not having them.
Our job management software is a supplier’s product. Who fixes it when it stops?
We do the first hour of it. Sign-ins, devices, sync, connectivity and the network underneath are ours, and most stoppages turn out to be one of those rather than the product. Where it genuinely is the vendor, we raise it and manage it through rather than handing you a reference number.
Our busiest week is the first cold week of the year. Can you cover a peak like that?
That is the week worth planning for rather than reacting to. Before it, the devices are known to be working and the enquiry routes are known to land somewhere. During it, response is prioritised on what stops a van earning, and on-site visits are already inside your plan so nobody weighs up a call-out fee in the middle of it.