Getting the best information about hailstorms and other weather events helps insurance restoration contractors identify regions with storm damage. Thanks to ever-improving radar and tracking technology, it’s possible to pinpoint and analyze hail and other storm damage with greater precision and accuracy.

A growing number of hail tracking apps are being developed to help roofing contractors take advantage of this improved technology. In this blog post, we’ll discuss:

• Why roofers use hail apps
• The best hail apps for roofing contractors
• Getting the most out of your hail apps
• Roofing software that makes using hail apps easier

Why do roofers use hail apps?

Hail tracking apps utilize the most accurate, up-to-the-minute data about storm events, making them an excellent source of information for any business doing insurance restoration work. Consulting a hail app can help your sales team find local areas with the greatest storm damage so they can focus their canvassing efforts and generate more leads. And hail apps deliver storm information directly to your mobile device, helping you stay up to date on weather events from anywhere.

The best hail apps for roofing contractors

These leading hail tracking apps can give your roofing business greater insight into hailstorms:

HailWatch provides high-resolution hail and wind maps, alerts, and address verification. “SWATH” maps retrace the path and intensity of hail and wind storms, providing you with clear boundaries for prospecting. Each subscription comes with a daily storm report, daily weather report, and weather portal access.

Pricing: $50-$99 / month
Available devices: Accessed through hailwatch.com

HailTrace allows contractors to locate areas of hail damage and see maps of the affected areas. With the HailTrace app, you have access to comprehensive storm data from anywhere. Their meteorology experts analyze hailstorms across the country to give you the most accurate information about hail size, storm intensity, and other essential data.

Pricing: Contact HailTrace for pricing
Available devices: Android, iOS

Hail Recon® is a hail reporting app that makes it easy to see if your area is in the hail path. A blue dot marks your exact location and where you are in comparison to the hail path. Use the Hail Finder tool in the app to find hail storms based on map location. The app also provides on-the-ground reports from storm spotters of the hail size and intensity.

Pricing: $999-$1,999 / year
Available devices: Android, iOS

Get the most out of your hail apps

While hail tracking apps are a valuable tool, even the best tools can fall short if they’re not well integrated with the rest of your business management tools. In addition, all kinds of factors from user error to poor training to inefficient systems can prevent hail apps from being used effectively.

Here’s what you need so your hail tracking tools can work better and give you more business insights:

Managing storm leads

When a big storm hits, how do you prioritize canvassing different areas? When is a small storm worth pursuing? What are the characteristics that profitable storms tend to share? Many of these answers are unique from roofing business to roofing business, and can’t be determined simply from looking at a report.

In order to get the most out of your hail apps, you’ll need to have a streamlined workflow in place, with clearly defined steps to help you translate information into business decisions. Ask yourself what information you need, besides the storm data, to move forward with selling your services to a given area. Then make it as smooth as possible to access this information, analyze it, and start the job process.

Tools like the Workflow Manager in AccuLynx allow you to build custom workflows to help facilitate the process of identifying opportunities and targeting leads. You can set up step-by-step statuses and checklists underneath each milestone so your team members know exactly what to do when a new storm hits, and see time-stamped actions so you can make sure the workflow is being followed appropriately.

Quickly evaluating which storm leads are worth pursuing will also help you make the most of the data from your hail apps. The Lead Intelligence feature in AccuLynx assigns each of your leads an automatic score based on how likely they are to convert to customers, helping you prioritize the most promising storm leads in your sales strategy.

Integrating with hail apps

Insurance restoration contractors often use individual tools in isolation. Instead of fostering collaboration and improving understanding of different parts of your business, tools are adopted by a single team or user and never communicate with the rest of the organization. Not everyone has access to the same information, and a lot of time is spent on entering information twice or bringing teams up to speed.

One way to prevent this happening with hail apps (and your other tools) is to integrate all your tools with roofing contractor software. With AppConnections in AccuLynx, you can easily integrate all your hail apps with our software system. AppConnections gives you access to the AccuLynx API so you can create and customize connections between AccuLynx and your hail apps, and seamlessly transfer data from the apps to your AccuLynx account.

Accessing information from anywhere

The information provided by hail apps needs to be available to your entire team whenever you need it in order to be most effective for your business. To make sure that everyone can use weather and damage reports, no matter where they are, it’s important to store information about the storm in the cloud. This way, it’s quickly accessible whether a team member is on the road, in the office, or talking to a customer on the job site. And it’ll be easily available in the future, when you’re looking back on which storms were the most profitable and making plans for how to approach the next storm season.

Software like AccuLynx is cloud-based, so you can safely store the information from your hail app integrations in its database and find it when you need it. In addition to keeping your hail reports in one place, you can also store other information about insurance restoration jobs in the cloud and help everyone on your team stay on the same page about a given job. This provides a way to seamlessly make the connection between weather information and the rest of your business insights.

Roofing software that makes using hail apps easier

Using a hail tracking app can help you find valuable insurance restoration leads and act on storm information. With a roofing software system like AccuLynx, you can more easily incorporate the data from your hail apps into your processes and take advantage of lead opportunities. To learn more about how AccuLynx can help you manage all your business tools more effectively, schedule a custom demo today.