Your roofing business is growing rapidly, and the old formula of Excel spreadsheets just isn’t cutting it anymore. You’ve probably heard of or even considered using a job management software, but with so many options and applications, finding the right software for you and your company seems like a headache.

Some software programs do one thing you need, others may have two or three, but at the end of the day, you’re frustrated that you can’t find one that does everything you want. Your solution may be to invest in your own custom job management software. Why not? You’ll get everything you want exactly how you want it – right?

While this method can be successful, you should really consider all of the factors that go into the creation of a custom platform before you decide to make the leap.

Cost

According to recent estimates,

“For a small or average CRM system, you should expect to pay about $18,000. For the development of more advanced software, you should expect to pay around $50-70,000. The cost of custom CRM system development can vary depending on the functionality as well as the needs of your company.” – RexSoftInc

When you hire a company to create your own custom software, you’re not just paying for the platform – you’re paying for a project manager, designers and programmers on top of hosting fees, customer service and maintenance. Add an app or offline services, and that’s a lot to take on for any business.

Sure, when you make that sort of commitment, you get to drive the bus when it comes to customization. But sometimes that can backfire too. You think you know what you want and how you want it to work because you know how you run your roofing business, and a programmer is more than happy to bring your vision to life. The problems arise down the line when you want to add features, upgrade, or make changes to a platform that was designed as a one and done tool. Everything you do is an extra cost, and at the end of the day, you’ve made and will continue to make a considerable investment to keep up.

Job management software like AccuLynx is already built specifically for roofers, so there’s little to no customization needed. On top of that, you don’t have to worry about software updates, server failure, or any of the small day-to-day issues that come with maintaining a custom program. AccuLynx is constantly innovating, so new features and integrations that you might not have known you needed are already in the pipeline and become available as part of your subscription all the time.

Time

Building a custom platform from the ground up takes time. You’ll find your first few months consumed by meetings discussing everything from how it works to how it looks – and these are not simple questions. When you’re running a roofing business, your time is important. You may not have the luxury of a 6 to 8 month planning, programming, implementation and training process before you actually get to start using your product.

It will take time to learn a new software, no matter if you build it yourself, or go with a job management software. But you’ll spend a lot less of it going with a pre-built solution like AccuLynx. Training and implementation are streamlined by dedicated staff, so you can get your whole team up and running in weeks, rather than months.

Dedicated Resources

If you’re an owner or a business manager, your focus is likely to be on running and growing your roofing business, so you’ll need to allocate some of your other resources to managing the process. These resources could be your office staff and sales teams that may or may not have the time or the experience necessary to dictate the parameters of a job management software platform. If that’s the case, you will end up dedicating time you might not have, and your roofing business could suffer for it.

After all that is said and done, you’ll still need to maintain and manage the platform you’ve created. Again, this may not fall into the wheelhouse of your staff, which means you could end up needing to hire additional resources or source them out to a third party, which will cost you more at the end of the day.

No matter what route you take, you’ll still need everyone on your team to learn how to use a new job management software. Consider the back-end process of managing assets, support questions and those updates – a roofing software like AccuLynx will already have those resources in place and will reduce your overhead through that access.

Advantages of utilizing pre-developed job management software

Job management software like AccuLynx grants contractors access to a plethora of industry applications, resulting in reduced costs and minimized stress.

AccuLynx is the leading provider of cloud-based management software for roofing contractors. Recognized as a pioneer in the industry, AccuLynx has helped thousands of companies—from rapidly-growing start-ups to multi-location operations—streamline their processes and grow their business. Used by more contractors than any other roofing software, AccuLynx’s simple business management tools and integrations include:

Picking the right job management software

At the end of the day, you know what solution will ultimately be the right fit for your business. Make sure you do your research and carefully consider all aspects before you dive headfirst into an investment.

AccuLynx is the leading CRM for roofing contractors because it was built to meet your unique needs and contains roofing-specific features. To learn more about how AccuLynx can help you succeed, schedule a quick demo today.