Notice: Carita Koen is a speaker at our upcoming Garden & Panorama Know-how Convention. For extra data or to register for the occasion, click on right here.
It took a worldwide pandemic for Inexperienced Magic Landscapes of Cell, Alabama, to begin embracing know-how. However the firm’s COO, Carita Koen, needs they’d have made the hassle sooner.
“COVID was once we actually needed to pivot and modify and embrace know-how,” she says. “I feel everybody at the moment was in a pivot stage simply because COVID was bizarre, unpredictable and overwhelming.”
Koen says that’s when the world noticed an excellent larger inflow of individuals shopping for merchandise on-line. She knew the corporate needed to money in on this development.
“Everybody makes use of know-how for one thing,” she says. “They pay their payments on-line, store, ordering transportation and meals — all that’s on-line. Everyone was utilizing know-how, and I simply thought ‘How might we use know-how in or enterprise to learn us and our prospects?’”
GOING VIRTUAL. One factor Inexperienced Magic did was make it straightforward for potential purchasers to get a quote on-line.
“Throughout the pandemic we began providing digital quotes, and it’s been the perfect factor since sliced bread for us,” Koen says. “Once we’d go to folks’s homes, they wished to speak to us, however they didn’t actually wish to be round us. We wished to make it useful for them to get a quote just about.”
Not solely was the net possibility good for patrons, however Koen says the enterprise benefited dramatically.
“We have been spending numerous time in visitors going to folks’s houses to do estimates,” she says. “Then we’d should get again, put the numbers in, do the estimate and it could simply take some time. We figured if we might incorporate know-how into our gross sales course of, it’d make us extra environment friendly and extra worthwhile.”
Koen says it’s carried out simply that, including that the software program used for the digital quotes was properly well worth the funding.
“It’s not costly,” she says. “I feel we spent extra in fuel driving to folks’s houses then we paid for the software program.”
The software program is user-friendly for everybody, one thing that’s necessary to make sure folks use it.
“The system we use means that you can go to our web site and fill out a kind and add a mission video,” Koen says. “You simply flip the digicam to panorama mode, and you’ll speak, level to issues and stroll us via it on the video.
“With the system we use, you don’t should be a brilliant tech-savvy particular person to put it to use,” she provides.
Koen says the software program is all the time evolving, and Inexperienced Magic is eagerly anticipating its subsequent replace.
“They’re on the brink of make it correspond with Google Earth, in order that’ll make it even simpler to measure areas,” she says.
EASE OF EXECUTION. Whether or not its quoting software program, accounting software program, fleet monitoring or anything, Koen says that in relation to using know-how effectively — all of it begins with the implementation.
She suggests instituting a top-down method to make sure a seamless transition course of. For Inexperienced Magic, which means Koen and her husband, CEO Larry Koen, are the primary to check issues out.
“My husband and I study to do every thing in-house earlier than we deliver our crew on board,” she says. “I feel that’s crucial. As enterprise homeowners, we don’t wish to be the perfect at every thing since you ought to have folks in your crew that do some issues higher than you, however we predict it’s necessary to understand how the method works. That approach when there’s a difficulty or we’ve to do some battle decision, we are able to step in and take it from there.”
In keeping with Koen, the subsequent step in implementing one thing new is establishing a trial interval to show whether or not the know-how is useful and worthwhile.
“Anytime that we’re using a brand new system, I’ll mainly do a trial interval for 90 days,” she says. “I feel that with something you do, 90 days is the candy spot to let you already know if one thing is working or not.”
After a brand new idea or know-how is rolled out, Koen says listening to these most impacted by it additionally helps gauge its success.
“We depend on the suggestions from our prospects to tell us if one thing new we’re utilizing is working,” she says. “We wish to depend on those that maintain us in enterprise within the first place as a result of their opinions matter.”
Equally as necessary as buyer suggestions is workers’ reactions.
“We additionally depend on our workers, as a result of they should do the work,” she says. “If there’s one thing that we’re implementing that they discover is just too difficult or takes too many steps, we like to sit down down with them immediately. It will probably normally be labored out. Numerous the occasions it’s a communication difficulty or a coaching difficulty.”
BREATHE A SIGH OF RELIEF. For Koen, the benefits of know-how make issues straightforward at each flip.
“Know-how has allowed me to see my husband extra as an alternative of simply seeing him leaving, particularly throughout peak season” she jokes.
One of many causes for that is automation, and Koen says that’s been an enormous time-saver for everybody.
“Doing the digital quotes have been superior, however having a system to automate every thing and having these packages communicate to at least one one other has been superior,” she says. “We’d spend a lot time within the workplace re-entering the identical data into totally different software program programs. Now it goes to CRM and that talk to a different system, and so they all communicate to one another.”
Automating the workplace has helped in all components of the enterprise. Koen says that’s been most useful.
“Embracing know-how has made us extra environment friendly,” she says. “Our response charges are faster, and our turnaround time for creating initiatives is faster.”
Koen admits to sleeping higher at night time after making know-how a precedence.
“All of us as enterprise homeowners have issues we stress about and a few of it may be managed and a few of it can’t… However know-how will simply make you extra organized, and group will increase effectivity, productiveness and income,” she says. “Know-how has made us extra organized, and for that I’m very grateful.”
