ServCraft blox: How To Do More with Less: Operations Management Basics for Electricians

If you want your electrical business to succeed, you can’t just focus on electrical work. Just as important is operations management. For electricians, effective operations management can be the difference between playing the game and winning the game.

Put simply, operations management involves handling the day-to-day activities that keep your business running smoothly. Ideally, your operations should be

both

efficient and effective.

Why is it important?

According to

a report by Sage

based on a survey of almost 12,000 SMB leaders in South Africa, 38% of South African SMBs reported that rising costs significantly impacted the profitability of their business. Even so, 41% of South African SMBs say that working more efficiently is increasing business confidence

Let’s start with exploring these concepts:

Efficient operations mean achieving more with the resources at hand, reducing waste, and minimising costs while maintaining output quality. Basically doing more with less.

Effective operations mean achieving your business goals, meeting customer needs, and delivering value.

Efficient and effective operations can help you do more with less AND deliver higher-quality outcomes.

As Peter Drucker put it

, effectiveness is doing the right things, while efficiency is doing things right.

Table of contents

What are electrical business operations?
Optimising operations for electricians
Optimising your business processes
Project management for elecricians
Continuously improving your electrical business
Why operations management is the key to growing your electrical business

In this article, we explore the essential operations management principles for electricians, to help you grow your electrical business with fewer resources and increase your profit.

What are electrical business operations?

Managing your jobs:
From the first customer lead to the final sale, every step in between requires managing.
Managing your supply chain:
Keeping track of stock and inventory, ensuring you have what you need when you need it.
Managing your finances:
Balancing the books, tracking expenses, and ensuring financial health.

Operations management isn't just about managing tasks; it's about growing your bottom line by doing more with fewer resources. For electricians, it's the key to:

Increasing profitability:
By streamlining operations and reducing unnecessary expenses. For example, by upgrading to job management software like
ServCraft
, you’ll be able to schedule jobs efficiently, track inventory levels in real time, and automate invoicing, reducing administrative work. By streamlining these operations, you save time and reduce costs associated with manual paperwork.
Maintaining quality:
Make sure your services or products meet or exceed your customer’s expectations. For example, you might offer annual maintenance packages to your clients. By checking electrical systems for issues before they appear, you can prevent unexpected breakdowns. This means both happier customers but also predictable revenue for your business.
Boosting productivity:
Doing more in less time, allowing for greater output. For example, you might invest in training for your team. By regularly upskilling your technicians in new technologies and safety practices, they can operate more efficiently and effectively. This investment in skill development translates to faster problem-solving, reducing the time it takes them to complete jobs.

Optimising operations for electricians

Businesses don’t become efficient and effective overnight. Typically they evolve in steps, moving from using manual and paper processes to automated digital processes.

Step 1: Manual and paper-based processes

In the phase of operating, many electrical businesses rely on paper-based systems. This involves using physical documents, handwritten notes, and printed records to manage jobs, track inventory, handle finances, and communicate with clients.

For example, an electrician might jot down job details, client information, and inventory lists in notebooks or on paper forms.

While this method is better than writing nothing down, it's time-consuming and makes it hard to control the moving parts which can lead to errors. Managing and organising these paper-based records can become overwhelming, leading to inaccurate data and difficulties in coordinating tasks.

Step 2: Excel and spreadsheets

As the business matures, there's often a transition to using spreadsheets like Excel alongside paper to manage operations. Spreadsheets offer a more organised way of tracking data, scheduling jobs, and handling finances compared to paper-based systems.

For example, an electrician might create spreadsheets to keep track of job schedules, inventory stock levels, and financial records.

While Excel brings some level of structure and simplifies calculations, it still requires manual data entry, has limited capabilities for collaboration, and can be difficult to adapt to a growing business.

Step 3: Software

To improve efficiency and overcome the limitations of manual and Excel-based methods, electricians will transition to specialised job management and accounting software.

These platforms are designed specifically to put you in control and help grow your business, offering features like job scheduling, automated invoicing, inventory management, and customer communication tools.

For example, an electrician might start using dedicated software like

ServCraft

to streamline their job scheduling, track inventory in real-time, send automated invoices, and manage client communication—all in one digital platform.

This software enables faster, more accurate data handling, minimises errors, improves task coordination, and enhances overall business efficiency and effectiveness.

Optimising your business processes

A business process is a series of steps you take to achieve a specific result. An example for an electrician can include how you run a job end to end.

If you want to improve your efficiency and increase quality service delivery you need to review and optimise these processes. This way you can identify bottlenecks, areas that are inefficient, or places that can have a negative effect on customer satisfaction.

What is a bottleneck?

In business, a bottleneck is a point where something prevents you from completing your work or slows down the progress of a task.

How to review your business processes

There are five steps to

reviewing your business processes

Identify your issues:
Start by identifying the areas of your business operations that are experiencing inefficiencies, bottlenecks, or challenges. This might involve looking at the steps you use to get things done, what your team does and how they do it, or customer interactions to highlight where you could make improvements. For example, you might notice an issue like delays in responding to customer calls and scheduling service appointments.
Identify the cause of the issue:
Next, you’ll need to understand the causes of the issues you’ve identified. You can do this by analysing data, gathering feedback, and talking with your team. For example, after digging into the delay issue you might realise that manually adding customers to a spreadsheet is causing confusion and missed opportunities.
Brainstorm possible solutions:
After you’ve identified the cause of your issues, brainstorm possible solutions to fix them. Try to think of a few different approaches that could reduce the problems you’ve identified. To fix the issue of delays, for example, you might decide to try job management software with advanced scheduling capabilities.
Test your solutions:
Test your solutions on a smaller scale and see how they stack up in terms of cost, feasibility, and impact. You should choose a solution that is the most effective and practical for your business. In our example, this means trying out a few different job management solutions to see which suits your business best.
Implement and monitor your solution:
Implement your solution into your business processes and keep an eye on how it impacts your business operations. Use key performance indicators (KPIs) to see if your solution is making the improvements you were hoping for. If not, you’ll have to adjust your solution. For example, after testing a few job management solutions and choosing the best option for your business, you’ll keep an eye on metrics like response time to find out if the tool is helping, if you need to change it or the way you are using it.

Get started:

ServCraft

offers a free trial of its job management software designed especially for electrical businesses, so you can test it to see if it can help make your business operations more efficient.

Project management for electricians

A project is a task with a specific goal that you need to complete within a set amount of time. For example, electrical projects can range from wiring an entire house to fixing a short.

Why is project management important for electricians?

Using resources efficiently:
Proper project management ensures that you use your time, materials, and workforce, as efficiently as possible, so you get the most from the time and effort that you put in.
Sticking to timelines:
Meeting project deadlines is crucial if you want to maintain customer satisfaction and build a reputation for reliability.
Budget control:
Effective project management helps you manage your costs, reducing wastage, and improving your profit margins.

How to optimise project management for electrical businesses

Clear planning:
Define the objectives, timeliness, and what’s required to complete the project at the beginning to avoid ambiguity.
Task prioritisation:
Break down projects into smaller tasks, prioritise them, and allocate resources accordingly.
Effective communication:
Talk frequently with team members, clients, and suppliers to ensure you’re all on the same page using channels like email, WhatsApp, and SMS.
Use technology:
Explore project management tools and software that can streamline workflows, track progress, and facilitate collaboration among team members.

For example, you might consider using specialised software designed for electricians, enabling you to streamline your scheduling, task assignment, and track the progress of projects in real time. This will ensure that you allocate your resources efficiently, minimise scheduling conflicts, and ensure your projects are completed on time.

Why operations management is the key to growing your electrical business

Operations management is key to running a profitable electrical business.

By using technology, optimising processes, embracing project management principles, and challenging yourself to continuously improve, you can improve your efficiency, effectiveness and success.

Be sure to keep an eye out for the rest of our articles where we’ll dive deeper into operations management and how you can use it to grow your electrical business.

Charles Freedman is the CEO of ServCraft (

www.servcraft.co.za

), a South African-designed and built job management software helping electrical businesses to win more business, get paid faster, and have happier customers.