Blogs

Business consultants are expensive. Many firms will charge you time and materials – an hourly rate anywhere from $125 to $250 per hour, plus travel, plus lodging, plus, plus, plus. So, what should you hire a business consultant?

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in April 2015 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

HVAC companies face the unique challenge of managing construction projects while also juggling a service organization. While overwhelming at times, especially in an industry where the margin of error is slim to none, there are several things that HVAC companies can do to prepare to organize and deal with requests for information (RFIs).

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in March 2015 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

Data re-entry is a major problem. While the term is self-explanatory - data that was previously entered being entered again – the issue itself is far more complex. In addition to being inefficient and time-consuming, data re-entry is very error-prone, which puts you in the dangerous position of making poor decisions due to inaccurate or incomplete data.

Have you ever envisioned a process and examined it from every angle and ran it through a million mental simulations and declared it as close to perfect as it could be – and then it was a total failure upon implementation? Have you had this happen and never figured out exactly what went wrong? While both of these things are totally normal in business, they're not exactly desirable.

The most important part of implementing new software is doing so without interrupting workflow. You can't avoid downtime while you make the transition, of course, but how do you avoid losing additional working hours during the process?

Many companies face problems with their reporting, such as when their expense reporting is part of their accounting. Separating the data for reports is time consuming and can eat up staff hours quickly. One way to combat the extra time and money is to streamline your reporting system.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in May 2015 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

What do you think of when you hear the word consultant? The value of a consultant is not the first thing that pops in heads of many. They think, instead, of promises made but never kept, money spent but never utilized, and plans created but never implemented. Clearly, consultants are doing something wrong.

Have you set up all of your policies and procedures to reflect a growing business, but are still noticing that your business isn’t trending in the right direction? You may be suffering from technology related inefficiencies. In other words, your technology may be too out of date to grow your business.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in February 2015 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy and comprehensiveness.

You shouldn’t use Excel for accounting.

In industries where the difference between billable and non-billable hours is important, it is essential to track each one correctly to keep your project and bottom line on task. Choosing the right software and using the right procedures can make tracking them easy and stress-free.

How Are They Different?

The difference between billable and non-billable hours doesn't seem important on the surface, but not properly tracking the two can be a big mistake. These numbers are how you gauge your revenue on each project and, to be successful, even the five minutes you spent assuring the client that you have everything under control counts. So how are billable and non-billable hours different?