How to make data-driven decisions with moving software

According to Beau Roskow, Vice President of Naglee Moving and Storage, "Data provides fact." "Fact," according to Beau is the hard numbers that allow you to make better business decisions and predictions to grow your moving business. 

"These are the numbers, for instance, that let you say:

• Over three years, here are the eight weekends you can maximize your top capacity and pricing model. 
• Here are the next three full weeks that you tend to run at 90% capacity for the last five years. 
• Here are the weeks you have variables due to what's going on in the marketplace. 
• Here are the different revenue lines that will peak during different quarters so you can start to train and prepare your crews to understand that, 'Hey, during this quarter, we're going to focus on these three revenue lines. And, in this [the next] quarter, we're going to focus on these three [other] revenue lines.' This lets you maximize your overall capacity and not just sit there and wait for the summer season to come where everyone gets crazy."

Getting the right data can be hard

Actually getting the right data in the first place and trying to understand it to make these types of decisions and predictions isn't always easy. Unsurprisingly, many moving business owners don't have information readily available to make decisions that impact growth, performance, and revenue. 

The good news? Moving software is here to help by providing:

• Reporting features for better data visualization and interpretation that help improve operations month over month.
• A dispatch calendar that allows you to be very predictive about the capacity of your operations schedule from one week to the next.

Reports for better data visualization and interpretation 

Most decent moving software will provide some form of reporting functionality that allows you to:

• Visualize important business data depending on the type of report, like revenue by truck and referral sources.
• Review the overall health of your business from one year to the next.
• Identify revenue channels that are performing well and those that aren't.
• Pinpoint top-performing salespeople and reward them accordingly.
• Highlight business areas you can improve to boost profitability.
• Spot trends. You can better pinpoint and anticipate the high points during summer and the slower periods during winter to prepare. For instance, in slow periods, you can preemptively be more competitive by offering discounts or promos to attract more business.
• Review last year's sales data (e.g., jobs booked in summer vs. winter) to anticipate the cash flow needed to run your business.
• Make decisions about where to reallocate or invest cash.

You just have to input the right type of data to start, and the moving company CRM software does the rest. The software usually provides a handful of out-of-the-box default reports, but you also have the option to create custom reports if your needs are unique.

The following section details a variety of reports and organizational metrics available in Supermove's moving software and how they can help you make data-driven decisions. 

1. Company dashboard

The company dashboard provides high-level metrics about your moving business, allowing you to view month-on-month and year-on-year values for revenue and jobs booked. You can also get very granular by filtering for specific salespeople, timeframes, types of jobs, and even job statuses. 

Plus, if you want to analyze all your job and project data further, you can download it as a CSV file for Excel. This can also be useful if you want customer information for email campaigns. 

2. Sales funnel report

Your sales funnel report helps identify how successful your moving company is at converting leads into customers. Use it for a deep dive into your sales pipeline so you can identify:

• Where customers are in the sales process, how many are at the different stages of the funnel, and what needs to be done to move them along. For instance, if you notice that many customers are stuck in the quote sent stage, it's time to follow up and move them along to get them to sign off on the job so you can book it and get paid.

• Bottlenecks in getting moves booked. Where exactly are the drop-offs? Maybe you're sending loads of confirmation agreements without receiving an e-signature. There could be something in your agreement that's putting people off.

• Individual salesperson performance based on revenue, jobs booked, and specific metrics like how much valuation coverage they sold.

• Close rates by salesperson (found at the bottom of the report) to pinpoint your top-performing salespeople.

3. Referral source report 

This report helps you identify how people hear about your company and which referral sources are driving revenue for your business. Use it to answer three key questions:

1. What referral sources drive consistent revenue? Look at the total revenue by referral source.
2. Which sources lead to the highest value moves? Look at the average revenue by source.
3. What's the total project breakdown for all referral sources? This captures the total and average revenue for all referrals. You can compare these numbers against your overall revenue to see what role—big or small—referrals play in your moving business's overall revenue.

The referral source report is especially handy for helping you navigate those slower seasons/periods. By identifying referral sources that bring in the highest average revenue and then focusing on those during the slower periods, you can maximize revenue without putting added pressure on—what will likely be—a limited workforce.

4. Revenue by truck report

This report shows how your trucks and drivers are allocated and helps identify which trucks deliver the most revenue. From there, you can make critical decisions like:

• Whether to get rid of trucks you're not using or aren't generating revenue to save money.
• Which trucks to purchase based on those that are already generating revenue.

5. Calendar report

The calendar report provides a quick overview of the month's total revenue from completed jobs. It helps you see the bigger picture of your financial health, identify slow and busier periods, and pinpoint outstanding jobs.

6. Custom reports

If you have specific needs and there's a particular report you'd like, Supermove can work with you to create it. As a rule of thumb, if the field exists in Supermove, the software can report on it. 

This means the software can report on anything from bill items, valuation coverage, supplies and materials sold on jobs, trucks on the move, job and project variables, and more. 

The team usually takes 24 to 48 hours to build a custom report if it involves a minor modification to an existing report, like adding a column, or up to five days for something more major, like a totally new report.

A dispatch calendar for improved capacity predictions 

Understanding your capacity from one week to the next helps you know how many trucks and movers to allocate and on what days. 

It also helps you determine your minimum and maximum pricing as demand and capacity fluctuate– as capacity increases, you can increase your prices and widen your margins, and as capacity decreases, you can transfer some of this value over to the customer by lowering them. 

But without any data to determine what those capacity levels even look like, you're left guessing and are literally leaving revenue on the table. 

Enter Supermove.

"By viewing the Supermove calendar and seeing how many booked jobs there are per day," explains Beau, "we know our max number so we can quickly calculate what's left from a capacity fill standpoint.

"Then, we can use the Supermove project screen or estimate calendar to see how many estimates there are and where they match. So, if we got five estimates occurring in two weeks on a particular day, we know that 30-50% [based on the understanding that conversion rates are anywhere between 30 and 50% in the moving industry] of that is probably going to translate into the operations schedule the following week. So we can start using this to be very predictive," says Beau.

Start making data-driven decisions with moving software today

Data may help you make better decisions and predictions to grow your moving business. But getting access to this data isn't always easy, which means you don't have the information you need to make the types of decisions that will actually move the needle on growth for your business.

But moving software like Supermove can help your business in tangible ways:

• The reporting feature gives you access to various reports that help you better visualize and understand important data like revenue by referral source. 
• The dispatch calendar allows you to better predict your capacity from one week to the next so you can assign crews and trucks, and adjust your pricing according to demand.

Learn more about these features and how Supermove can help you make data-driven decisions. Schedule a demo today.

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