From Data to Action

There’s a common phrase in the business world: What gets measured gets better. When leaders can monitor and quantify different facets of their business operations, they can make targeted, strategic improvements. This is undoubtedly true in the skilled trades, where the ability to consult real-time analytics leads to opportunities for continuous optimization—including technician training.

Simply put, robust analytics allow skilled trade contractors to constantly assess the skill level of each employee, making informed decisions about ongoing training needs, about which technicians to dispatch for particular jobs, and about when the time is right to recruit new hires. But just having access to analytics is not enough; it’s equally important to act on those analytics, turning data into meaningful change.

Seeing the full picture with business analytics

What does it mean for a skilled trade company to have access to real-time analytics? Think of a dashboard that provides up-to-the-second insight into every aspect of the company’s performance — for example, the number of jobs completed or units sold on any given day. Analytic dashboards allow contractors to be constantly in the know about how their team is performing and about the state of the business overall, evaluating progress toward both daily and long-term goals.

Contractors should know that analytics can track more than just financial metrics. An analytics dashboard may also provide insight into each technician’s level of skill — and frankly, without an investment in real-time data, very few skilled trade companies possess this knowledge, at least not with any kind of precision.

Real-time analytics, when tied to technician training, can provide this precision. For example, an analytics dashboard can help leaders assess technician skill levels by job type. Imagine a team with 70 different technicians. Do all 70 of them possess the skills needed to replace a garbage disposal? To install a new heat pump? An analytics dashboard can not only provide up-to-date evaluations of competency, but even sort technicians according to their particular degree of skill — for instance, denoting which technicians have novice-level insight, which are true masters, and which fall somewhere in between.

Using analytics to drive decision-making

Having this information at their fingertips can benefit contractors in a number of different ways. Most immediately, it helps them know exactly which technician to send for each job to maximize the odds of prompt completion.

Real-time analytics also help contractors discover skills gaps among their employees — and thus, where they may have opportunities to improve their training offerings and better equip their technicians. Think again about the example of garbage disposal replacement. If only 30 of the team’s 70 technicians possess this skill, the company is limited in how many garbage disposal jobs it can take on — but by identifying this gap, contractors can double-down on training, raise that number from 30 to the full 70 (or close to it), and dramatically increase their opportunities to assist homeowners with disposal needs.

Where to start with training analytics

Given the benefits of connecting technician training to data and analytics, it may seem surprising that more skilled trade companies don’t make this strategic investment. The primary impediment is simply the level of time and effort required. A good analytics program can’t be implemented — nor will it yield results — overnight. That question can be answered with a few different metrics:

• There are a number of operational metrics that directly reflect the efficacy of a technician training program—including job completion time, first-time fix rate, and customer satisfaction.

• Utilization rate is another important metric that helps contractors determine how much of each technician’s 40-hour week is actually being put toward paying, productive work.

• Another meaningful metric is time-to-competency—how long does it take (and how much it costs) to get each new technician to the point where they handle a full range of jobs?

• Turnover cost is another crucial data point. Note that a high-quality training program typically leads to happier and more engaged employees — after all, technicians want to learn things — which in turn reduces churn among the workforce.

Investing in ongoing improvement

Real-time analytics can make every contractor’s job easier, while also allowing them to be more competitive within their market, but only if they understand there will be some work on the front end. A data-based training program can lead to a stronger team and a wider range of opportunities, but only when that data is acted upon consistently and strategically.