Automating Your Solar Business: How What & Why

WHY Automate your Solar Business?

Did you know your business is leaking profit because of robots?

There simply aren’t enough hours in the day. And if you’ve ever thought, I don’t have enough time or I’m already working too hard, or I just feel stuck, you know what I mean? You’re right. If you’re running a solar business, you’ve got to keep on top of sales and accounting and all the usual businessy stuff on top of the solar-specific stuff like grid connection, paperwork and STCs and more.?

There are plenty of tasks that you and your staff are doing that robots could actually do more quickly. On top of saving you time and money from reducing the amount of double entry that you do and the amount of effort it takes to keep things in sync, Automations are actually also going to reduce the amount of errors that you make, and they’re also going to free up your staff to use their talents, and that’s going to result in reduced staff turnover and the effort they have to put into new staff training. All that’s going to improve your business profitability at a structural level, which will then improve the valuation of your business should you come to sell.?

Automation isn’t as easy as you think, but that’s not a bad thing because it’s that exact barrier that makes a difference between the manual process that you’re currently operating and all the benefits of automation, because that barrier is going to leave behind your competition still in manual. So stop trying to haggle your suppliers each and every week just in an effort to squeeze a little bit more profit out of your business and instead invest in a one off impact to your business that’s going to give you an instant impulse and pay dividends each and every week. So I hope you understand why to automate your solar business. In the next couple of videos, we’re going to run through?what to automate?and then?how to automate it!

WHAT to automate in your solar business

A computer can operate your solar business better than you.

So it turns out computers can do a lot of things faster than you and for me and with less error, as I found out. So avoiding the mistakes that cost you further time and money, all of which frees you up to do better things with your time and money. Now, in your solar business, you’ve got automations that are typical to any business, plus many automations specific to the solar industry.?

Integrating your software avoids double entry or even triple entry.

For example, entering leads into your solar system solar software, your CRM, your bulk mail, your accounting, and your fulfillment management software is going to cut out a chunk of menial work from your day

You want to keep things in sync.

Many software packages incorporate CRM functionality, and we love how you can configure OpenSolar to match your business processes and then use some of the advanced reporting that SunWiz provides to unlock its CRM power. Still, many companies prefer the power of a purpose built CRM, and embedding links between the two platforms into the customer record is going to save plenty of time. Syncing the customer stage means you’ve got a clear reading on your customer wherever you are at that moment. You may also wish to automatically store in your CRM key documents, such as proposals and signed agreements.

Get instantly notified of customer activity.

It’s helpful to know when your prospective customer is looking at your proposal. That’s a great moment to give them a call so you can answer their questions and close the deal while it’s hot. OpenSolar provides instant notification that your customer is viewing your proposal by sending you an email. And because emails can tend to get overlooked, you can instantly notify your salespeople on their computer and phone using an instant messaging notification.

Automated customer engagement increases likelihood of sale.

We recommend you build a series of emails for each of the following scenarios pre-sale, post-sale, post-installation, long-cold and long-old, and your intention here is to increase the chance that you make the sale, keep hold of the sale during the people’s cooling off period, and then ultimately you’re trying to get more ratings, reviews and referrals from your customers. It’s essential that your emails are very engaging and that they provide value to your customer to save you time. SunWiz integrates OpenSolar and almost any CRM with our partner Sunfluence, who has done all of that customer engagement work for you.

And the most important: Automate Customer Fulfillment processes

Though plenty of businesses like to use service made or simply just connect OpenSolar to an external CRM, the key here is to ensure that they too are in sync no matter where you’re making changes. SunWiz?has already built out connections between OpenSolar and Xero, Solarquotes, Hubspot, Pipedrive, Servicem8, Discord, Sunfluence and Campaign Monitor – we’re working towards automating STCs and adding others along the way. We are experts with OpenSolar’s API and its data structure. We’ve also built an OpenSolar zapier connector which means we can connect OpenSolar to practically any platform.

HOW to automate your solar business

Airplanes have an autopilot for a reason, and so should you.

So automating your business is like building an autopilot for an airplane. Lots of learning and effort upfront, after which you can cruise as long as you like.

Many software packages incorporate CRM functionality, and we love how you can configure OpenSolar to match your business processes and then use some of the advanced reporting that SunWiz provides to unlock its CRM power. Still, many companies prefer the power of a purpose built CRM, and embedding links between the two platforms into the customer record is going to save plenty of time. Syncing the customer stage means you’ve got a clear reading on your customer wherever you are at that moment. You may also wish to automatically store in your CRM key documents, such as proposals and signed agreements.

First, you want to decide which of your software platforms you’ll use as your hub and the rest will be your spokes.?Typically, your CRM will be your hub, but you could also consider using your solar software such as OpenSolar, as your CRM and as your hub. OpenSolar already offers pretty decent CRM functionality without the price tag. Now, next, you want to decide who’s going to do the implementation for you. Do you have the time and know-how to learn how to implement and then do the implementation and then debug and maintain it? I reckon you’ll save valuable time and avoid mistakes by using somebody who’s done this many times before. SunWiz can perform the implementation for you if you wish.?

Next, decide whether you’ll integrate your software using an API, which is going to require sophisticated programming skills and a thorough understanding of each software you connect, or whether you will use a platform like zapier that provides instant connection to thousands of software platforms and a more understandable, process-driven interface. For those of us who don’t like programming, SunWiz are experts in OpenSolar’s API. And we’ve also built a connection between OpenSolar and zapier so you can connect OpenSolar to most other software platforms. SunWiz can provide you access to that zapier connector. See the entire video guide above.

If you’re going to do it yourself, you need to consider what’s your trigger, what are the actions and how do you handle errors and make sure you keep things in sync between whatever platforms you’re using now.?Automations?are just one of SunWiz’s extensions to OpenSolar’s capability. We’d like to invite you to discover all that’s possible with SunWiz on OpenSolar on our?ExtendIT?page, or for an effortless business elevation we do it all for your solution including the automation, please check out?SunBiz Accelerate.