Insights
Notes from the shop floor
Plain writing on how jobs actually move through a trade shop, a builder or a property manager, where the hours leak, and what AI can and cannot do about it — from the person who runs the audits, not a marketing team.
- Insights 5 min read
AI Contract Review for Trade Subcontractors: What It Should Flag Before You Sign
The subcontract arrives Thursday and the GC wants it signed Monday. What an AI contract review tool should do for a trade sub, the nine kinds of clause it should flag, where you and your attorney still decide, and three questions to ask before you buy one.
Read the post - Insights 5 min read
Finished Is Not Invoiced: Where an Electrical Job Waits Between Rough-In and the Bill
Most electrical shops can say how many jobs are finished and not yet billed, and the answer lives in one person's head. The chain for one panel upgrade, the four places it stalls between rough-in and the invoice, four fixes cheapest first, and a Friday test.
Read the post - Insights 4 min read
The Truck Sheet Gets Typed Twice: Closing a Service Call Before the Van Leaves
The tech closes the last call of the day on a clipboard, and the office types it into the field software the next morning. Why the clipboard wins, how to count what the re-key costs your shop in one week, and three fixes, cheapest first.
Read the post - Insights 5 min read
Your Back Office Lives in a SharePoint Folder: What to Move Out, and What to Leave
SharePoint is good at documents. A job has a status, and a folder cannot tell you what it is waiting on. The signs the file share has become the back office, what to leave there, what to move out, and how to start with one question.
Read the post - Insights 5 min read
Before You Buy an AI Tool for the Shop: Configure, Connect, Build, or Leave It Alone
Somebody has pitched you an AI tool this year. Before you sign, write down how one job moves through the shop, count the hours, and hold the tool up against four answers: configure, connect, build, or leave it alone.
Read the post - Insights 6 min read
You Bought the Software and the Team Went Back to Excel
Six months after the rollout the office runs on a spreadsheet again, and the owner concludes the team will not adopt software or the shop bought the wrong one. Both are usually wrong, for the same reason: nobody mapped the handoff, so the tool became a second place to type. Three patterns, what adoption actually means, and the one-week test to run before buying anything else.
Read the post - Insights 4 min read
Builders vs. Bystanders: What the Enterprise AI Race Means for a Business Your Size
A 43-page report just landed on my desk about how the world's biggest companies are racing to adopt AI. Here's the 2% that actually matters if you run a service business — and why the gap it describes is good news for you.
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Related resource
How to Choose an AI Receptionist Without Getting Burned
Our ungated buyer’s guide: the five ways to cover your phones, the trade-off nobody quotes you, and the questions that sort a service from a dashboard. The rest of the ungated guides are on the resources page.