Is My Company Too Small for SynkedUP?

I just got back from one of my favorite trade shows for contractors – Landscape Ontario Congress in Toronto.

It was a fantastic show, and we had a lot of great conversations with people interested in the software.

It was a blast to meet with existing SynkedUP users as well, and we even got to record a couple podcasts.

Since getting back, one thing has been percolating through my mind from all of those conversations.

A question I got a lot was “Is my company too small for SynkedUP?”

Sometimes it didn’t come as a question, but rather a statement – “My company is too small for SynkedUP, I think it’s awesome, but that’s for companies with lots of crews, etc.”

So…

What do you think is the right size to be, before investing into an app to streamline estimating and job costing?

I have some thoughts, but I’d like to hear from you all reading this.

What do you think is the right size to be before the cost of SynkedUP is justified?

I made a poll here, let me know what you think! 😁

I want to hear from both SynkedUP and non-SynkedUP users! 🤙

My thoughts:

I look at this question like I do any other business decision.

What is the cost vs benefit?

What is the size of the problem?

Cost vs Benefit

The idea of thinking through the cost vs benefit is as simple as “is the cost more or less than the benefit?”

I’ll use an example unrelated to SynkedUP to highlight my point.

Credit card processing fees.

A common debate amongst contractors is whether it’s worth accepting credit card payments because of the fees.

At SynkedUP, we use Stripe for our billing.

We spend more on Stripe than we do on any other software product.

You might look at our P&L and think that this is ridiculous, all that money going to those Stripe fees. Just look at that cost!

But do you know what the benefit is?

I don’t have to hire someone to run our billing.

It’s all automated.

And the cost of Stripe is less than it’d cost me to hire someone to stay on top of it all and collect payments some other way.

Cost – fees

Benefit – don’t need to hire someone

The benefit in this example is greater than the cost.

Now that isn’t always the case in every scenario.

There are certainly times when the benefit is not greater than the cost.

So how do you think through that?

What is the size of the problem?

The way I think through it is “how big is my problem?”

$10 is too expensive if it doesn’t do anything for me.

$10,000 is cheap if it solves a $100,000 problem.

The price tag in and of itself is not really that big of a concern.

The question is whether the benefit outweighs the cost.

Am I too small for SynkedUP?

So in the context of thinking through whether SynkedUP is worth it for your business, ask yourself, what is the size of my problem?

Many times I run into contractors that say they are too small, but have never considered the size of their problem.

“Problem” in this example meaning:

How much time am I wasting on manually producing accurate proposals?

or

How much money am I losing on incorrect rates that don’t cover my costs?

Those are the questions to be asking.

And usually the benefit will outweigh the cost of SynkedUP – even for a one man show.

Here’s what I can tell you – the average company spends $5k a year with SynkedUP, and the average company recovers tens of thousands in expenses that weren’t being recovered, in their first budget building exercise with SynkedUP. Within days of signing up.

And that’s before we even consider the benefits of saving time in estimating and in visibility they gain into their performance by using job costing.

Some of our users recover six figures plus in their first year through unrecovered expenses, saved time in estimating, and closing off profit leaks by what they learn in job costing.

A lot of users cut their time it takes to produce an accurate estimate by up to 90%.

This is made possible through having all their pricing in the item catalog, and using templates and production rates.

Summary

So…

at the end of the day, you need to make your own call.

No one product is the right fit for everyone.

Just don’t get caught straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel.

Don’t look at only the price tag.

Look at the cost vs benefit.

Stop and think about the size of your problem.

And then make the best choice for you. 🤝

Don’t forget to take the poll at the link above in this article, I wanna see the overall consensus of what you believe is the right size of company before it’s worth spending good money on an app. I’ll share the results on my stories on Instagram.

Cheers,

Weston Zimmerman

SynkedUP CEO and founder