I ain’t sayin’ ‘nuttin
Posted on | January 9, 2007 | 2 Comments
What a day! We may very well have to again hire some field reps and get Vickie some part-time help in the office. The 1st to the 15th is not going to be our quite time this month. I am quite convinced that there will be no slack time in January this year.
I started the day with three insurance loss inspections followed by thirty-eight occupancy inspections. (3•25)+(38•6.50). I also had thirty-eight pictures. Not every company pays extra for pictures but I will get paid for twelve. (12•1.50)
It’s late here and we are still working-Vickie more than I since she does the uploading of the inspections. We will be up early tomorrow morning since work continues to come in: 106 from one company, 12 from another, and 6 from yet another. You probably will not hear from me tomorrow unless a miracle happens. I will be working the rural south end of the county where the inspections are miles and miles apart and when I get in, I have to get ready for our usual Wednesday night out.
To relax in the evenings, I normally write or design web sites. Most of my writing lately has been on the business manual. I am giving it a facelift and of course it is constantly upgraded. Since I have never shown you a page of my manual, I am posting a page that I updated tonight. That will be it for today. Did you know that facelift without the hyphen is a noun and that face-lift with the hyphen is a verb? Here’s the page:
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Mortgage Field Services Business Manual
Software
Our two most important software programs are:
- PaperPort – is used for scanning every piece of paper that goes through our office. It may take a little while to find it, but we can usually display on screen our scanned copy of the original document if it was in our office within the last five years. Anything older than that will have to wait for us to get the CD’s out of the safe deposit box.PaperPort scans and coverts by a technology called “OCR”. Once it has done its magic, you can search for “President Bush”, or “1600 Pennsylvania Ave”, Washington DC” or anything else. PaperPort will then list or show all documents that contain the phrase you searched for.We have seldom had to find a document by date. The majority of the time we have a particular address or owner name and when we search using those phrases, all inspections that we have done appear on screen. If we did have to locate a document by date we could go to the directory for that date and look at all scans for the month. It would take longer but it could be done. The program has been a life saver!
Here is an example of the directories on the computer that hold these scanned images:
Inspections-2006
————————2006-09
————————2006-10
————————2006-11
————————2006-12Each of the monthly directories has a directory for each company we work for. Like this:
———————–2006-12
———————————-Company-One
———————————-Company-Two
———————————-Company-ThreeEach of the company directories has a directory for each field rep. LIke this:
———————————-Company-One
———————————-Company-Two
———————————-Company-Three
——————————————————–TerryP
——————————————————–VickieP - ———————————————————TDyeWhen the field reps submit their paper inspection forms, a directory for the day’s work is created using the reps initials and the date the work was completed. The date it was completed, not the date it was scanned. Like so:——————————————————–TerryP
—————————————————————–tp-10-04-06
—————————————————————–tp-10-06-06
—————————————————————–tp-10-22-06Looks like TerryP did not work from October 7, to October 21, which is correct.
When the document is found we now know when it was done and by which field rep.After many false starts, we adopted this directory structure and it has been in place for over five years. As the years and months roll by, just add new directories. As you pick up new companies, make a directory for them in the year-month they become your client.
- Corel Photo Album – is used to catalog every picture that goes through our office. It may take a little while to find it, but we can usually display on screen within seconds any saved digital picture if it was in our office within the last five years. Anything older than that will have to wait for us to get the CD archived pictures out of the safe deposit box.Our directory structure for pictures is a little different because most of the time we are looking for a particular photo first by the company we took it for and then the address of the property. For example, SuperBigCompany may call and ask for the picture of 1199 FlatRock Street that we took in September of 2006. We would then have Corel Photo Album use only the folder marked with the red arrow.Inspection-Photos
————————-Company-One
———————————————2006-10
———————————————2006-11
———————————————2006-12
————————-SuperBigCompany <<—-
———————————————2006-08
———————————————2006-09 <<—-
———————————————2006-10
———————————————2006-11
———————————————2006-12Every picture is saved by street address so we search by address. If we want to see all pictures of 5566 BigYellowBird Lane taken for SuperBigCompany in year 2006, we would have Corel Photo Album use the main directory for that company. The example above is marked with the blue arrow. The program would display all pictures taken of 5566 BigYellowBirdLane during year 2006. Maybe we took a picture every month, maybe not. Either way, we will know in just a few seconds after this search.
It Is Important To Share Good Information
On occasion I will ad-lib a subject to spice things up a bit. While writing this page, it occurred to me just how secretive everyone in this business is. Everyone is fearful of loosing what they have. Believe me, I’ve heard it so many times: “I ain’t sayin’ ‘nuttin. I gotta protect what I got”.
It’s my opinion they don’t know they are loosing it anyway. Do a little searching on the internet and you will find lots of companies running help wanted ads for field reps. I’ll bet they just hired somebody right down the street from the guy that’s “protecting what I got” and he dosen’t have a clue!
If you have good information that can help other reps, share it. If you find some killer software, please let me know.
I am beginning to evaluate some other software products that will replace everything we now have. Our business has grown so much that we are scanning thousands of documents a week and digitizing hundreds of photos a week. It really is too much work for a home business. Looks like we are going to be forced to find more efficient technology so we can continue to grow.
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January 16th, 2007 @ 10:44 pm
Terry,
I just found your blog this weekend and I am pleased to read your blog. I own my own Home Inspection business in Southeast Texas where hurrricane Rita roared through. Before the storm i didn’t have a clue what field services was I had never heard of it. Rita hit and I decided to do Fema Inspections for three months and during this time I was continuing my business, one day during this time I actually payed attention to a winterized sticker and looked them up and tried to get some work through them, but the E&O insurance requirement threw me for a loop, anyway i did a litlle research and found SOFI and signed up. Low and behold the phone started ringing,”OH MY, we have so many overdue reports in your area, can you do these?” Sure, I guess, needless to say I have been so busy since then I really haven’t studied the field service industry. So I am kind of clueless to all the different companies out there and what I need to do to find them. Also, what am I suppose to be keeping and holding on to, and how do I organize all this info, I did (52*6.50) and (1*60)today, whew! Now I have to enter all of them in the computer getting to my point I wanted to get to in the first place. I have been thinking about purchasing a laptop with a mobile broadband connection and entering everything on-line and on the fly instead of writing and then transposing them on the computer. Have you ever tried that or talked to anybody that has done that?
Thanks for your time,
Troy Priddy
January 16th, 2007 @ 11:15 pm
Troy,
Glad to hear from you. I think it might be best for you to call me so we can discuss a lot of this but here are some short answers for now.
Hold on to everything. When I first started I kept all my completed paper inspections in file cabinets and boxes. We now scan everything with a program called PaperPort. The pro version, not the regular version.
Yep. I’ve said it a million times, it’s a lot of work to upload all the stuff. I’m lucky because Vickie stays in the office a lot and does all the uploading. We have hired people in the past and you may have to do the same. You could pay by the piece and there are a lot of people that want evening or early morning data entry work.
Yes, I have thought about the laptop and I will eventually get there myself, but not until I discover a way of keeping a record of the inspection for myself. Some of the companies have you transmit on online form and if you do not have a paper copy you have no proof of your work. Sorry, but I just am not that trusting.
Talk with your legal advisor and tax advisor about how long to keep records.
Give me a call. The info is on the contact page.