Software for surveyors – which software is right for your surveying business?
There is a whole host of software for surveyors depending on what you are looking to achieve in either the residential or commercial surveying sectors. The current software available to surveyors covers everything from boosting sales to data capture to submitting final reports.
We take a look at all the types of software systems available to your surveying business so you can start investigating what will boost your business.
Software for Residential and Commercial Surveyors
Data capture and Report writing software
There are a number of solutions available for on-site data capture and report writing. These software solutions can make capturing on-site data much more efficient and aid in producing final reports more effectively. This isn’t about rushing reports out but cutting out the time-consuming processes of capturing notes, photos and more and compiling them effectively into a good-looking report.
Report writing apps typically come with a mobile app for your tablet enabling you to capture data on site such as:
- Notes
- Photos
- Videos
- Dictation / Voice-to-text
- and much more
This makes it really easy to write up your report later when back in the office and to ensure you have everything related to the inspection stored in one place.
Dashboards can often be provided to help you get a better overview of the properties you’ve inspected. For example, what are the common issues and ratings being flagged up in different report types, by different users and in different locations.
It’s important to understand the full host of features available to you, what you need now for data capture as well as what you might need in the future to aid with data analysis.
Some solutions that exist are:
Sales and Survey Management Software
Survey Booker is a provider of sales and survey management software for surveyors. What is the difference between sales software and survey management software.
Sales software for surveyors should help you manage all your incoming leads and convert them successfully into paid instructions. Survey management software should help you move that instruction from appointment through to final report. It’s important that your systems talk to each other so you can efficiently manage your sales process, updates to customers and report production.
What should you look for in a sales and survey management system:
- Automation – can the system automate a lot of the key processes such as data entry and document production so you can spend less time on keying in data and more time speaking with customers.
- Compliance – your system should automatically log signed terms, all email correspondence, reports and more to help you build a single source of truth without lifting a finger. Manual intervention costs you time and risks human error.
- Integrations – no system can do everything. It will do a poor job of each thing it does. Therefore, your software needs to link with report-writing apps, accounting software, email providers, lead sources, your website, phone call software and more.
- Team management and scalability – you should be able to manage team members, assign jobs and see everything they are doing on a job record so that you can easily scale your team, and ensure everything is being done correctly. No time lost waiting to see what’s in an inbox.
A software system that connects with everything else you use can ensure you can automate key processes so you can focus on what you do best. For example, your leads feed in from external lead sources (comparison sites, your website, referral partners and more) without you having to manually fill in that data. It can then automatically email your customer keeping them warm with key information until you can pick up the phone. Terms and payments can be automatically processed and stored with little intervention. As you set appointment dates, diaries, report writing software and notifications can be sent to different parties to keep everyone in the loop. A connected business is a successful, efficient and scalable business.
Other software for surveyors
CAD
Create site plans, elevations and sections easily, accurately and quickly. These can be drawn up and modelled using CAD software in systems like Sketchup. These can then be uploaded to other systems to automatically produce further documents, models and more.
Matterport
Easily create 360 photo tours of a property. This can give you different views of a property so you can easily understand its state either at the point of sale or through different stages of a restoration or building project. Providing the key evidence you need of what has been done when. You can also extract other data points and produce other models from it.
Thermography software for surveyors
There is a range of software that aids with the collection and analysis of thermal imaging. This can aid with predictive maintenance on critical components, system troubleshooting, and increased productivity. These scans can be done over time to evidence the change in the property’s state to show when maintenance is critical or to evidence the benefits of the changes made.
Digital Twins
Systems like Vu.City help you to make better and faster planning decisions for both buildings and infrastructure. They can show you how skylines changed over time or how they will look with a new building added. It can provide insights into the effects of rights of light, how traffic flows will be affected and much more before a single change has been made in real life.
BIM Modelling
Building Information Modelling (BIM) is an intelligent 3D model-based process that gives architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) professionals the insight and tools to more efficiently plan, design, construct, and manage buildings and infrastructure.
Augmented reality software
This can be used to help in construction to show where walls and services need to go. It can also aid in viewing an existing building to see where wires and pipes flow before alternations are made. It can even be used to aid in the servicing of on site systems, talking someone through the steps they need to make to fix or service something.
Conclusion
There is so much software available to surveyors. The key is doing your research to understand how it will work for you now and how it will serve you in the future. Moving between systems isn’t always easy so you want to choose a system that is future-proofed and can scale to suit your needs as you grow.
Check how different software can integrate with the other systems you use in your surveying business so you can drive the maximum benefits, efficiencies and more from it.
The benefits you gain from software are both what the software can offer and how you implement it within your business. Everyone has an email account. But how effective your emails are rely on how well you write and display your content and how engaging your content is. That is the same as any other software you use. It’s a tool that you can implement in the way that gets your business the best results.