This installation tip was provided by Lennie Moreno, CEO at Solargraf

As millennials rapidly move toward a generational take-over of most small and medium home improvement businesses, technology is taking a much more important space in their everyday tasks. This should be a wakeup call for all solar contractors: If you’re looking to properly scale your solar installation or solar sales company but not using a cloud platform, you must rethink your current processes and arm yourself with the industry’s leading technologies.

Software solutions can cut down on soft costs, automatically organize tasks, confirm if a project is viable in seconds and help shorten project timelines.

In an ideal world, a contractor would get a new lead from a lead aggregator, then from that one lead would design the array and vet the viability of that house within seconds. Software would automatically create a quote ready to sign in front of the customer or remotely. If a client required financing, the same platform could have the loan documents ready and get the customer approved on the spot. From that moment on, the contractor could schedule the final site assessment, order their permit set and obtain the engineering stamp. All the while, software would keep the client updated automatically about what is happening with their project.

Dear solar installation companies, this ideal world exists and is currently available on the market. The most important thing is a company’s willingness to adapt to change, re-condition past behaviors and embrace new technology. When looking at the Fortune 500 list every year, studies have shown that the companies staying at the top are the biggest investors in research, development and technology, while the ones slowly falling down are the ones accepting the status quo.