From day one, contractors used pen and paper to capture everything into manila folders; the rest was kept in memory and travelled through word of mouth. This hindered their ability to locate information and react to critical issues quickly. The loss in productivity and increased cycle times limited a company’s capacity to handle incoming jobs. As the needs and expectation of the customer started to advance, there became a desire for more sophisticated systems. Software tools were designed to better manage and spread information quickly. A fundamental flaw of these tools was that they required constant data input to provide any meaningful information - garbage in, garbage out. The industry was populated with people who were resistant to the use of technology. Paper thrived and over the last three decades, trends show our consumption of paper has tripled. Even today, 90 percent of all information recorded in business is captured on or printed to paper.
There are few opportunities where technology has been used to standardize information across the board. In the restoration space, Xactware became the standard for estimating. In 1995, they released a data collection tool called Xactanalysis, which acted as a communication bridge between contractors and carriers. From its inception, it took almost six years for the industry to embrace and by 2001, there was enough data to start benchmarking industry averages. On average, it took 11 days from claim received before the customer was contacted; 13 days from customer contacted to inspected; and 33 days after the inspection before an estimated was written and returned. These numbers were greatly inflated when introduced to a catastrophic loss. The numbers collected were based on submitted job files across North America and numbers don’t lie. To achieve higher efficiency and response times, contractors were faced with limited choices: increase staff and administration or do away with paper folders and embrace the automation in technology.