How will you rise to this challenge and connect your customers’ site to ensure remote access to meaningful data for your customers’ and a continuous revenue flow for yourself? Is the COVID-19 pandemic the most significant digital transformation catalyst we’ve seen in decades?
And, if so, what can contractors do right now to survive, recover, thrive and be ready for the ‘new normal’? The world we know today is going through an unprecedented transformation as measures are being taken to let people stay, and if possible, work from home. This has resulted in a huge surge in internet traffic as people and businesses learn to work, operate and collaborate virtually. 
Similarly, since the start of the pandemic, customers are looking for partners who can deliver cutting-edge digital solutions that will allow them to improve building performance, ensure business continuity by acting fast, even remotely, and ideally prevent instead of having to react to issues on site whilst optimising cost.
The demand to control and monitor requires new skills to integrate cloud applications, Internet of Things (IoT) and smart devices. This brings an opportunity for contractors to step up and engineer a solution that provides their customers the needed information anytime, anywhere, at their fingertips through a mobile app or a web portal – whether it be alerts and alarms from their critical assets all the way to their energy data.
Furthermore, the lockdown and changing priorities impacts many contractors who are now struggling to generate business and have clarity on a future work pipeline. So, the question becomes, how can you leverage this “new normal” to learn new skills and transform your business by providing digital solutions allowing your customers to convert data into meaningful insights that drive actions?
Can you accompany your customers on a connected journey where you, the contractor, become their trusted adviser?
Take maintenance for example. Thanks to new digital tools, contractors can enable automatic task reminders, provide guidance for an efficient resource allocation, keep historical maintenance logbooks and easily generate meaningful inspection and activity reports.
Another example is the use of QR codes on switchboards and other electrical gear that allows contractors and their end users to access and share important technical documents such as drawings and datasheets by simply scanning the QR code through a secure mobile application. Routine maintenance and troubleshooting becomes easier to plan and execute, making the contractor’s operations more reliable, efficient, and cost-effective.
Expand your service offering
The total cost of ownership is minimised when equipment maintenance is done at proper intervals, which for a typical installation means 12 months. The operational phase of an electrical asset is around 20 – 30 years. Therefore, some of the most significant cost reduction opportunities for the owners of the assets are found by opting for preventive maintenance that will prolong equipment life, ensure uptime, and optimise performance as well as present an opportunity for contractors to generate repetitive busines through offering digital services.
Predictive maintenance is the way forward. IoT connected sensors on a customer’s site can send data in real time to the cloud, thereby enabling preventative maintenance work that is timely, accurate, and more efficient. New technology and digital tools such as EcoStruxure Facility Expert can help expand contractor’s services and provide customers with cutting edge digital solutions. Facilities can be managed more effectively by connecting buildings and equipment, as well as teams, using cloud services via smartphones or tablets.
And it doesn’t have to end there. Contractors can even become their customers’ trusted adviser by furthering their services through analytics, whether it would be through helping their customers view the energy data of multiple sites on a simple platform and benchmark them, or collating their critical alarms from their site at their fingertips.
