Across North American the economic situation seems to be improving. We are certainly not back to boom times but overall confidence seems to edging back up and we are seeing signs for cautious optimism for 2010. Most believe we have come out of recession and the debate seems to center around how quick or slow the recovery will be (my personal bet is slow and steady.) As we enter recovery the renewed growth will present contractors with significant opportunities for growth but only if they have the people and systems in place to take on the extra work. This makes now an ideal time to invest in IT systems.

The market is currently running lean. Very lean! The recent recession definitely had the effect of shaking out some weaker competitors and shrinking just about everyone. As the business returns there will be huge potential for growth especially for those with capacity. For everyone else there will be a race to add people quickly enough to grow. I believe that people will be the limiting factor for growth through late 2010 and 2011. The challenge in all this is that recruiting and training new people is very time consuming. This is where IT investments come in.

As announced here Jonas Software (through our parent Constellation Software) acquired Compusource Corporation on August 7, 2009. Today’s post will introduce Compusource and their products as well as provide some insight into why we have made this acquisition and what it means for our existing customers.

Company Overview
Founded in 1971, Compusource is a leading provider of mission critical software applications, hardware and services for the Field Service & Construction Management, Metal Service Center and Moving & Storage markets. With offices in California, Georgia and Texas Compusource employs over 40 professionals that together support over 450 clients across North America. The Compusource products include:

• Ascente: A modern Windows based business and service management system for Air Conditioning, Plumbing and Electrical Service Contractors

An article published by McGraw hill back in October 2008 caught my eye the other week. The article entittled "Managing a Construction Firm in a Down Economy" written by author and industry consultant Matt Stevens seemed to perfectly encapsulate the steps contractors need to take to most effectively manage their businesses through the bottom end of the business cycle and to be prepared for the uptick. The key points from this article are especially valid now as we slog through what I hope is the bottom of this recession.

Matt's Key pieces of advice are as follows:

• Make sure where you are financially. The stress of a cash flow problem is not the singular reason to lay off core employees. Another important measure is gross profit per manhour. Since we are in a variable-cost businessm this makes economic sense.

At Jonas we have made the conscious decision to stay out of the estimating space. We just do not think that any company can do a great job on the core accounting, job cost and service management as well as estimating for all the different types of contractors that use our system. We have instead built a standard integration which is used by most of the leading estimating packages to upload estimates into our job cost system. One of the more popular packages that we see in use is ProEst from Construction Management Software (CMS.)

Paper is the life blood of an organization. If you want to understand any process you follow the paper. Whenever decisions are made there are paper documents to trigger action and demonstrate approval. Over the past few years organizations of all sizes have been trying to improve processes by cutting out the paper and replacing it with document management solutions. On the surface, one would expect putting in document management to be relatively simple (instead of printing paper you just file it) but the challenge has been to recreate the flow of paper within the electronic system to ensure that key processes continue to operate. If you miss a link then the paper will continue to get printed and support for the document management solution will fade.

Last week I embarked on a seven and a half hour road trip with Steve Ecclestone (Jonas's VP of Product) to pay a visit to one of Jonas’s stronger reference accounts. This long time plumbing and HVAC contractor is one of the most engaged and knowledgeable clients on the Jonas solution. Steve and I had proposed the meeting to get some feedback on some elements of the system that we are considering changing and to show them a new mapping application that they are planning to beta test for us, but, upon our arrival we found that the client had a slightly broader agenda for us. In addition to our discussion points the client had organized meetings with each of their key Jonas users to ask questions and provide feedback on any challenges that they were facing.

Much to my chagrin I am a week late with my post about the Field Service 2009 Conference. As noted in part one I had grand designs to get to work on this last week upon my return from Palm Springs but in setting this objective I seem to have forgotten about my need to do all the work that had piled up in my week and a half absence. In any event, after a week of late nights I am back on track and ready to give you my belated update.

This week I have traded my comfortable abode North of Toronto for the warm desert climate of Southern California. After a nice hike through Joshua National Park (today) and a visit to our good friends at Air Rite tomorrow I will be attending the Field Service 2009 conference in Palm Springs. This is a new conference for me (Historically I believe it has been held in Europe) so I am curious to see what it is all about. According to the conference’s website the three day discussions will center on the following broad topics: