A grounds maintenance company I looked at recently was paying about $500 a month for its field management software. Scheduling,
invoicing, customer records. A good platform. They had been on it for three years.
When we actually opened it up, they were using about 15 percent of it.
The same software they paid for every month also did asset tracking, automated job follow-ups, a customer portal, and recurring
service reminders. All of it included in the $500. All of it switched off. Not because they had decided they did not need any of
it. Because nobody had ever turned it on.
That is the most common thing I find when I look at a business. Not a missing tool. A paid one running at a fraction of what it
does.
Here is another one. An owner with about 20 staff asked me which AI tool he should buy to summarize his meetings and clean up his
inbox. He already had access to it, through the office software he had been paying for every month for years. No new vendor to
sign up with. No new system for his people to learn. We switched it on in an afternoon.
This happens for two reasons, and neither one is the owner being careless.
The first is how software gets bought in the first place. You buy it to put out one fire. That one feature gets set up, and it
works, and you move on. Everything else the tool does stays in the box, because setting it up is work and the fire is already
out. Over time the thing quietly becomes a one-trick tool you are paying full price for.
The second is that the plan you bought two years ago is not the plan you have today. These companies ship new features
constantly, AI features included, and fold them into the price you are already paying. Nobody re-reads the plan. The capability
shows up, sits there, and waits for someone to notice.
I run an automation company. You would expect me to tell you to go buy something. Most weeks, the most useful thing I tell an
owner is the opposite. Before you add another login and another line to the monthly bill, look hard at what the logins you
already have can actually do. It is almost always more than you think, and you have already paid for it.
Here is the one to run this week.
List every piece of software you pay for every month. Next to each one, write the single thing you actually use it for. Then
spend ten minutes on each tool's own pricing or features page and read what else it does. Circle anything you are paying for and
using less than half of.
That circle is your cheapest automation. No new tool. No new login. No new bill. Just the part of the invoice you have been
throwing away every month.
Reply and tell me the software you pay the most for. I will tell you the feature you are probably sitting on.
Kevin Chan
The Ops Shortcut by ChanAutomation
https://www.chanautomation.com