Tip-offs to the future course of the electrical service and maintenance business appear every month in this magazine, but they do not only show up in regular columns or feature articles.

They are simply embedded in the colorful content of advertisements (not to mention the New Products section; see this month’s on pages 64 and 76). That’s where readers can always go to learn the latest on newly released products or be reassured about their continuing faith in reliable old favorites.

Across-the-board progress in the electrical construction industry—of which service and maintenance is an increasingly important part—is driven, and always has been, by the introduction of new products.

Knowing new products

Neither business strategies, management expertise, supervisory skills nor superior workmanship can come close to creating the same level of influence as the planned use of new products.

Advertisers will proudly point to all the ways that the most advanced version of their products will make today’s contractors more competitive tomorrow. At the same time, what goes unsaid is that the better/cheaper/faster solutions the newest products offer just might be enough to entice a new set of competitors into the game. It might convert the much-heralded promise of new business in the electrification of everything into the daunting prospect of electrification by everybody.

Product development delivers plenty of new opportunities, but not without many new challenges for the electrical service and maintenance business. Product development can alter the fortunes of every type of enterprise in the chain, from manufacturers to distributors to end-users.

What Kodak can teach us

In that vein, we see a parallel in the history of one iconic American corporation with the present-day situation in electrical construction.

Founded during the same decade as the original era of electrification in the 1880s, Eastman Kodak Co., Rochester, N.Y., was a huge source of American-made pride and the envy of corporations everywhere. It dominated its industry for decades.

Unfortunately, in 2012—its 132nd year—it filed for bankruptcy.

Without knowing much about the history of Eastman Kodak, people whose only camera has been the one in their mobile phone might innocently suppose that, failing to keep up with advancing technology, the company was brusquely swept aside by a tsunami of newer technology. But that was not the case.

Indeed, Eastman Kodak demonstrated the first prototype of a digital camera 50 years ago, in 1975, continuing over the years to pour research and development funding into that technology. Nor did the company fail to imagine a future in which its customers would regularly enjoy sharing images online. In fact, it invested millions of dollars in a venture to do exactly that.

The ultimate problem, however, was that Eastman Kodak saw every new development as simply another way to further its trademark devotion to high-quality photography captured on high-quality paper. That was the source of its undoing.

Electrical contractors today, who from time to time have made a quick foray in and out of some aspect of emerging technology, could make a similar miscalculation. Perceiving any such experience as merely a minor adjunct to its traditional business, service and maintenance contractors could foreclose on a future possibility of expanding their realm of capabilities.

But if Eastman Kodak, a multibillion-­dollar corporation with millions to spend on research and development, could make that kind of unforced error, how could a far smaller electrical contracting company with fewer resources do any better?

We believe that contractor might indeed do even better than one of the Fortune 500 companies that from time to time have famously charted a poorly conceived course.

The solution we propose lies in what we would term “business relationship management.” Business relationship management is a step up from customer relationship management, more commonly known as CRM.

With business relationship management—making and keeping active connections with customers and selectively with suppliers, designers, accountants, lawyers, bankers, insurers and other contractors that are not likely competitors—the collective knowledge and reliable advice that an electrical contractor can garner will arguably prove far more down-to-earth than the recommendations from high-priced consultants that big corporations so often rely on.

Basically, the challenge that an electrical service and maintenance contractor always faces is to understand where the industry will be headed next. Engaging in business relationship management to collect knowledgeable opinions on where the trail ahead leads is something every service and maintenance contractor should rely on, keeping in mind that on the daring trek, new products will prove to be the best trail markers.

stock.adobe.com / Edler von Rabenstein