You’re a contractor, and you own a growing business.
Whether it’s a team of two or 200, you want to solve a problem with organization and communication between your teams and customers. So, you start searching for comparisons between all the different software solutions.
You find CompanyCam.
It has a vast array of features tailored for contractors and looks exactly like what you need.
But it also raises a pressing question for you: “Can’t my iPhone or Android camera do the same thing?”
So we did the research. and a little bit of an experiment with this hypothesis:
How much of what CompanyCam offers in one app can you replicate using only the native software of your iPhone or Android device?
Check out how these seven key features of CompanyCam stack up against your native Apple or Android device.
Photo Storage and Organization
iPhone (iOS native): Apple Photos offers straightforward storage automatic organization by date, location, and even persons. Plus, the “Albums” feature lets users categorize photos manually.
Android (native): The built-in Gallery or Photos app (depending on the Android brand) organizes photos, and users can create custom albums. Google Photos also often comes preinstalled, offering cloud storage and auto-organization.
What CompanyCam Delivers: Instead of just organizing photos by date, location, or people, CompanyCam organizes photos around specific projects. This makes it easier for professionals to locate before-and-after shots or reference photos related to a particular job. CompanyCam tailors photo organization specifically for contractors and businesses in the construction, repair, and service industries. It is purposefully designed to cater to the exact needs of these professionals; something general smartphone software does not consider. Plus, CompanyCam uses enhanced metadata and customizable “tags” so you have numerous ways to find the photo you need when you need it.
You get unlimited cloud photo storage without paying for more as you get closer to full, and you can keep your work photos separate from all the other photos you take on your phone on a given day, week, or year.
Location Data
iPhone (iOS native): The built-in camera app automatically geotags photos when location services are enabled. You can view the location on a map in the Photos app.
Your phone is a powerful tool, but is it optimized for your business as a contractor?
Android (native): Most Android devices also automatically geotag photos when location services are active. You can view the location within the details of the photo.
What CompanyCam Delivers: While the fundamental technology of geo-tagging might seem similar across platforms, the implementation and integration make a significant difference. Beyond just tagging a location, CompanyCam integrates this location data with specific projects. Contractors can seamlessly view all photos and videos associated with a particular job site, making project management more efficient. The general-purpose gallery apps in native devices organize photos primarily by date, meaning contractors must sift through their gallery to find project-related photos. CompanyCam also includes enhanced metadata, giving a fuller picture of the job site (no pun intended).
Real-Time Communication
iPhone (iOS native): While you can share photos via iMessage and even create shared photo albums in Apple Photos, real-time collaboration on tasks or projects isn’t natively supported to the degree CompanyCam offers.
Android (native): Google Chat and Messages allow photo sharing. Google Photos has shared albums, but again, the in-depth project collaboration feature set of CompanyCam isn’t available natively.
What CompanyCam Delivers: CompanyCam is designed with contractors and their teams in mind. Features like commenting directly on photos/videos, tagging team members, and project-centric conversations cater to on-the-job communication needs. The real-time feed lets contractors see project updates as they happen. This seamless integration is vital for project progress tracking. While group chats or shared albums provide a semblance of a feed, they don’t have the organization or focus of a dedicated company feed. And as we discussed with geo-tagging, collaboration isn’t just about what the photos and videos show but also where they were taken. This geo-contextual collaboration is invaluable for site-specific communication.
Photo-Based Reports
Both Devices (iPhone and Android): This is a specialized feature. Both iPhone and Android lack native tools for creating photo-based reports in the manner CompanyCam offers. A third-party app would be essential.
What CompanyCam Delivers: While native devices can pull together some data points, such as photo metadata like time and location, they don’t integrate this information into a cohesive report format without third-party apps. They also can’t produce a report quickly that can be customized to include company branding, logos, and specific data fields, ensuring that the report not only provides information but also represents the company professionally. With CompanyCam, you can quickly generate a report with photos with annotations, markups, and notes, which are crucial for clarifying details, pointing out issues, or highlighting specific project elements. While some basic markup might be possible on individual photos, integrating these markups seamlessly into a report is not a native feature on Apple or Android devices.
Before & After Photos
iPhone (iOS native): While iPhones let users snap photos and organize them in albums, there’s no ‘before & after’ feature. Users would have to manually sort and pair photos to showcase transformations, which can be cumbersome.
Android (native): Similar to iPhones, Android devices don’t have a built-in ‘before & after’ photo tool. While you can certainly place photos side by side in a gallery or album, it lacks the seamless transition presentation that CompanyCam offers.
What CompanyCam Delivers: CompanyCam’s Before & After feature allows contractors to effortlessly capture the transformation of a project from start to finish. Not to mention, the feature is streamlined and designed with the contractor’s workflow in mind. CompanyCam offers tools to ensure that the “before” and “after” images align perfectly, which is crucial for an accurate comparison. Once the Before & After comparison is created, sharing it — whether internally for team reviews or externally with clients — is seamless. The format is professional and tailored for presentations to customers. Without CompanyCam, you’re left without a solution on a native device without several very manual steps and a third-party app exclusively for this task.
Project Management
iPhone (iOS native): The Reminders app offers basic task management but lacks the comprehensive project management features found in CompanyCam.
Android (native): Google Tasks or Google Keep provides task lists and reminders but doesn’t equate to the project management capabilities of CompanyCam.
What CompanyCam Delivers: While native devices can store and organize photos, integrating them into a project context requires additional effort or third-party apps. For instance, while smartphones have geo-tagging abilities or messaging/note-taking software, they need to be integrated into a project management framework out of the box and certainly not built to handle many projects your business has underway on any given day. General tools on Android or Apple devices are not inherently built for scalability in a contractor business context and need integrations with industry-specific tools. CompanyCam is made for the contractor and the projects they must manage most efficiently without combining multiple third-party software solutions.
Photo Portfolios
iPhone (iOS native): iPhones have the “Favorites” feature in the Photos app, where users can “star” their best photos. However, converting this into a professional-looking portfolio that you can quickly embed into your website is only possible with a third-party solution.
Android (native): Android phones, depending on the manufacturer, might have a similar ‘favorites’ or ‘highlight’ feature in their gallery, but again, presenting these in a polished portfolio format that embeds quickly to your website isn’t built in natively.
What CompanyCam Delivers: With CompanyCam’s Showcases feature, the days of doing heavy lifting just to get project photos displayed on your website are over. Showcases allow you to showcase (get it?!) your work and publish CompanyCam project photos directly to their website. Plus, we make sure your photos look great on mobile, can be filtered so customers can find examples of a specific project type, and it doesn’t require massive coding to display on your site. It’s as simple as a copy and paste one time, and then you can add and modify which photos are displayed in less than 30 seconds moving forward.
Worried We Don’t Gel with Your Favorite CRM?
What makes CompanyCam even better is that anything we don’t specialize in to help your business, we probably have an integration for — so you can seamlessly get everything moving in the same direction.
Let’s say you have a favorite CRM you rely on daily. You want to know if CompanyCam can easily integrate with that software.
Quickly search to see if it integrates with CompanyCam.
From Jobber to Zapier, you’ll be shocked how many software solutions you’re already using fit neatly with CompanyCam.
Our smartphones are powerhouses in their own right, but certain features — like in-depth project collaboration, photo-based reports, and advanced project management — are distinctly the domain of CompanyCam.
For the full suite of tools specifically tailored for contractors, CompanyCam is unmatched.
