EFC’S 20/20 Vision: The Future of the Canadian Electrical Contractor

June 23 2016

Emerging technology, demographic shifts, volatile economic conditions, and changing customer expectations have all created new challenges and opportunities within Canada’s electrical industry, notes Electro-Federation Canada (EFC) in its just-released research report, 20/20 Vision: The Future of the Canadian Electrical Contractor. “All players within the electrical industry will be challenged to adjust their business strategies to keep pace with new market demands.”
The report examines changing trends from the perspective of the organization’s largest customer segment — electrical contractors. The findings offer insight on the strengths, challenges, opportunities and threats that Canadian electrical contractors are experiencing due to the emergence of a number of factors.

Among the findings:
1. The uptake of pre-purchasing trends by end customers is driving new concerns among contractors. A growing percentage of electrical contractors are tasked with taking on labour-only roles, which undermines their overall value proposition, results in a loss of control over projects, reduces their margins, and raises safety, warranty and liability concerns. This trend has also led to contractor mistrust of manufacturers and distributors who may be selling directly to end users.

2. Electrical contractors are re-evaluating their business models to reflect current realities. With new products and technologies creating a new subset of market demands, many contractors are deciding between one of two strategies: diversify to offer a wider range of services, or specialize to offer expertise in core services.

3. Electrical contractors are facing an abundance of new products, technologies and tech-based services. They increasingly rely on manufacturers and distributors to provide more Web-based training programs and product updates for education on emerging product trends to offer safe, reliable service and relevant expertise to meet new customer demands.

To address these changes, the report says, companies must think forward and explore some important factors: What will their business model look like by 2020? Who will their primary customers be? How will they adjust business strategies to meet new customer and employee expectations? This forward-thinking approach is critical for businesses today. After all, you need to have a vision of where you are going, to build a path to get there.
The report also advises that all channel partners will need to band together to mend what is perceived to be the onset of fragmented partnerships.

These and other findings result from EFC’s collaboration with a number of organizations, including:
• the Canadian Electrical Contractors Association
• Kerrwil Publications, a leading online market resource for the Canadian electrical industry
• provincial electrical leagues, including the Ontario Electrical League
• a market research committee, comprising industry professionals from member companies
• Environics, a leading market research firm

As part of this collaboration, EFC organized two focus groups with union and non-union contractors, and deployed an online survey to electrical contractors across Canada.
According to Kerrwil Publications’ John Kerr, “The ongoing study of the buying patterns and business environment that surrounds the electrical contractor will be increasingly important moving forward from today. New products, new technologies and evolving customer demands will clearly shift the current status quo. Electrical contractors, manufacturers, distributors and information companies like ours will need to monitor this frequently and stay ahead of the shifting sands. With greater end-user involvement, more technology and a rapidly growing competitive base sounding the marketplace, change will occur at an increasingly demanding pace.”

Download the full report: http://files.ctctcdn.com/f5006186001/52a07c88-aed6-4fbe-b9a1-69ef5afb7c73.pdf.