Are you protecting your margins against rising maintenance costs?
Building maintenance costs in the UK have risen by 5.4% over the past year, according to the latest BCIS data – a rate significantly higher than previous years, and one that’s putting real pressure on contractors across property, gas, electrical, FM and HVAC sectors.
For most businesses, that kind of inflation doesn’t show up as a single shock. It creeps in. A job that was priced three months ago costs more to complete today. Materials tick upward. Subcontractor rates shift. And if you’re not watching closely, the gap between your quoted margin and your actual margin quietly widens.
The question isn’t whether cost inflation is happening – it’s whether you can see it clearly enough to respond.
Visibility is the first line of defence
The contractors who weather cost pressure best tend to have one thing in common: they’re not relying on gut instinct or end-of-month reports to understand how their jobs are performing. They’re watching the numbers in real time, at a granular level, and making adjustments before small variances become significant losses.
That’s exactly what MARKUS is built for. With a library of over 700 dynamic reports, MARKUS gives users genuine visibility into their operations – not just a static snapshot, but a live, configurable view of the data that matters most to their business.
Reports that work the way you do
Most reporting tools present you with a fixed list of pre-built views and leave it there. MARKUS takes a different approach. Rather than forcing your workflow to fit the software, it gives you a customisable environment where you can strip away irrelevant data, focus on the specific metrics that matter to your team, and save those configurations so you’re not rebuilding your setup from scratch every time you log in.
In practice, that looks like this:
- Access – launch any report directly from the navigation bar. You can work from the default list or pin your most-used reports as favourites for faster access.
- Customise – apply filters when you open a report, then continue refining columns and parameters on the fly as you drill into the data. The report adapts in real time.
- Save and share – once you’ve built a view that works, save it for future use. If you need to work with the data externally, export it in a format ready for external reporting.
The bottom line
A 5.4% rise in costs doesn’t have to mean a 5.4% hit to your margins. But avoiding that outcome requires the right tools, and the discipline to use them consistently.
MARKUS gives you both the depth and the flexibility to stay in control, whatever the market is doing.
Already a MARKUS user? If you’d like to get more out of your reports, we’d love to help – give us a call.
Not yet using MARKUS? We’ll walk you through how it works and what it could do for your business.
0161 477 2343
You can also find out more about how MARKUS reporting works over on our YouTube Channel.
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