Any contents restoration contractor knows just how fun it can be to enter a job site and take on the monumental task of recording and cataloging damaged contents. The hours upon hours of digging through damaged items, crawling through dark spaces and identifying and recording each and every piece is every contractor’s dream of a perfect day.

Yeah, right.

The fact of the matter is that contents inventory and pack-out is not for the faint of heart. It’s a tough job, not to mention a time-consuming one. Working against you is the fact that the success of your business depends on how fast you can complete this process.

There’s also another aspect to pack-out that makes contractors’ lives difficult: logistics. Keeping track of and cataloging contents, and then delivering data to insurance claims adjusters, is a process that’s riddled with errors and inefficiencies. It’s a task in itself just to keep everything organized.

For those contractors who are (relatively) new to the field, you should take solace in the fact that this process used to be much harder. Before the Internet, contractors had to identify and record everything by hand. They then took physical forms back to the office and entered the information into a database. Years later (at least it seemed to take that long), contractors could deliver the data to adjusters.

Since the mid-1990s, this process has become much easier thanks to the servers that could store this data. This added a significant degree of efficiency to the process, although packing out is still an enormous challenge.

But then, in 2009, it appeared: The Modern Contents Movement©. Created and led by your friends at iCAT Solutions, we’ve made the pack-out process much less of a hassle.

Not to get too promotional here, but it’s kind of a big deal. Our Fast Packout app gives contractors the ability to instantly identify and catalog contents using their smartphones or mobile devices, while updating their databases in real time via the cloud. Adjusters can have access to this database, so if they want to, they can have up-to-the-minute updates on the packout process. This allows contractors to be extremely responsive to adjusters, who in turn can be just as responsive to their own clients. It’s a win-win-win all around.

We’re also about to release our photo recognition technology, which means that you can literally take a picture of an item and identify it — even if you have no clue what it is.

OK, enough bragging. The bottom line is that contractors no longer have to dread the contents cataloging and pack-out processes. In fact, you might just have a little fun doing it!