The Definition of a Good Field Service Application
Achieving maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense – the definition of efficient. Although some would say, that’s also the definition of a good field service application.
Every field service organization’s goal is to be as efficient as possible in every aspect of their business. The more areas you’re efficient in, the higher your profits. And despite there being many different areas to focus your efforts on being efficient, you only need one good field service management software to help across all those areas.
Take a typical break/fix scenario, with many moving parts and areas in which a company will strive for a high level of efficiency. From the scheduling of the technician for the repair to completing the work order and billing, from end-to-end, a field service application can cut down on time to fix, extended expenses, and the speed at which the entire process is completed.
Scheduling Your Way to Success
Efficient scheduling could mean multiple things, from selecting the right technician with the right skills, or one that has a high customer rating or first-time fix rate. Or maybe efficiency is achieved through geographical location, where a technician is selected based on where they are in respect to the location of the repair. Whichever reason, a field service application can assist in narrowing down the right technician for the right job, getting them to the location quickly, which makes for a happier customer.
How Does Mobility Help Your Technicians?
Adding a full-featured mobile app to your technician’s toolbox has also created a more efficient worker. Tasks are dispatched to a mobile device, cutting down on the time and communication needed between dispatch and the technician. Time, they could be used to travel to the next location. Job tasks can be pushed through a field service application to a mobile field service app, giving dispatch real-time control over a technician’s schedule, as opposed to trying to catch them on the phone to alter their schedule.
Advanced Checklist Management
Add in the ability for automated checklists to be assigned to a work order, and for technicians to be part of the bookkeeping process by collecting signatures of completed work, which could send an invoice immediately, less time is being spent looking at paperwork back at the head office and manually inputting invoice information.
Business Intelligence and Analytics
The problem that comes with trying to be efficient is, how do you track it? How can you tell if a technician is efficient in their work, or that the process is working, other than of course, seeing an increase in your bottom line? That’s where business intelligence comes into play, giving everyone within a business the ability to track what they need to see efficiency.
A service manager can look deep into specific technicians to see who is the fastest, who has the best first-time fix rate, and who is requiring multiple visits. Everything from travel time to expenses and profit margins can be tracked and displayed, giving efficient a physical representation.
The Bottom Line
While the final look will always be towards the bottom line, there are many other line items that contribute to that hopefully positively increasing the number. Field service applications offer an approach that touches on all those line items to make your entire business more efficient so that when you do look at that final bottom line number, the gains are positive month over month.