It’s the reason that field service software has to be so customizable, because what you think optimization means, might mean something totally different to your competitor, or another industry. It’s not a one-size-fits-all concept, but rather one that is built from the needs and desires of each field service organization.
As we touched on, optimization can be many different things, and only you and your organization can decide what that really means. But here are just some helpful ways to look at optimizing your field service organization, and how a field service system can help you achieve those goals.
Optimizing Your Scheduling
Generally, the number one thing field service organizations want to optimize is their service delivery, and that means their scheduling and dispatching of technicians to job sites. It can be a tiresome task having to schedule a technician, get them work order information and instructions, while trying to balance their schedule, making sure they aren’t spending too much time idling or driving to a new job site. To think, there are still some organizations who are using whiteboards to schedule their technicians, and everything is done manually.
Field service scheduling software, however, can optimize the entire approach to service delivery and cut down on the time it takes to schedule technicians for a job and the amount of communication it takes to relay them information and ensure they can complete the tasks involved. Dispatchers will have added functionality of being able to search for the closest technicians to a job site, or by a particular skill, and a full view of their schedule will become available, making it easy to drag and drop a work order into their schedule without overlapping with other calls. Field service scheduling software makes it so that a dispatcher now has complete control of the entire workforce’s schedule, and can move work around so that technicians are completing the most calls they can in their day, which maximizes revenue.
Optimize Your Service Teams with Mobility
Mobile field service software has taken off, and it has been another major area that field service organizations have looked at to replace outdated practices, such as manually completing work orders, to better optimize their service delivery. As opposed to having paper-based work orders and checklists, native field service mobile apps are putting them in the palm of the technician’s hand, allowing them to insert information onto a mobile device. No need for paper work orders, filing systems, or worrying about hand writing you can’t read, as the electronic version is a clean way of completing work. And levels of automation can trigger work orders to automatically create invoices that can be sent to your customers immediately following the service call, speeding up billing times.
Optimization is About Speed and Revenue
Whatever the reason you decide to deploy a field service system to optimize your service delivery, the end result is a much faster and efficient process and increased revenue. Time saved is money earned, and that time can come in the amount of time technicians are driving, filling out paper word orders, trying to communicate with dispatch, or looking for parts, while administrators are spending ample amount of time trying schedule and dispatch their teams to the proper spots.
All of it costs dollars, and the easier everyone’s job is made, the more time they can spend on other tasks. That’s revenue you aren’t spending on other areas of the business, or for additional personnel. But whatever the case me be, when implementing a field service software, ensure you are optimizing your business to fit your needs and to get the results you want to see.