When selecting a field service management software, you are really selecting a solution to three fundamental areas of field service – people, processes, and data. How you manage technicians and subcontractors, how work orders are created and finalized, and how your business makes critical business decisions can all be drastically affected by installing a field service software, as opposed to using multiple systems, manual approaches, and spreadsheets.

Here’s a look at how a field service software affects all the components of your organization.

Managing People

Field service work is about getting technicians to a job site to fix a problem. It’s as simple as that, but the solution can be a complex nightmare for many organizations that have hundreds of technicians, a large geographical area to cover, and a large volume of service calls coming in. How you manage people is a critical challenge for most field service organizations, however, a field service management software can provide tools that help manage the people who do the work. Either technicians or subcontractors can be easily scheduled and dispatched to a job site through different means. Dispatchers can search by skill set to narrow their field down to qualified technicians and search by geographical location to ensure a technician or subcontractor is close by. And with the ability to see their entire workforce’s schedule, they can see who is free and keep customer wait times to a minimum.

For service managers, field service management software gives them the full scope of their department and where their people are. And being able to successfully manage technicians’ time will lead to more service calls and more revenue for the organization.

Improving the Field Service Processes

Many of the processes involved in the field service industry can be time-consuming, redundant, and labor-intensive for administrative staff and technicians alike. The old paper-based, manual systems of the past don’t have a place in today’s fast-paced, on-demand world where customers are expecting results quickly. Field service management software can offer streamlined ways to manage the process in which quotes, work orders, and billing are completed without large administrative hours needed to input data. Mobile field service app technology has changed how technicians and subcontractors complete their work, as work orders are pushed to their mobile phones, complete with checklist features that manage their workflow. They can also perform quotes, order parts, and select inventory from a mobile device, while cutting down on the communication they need to have with a warehouse manager. With integrations to ERP and CRM systems, field service software also automates many of the redundant tasks that need to be completed, while offering a complete end-to-end solution from the technicians in the field, straight through to the accounting department.

Big Data and Its Pivotal Role in Field Service Management 

Data and information are critical to any business wanting to make crucial decisions, but where the data comes from, how current it is, and how it is interpreted can be drastically different with or without a field service software. Real-time reporting is only capable if you’re getting real-time data from the field. Without a field service software, numbers and information are always going to be behind, or run the risk of errors when the manual calculation has to be completed. Inside a field service software, however, the data is in real-time from the field and customizable to whoever is looking at it for their specific needs. Key Performance Indicators can be set up that automatically communicate when they aren’t being met, while all the information can allow for advanced reporting that gives managers the ability to make critical business decisions with real-time data.

Field service management software can affect every aspect of your service organization and deliver a flexible solution to managing the many people in your organization, how they do their job, and how information is used. It’s a large decision, but it comes with large rewards in potential growth and greater revenue.