The phrase, “less is more“, doesn’t generally get thrown around when speaking about field service management, however, in the growing world of automation, innovation and field service management software, it’s a phrase many new field service organizations should be taking to heart.
Especially when you consider that less could lead to more accuracy in reporting, reliability in data and greater efficiency out of technicians. And all this can come from making your technicians do less paperwork, which will give you more of all the good qualities that make up a great field service delivery team.
It’s a barrier that many in the field service industry face every day, as manually writing work order information, quotes, notes, validations or compliance checks and other essential data has been common for years, and remains prevalent in the industry today. It’s hard to kick an old habit, but with more paperwork comes more opportunity for errors and omissions, delays in returning quotes and invoices to customers, and greater time to turn the data collected into useful information.
Mobile field service software can offer more to your organization
Processing data on paper is slow and not just for the technician in the field, who has to put pen to paper every step of the way to write down notes, calibrations or other data, but also for the service administrators in the office who have to then transcribe that data and turn it into invoices, spreadsheets, legacy databases, and data to be analyzed to better improve the business.
It’s an inefficient way of doing business, and costly when you consider how much time is being spent by technicians and administrators on paperwork, when they could be doing other activities, such as driving to the next job site or finishing their current work faster, or it can give administrators time to do other work in the office now that their time is free to complete additional tasks.
With a mobile field service software application, technicians can enter their data onto a mobile device that synchronizes with the field service management software the service department deploys. Any checklists the technician fills out, or parts requests, calibrations, and inspection notes, and time spent on the job are all brought together and transferred from the mobile app to the office via the field service management software, cutting down on the paperwork they need to fill out, while also giving administrators an electronic version of the work order with all the information available to produce invoices, vouchers and reports as soon as the technician closes the call.
There are many solutions to problems that are solved when implementing a mobile field service software, including:
- Legible field notes that are easy to understand, as opposed to handwritten ones.
- Requests for quotes, parts or additional service is addressed immediately when attached to a work order.
- Collection of photos, digital signatures and barcodes improve the visibility of the repair.
- Errors, when administrators need to ‘re-key’ the information into the system, are a thing of the past.
- Incomplete work orders won’t be allowed to be closed when required fields are remaining in the work order, ensuring every issue is addressed and every step is taken properly.
Less work for technicians and administrators means more time for other tasks, greater efficiency in reporting and documentation, and more reliability from your entire service team, ensuring they deliver the best quality service they can. A field service organization with a mobile field service software solution will be able to offer faster turnaround in billing and quotes, greater insight into business activities, and be able to limit downtown of technicians and wasted time of administrators by providing them with less paperwork to do, making them more efficient and valuable to the service delivery.