Last year in January, Find Accounting Software, a website that has helped more than 200.000 businesses around the world find the right software for their needs, published an interesting interview with David Friedlen from MSI Data. Mr Friedlen discussed the importance and benefits of having a comprehensive field service management software in today’s competitive market.
As seen in our first blog post, the majority of buyers (54%) still use manual techniques to manage their field service business. A clear sign that there is still much to say in this respect.
With the rise of mobile phones and tablets we entered the era of mobility and automation, which have become new paradigms in any industry. Today’s technician, installer, or other service field worker are no longer cut off from software and left at the mercy of paperwork, manual data collection and poor time & jobs management. Mobile devices allow information to circulate freely in real-time between the office and the field, thus enabling better communication and improving the overall productivity of your business in 5 major ways:
1. Business Intelligence in the Field
By using your mobile device to access your field service software in the cloud and pull the customer data and previous service information, you quickly access your business intelligence while working in the field. This provides a better understanding of customers’ assets and helps deliver a more personalized service.
2. Business Analytics
The use of field service software to gather and analyze data from the field has a major impact on productivity in the field service business. It measures the efficiency of each technician and the quality of work done. It also provides managers with an insight into which services are bringing the most profits and shows the weaknesses in company’s potential utilization. Decision-making process is, thus, governed by analyses, not guessing, and it leads to successful management of the most valuable resources: time, workforce, spare parts and equipment.
3. Job Scheduling
By knowing exactly where your techs are and what they’re currently working on, you can appoint those with the right skillset and equipment to perform the job well and in time. You can also schedule preventive maintenance with great precision for your customers, by seeing the history of previous jobs.
4. Automation – Tracking
On-site reporting has brought huge time saving and productivity improvement opportunities. Automated processes give more space to the tracking of:
- Status
- Time
- Parts
- Repairs/Inspections
- Assets
- Warranty/contract coverage
Back office is automated and integrated with mobile, so workers no longer need to manually re-enter data taken in the field, while managers get a chance to track workers and work done in real time.
5. Integrated Solution
Some of the biggest challenges that companies face in finding the right field service software are how to choose the best match for their service and how to integrate the solution with the accounting system already in use. Also, they wish to have a comprehensive solution that covers all aspects of field business in order to take a big picture approach without the threat of data loss or mismatch. Luckily, most software development companies do offer integration with other systems, as well as data security guarantees.
Having all this in mind, it is not so hard to predict that companies that wish to be at the forefront of field service business really need to start considering field service software as a way to success in 2015!
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Jonathan
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Joe
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Alley Smith
