5 Ways To Grow Your Business | How Field Service Management Software Helps

Building up any business is already hard, more so when it involves providing field services.

A field service business owner has to manage the usual tasks, like scheduling jobs efficiently or inventory checks, and you have to do it while your employees are scattered about on various locations.

It’s the reason FieldElite was created, to provide companies with a much better way to manage and monitor their field workers.

Aside from effective management for your workforce on the move, field service management software can also help your business grow.

5 Ways Using Field Service Management Software Grows Your Business

1. Management Integration

You replace manual field service processes. If your business also uses other management apps, like CRM, payroll, industry-specific software, etc., make sure to integrate them with your chosen field service management software.?

Make those software work side-by-side with your field service management app to achieve streamlined business management.

Integration also removes the possibility of duplicate input on the regular system used and your field service management software, maximising your efficiency and business growth.

2. Improved Tracking

Utilising a field service management software gives you better tracking of every aspect of your field service business.

Track your inventory numbers in real-time ? know exactly how much stock is on hand for parts, and when it’s time to order more
Constant updates on Key Performance Indicators ? ensure your business is running smoothly
First-time fix rates tracking ? avoid wrong rate application
Monitor your technician?s performance ? ensuring quality work, in turn, profit.

Grow your business by having improved tracking on meaningful data and analytics produced from your field service management software.

3. Cost Cutting

Cutting costs can improve your bottom line and a lot of businesses turn to laying off technicians to cut costs. With a field service management software, there?s no need to go this route.

You cut costs through no manual processes needing to be completed. No need to hire back-office staff to field service calls or produce paperwork orders.

Your field service software should have all your automated needs met for efficient field job management.

An example of cost-cutting using field service app:

Track how much your technicians drive and find alternate routes for them to take.

Reduce gas expenses
Reduce repair bills for the truck
Finding better alternate routes can give more time to get to more jobs
Increased efficiency for the field technician

4.? Mobile Adaptability

Field service companies are focusing on mobility to grow their business. With a field service management software, technicians have on hand the tools and information needed to complete their job.

Field technicians can utilise the following field service software features:

Limit how much time they spend completing administrative work with the automated work-order management
Complete checklists on their mobile device and follow step-by-step instructions
Check service history
Close job orders/calls, collect signatures and start the invoice process

With a mobile app, technicians can complete a call faster, increasing the number of job order scheduled each day, giving additional revenue and that helps to grow your business.

5. Automation

What good is a field service management software without automated features??

Automation, in any industry, is an important factor in managing and growing your business.

Here are some examples of automation features and tools that your software needs in field service:

Create and convert quotations into work orders
Schedule/Reschedule jobs
Accept jobs in the field
Convert jobs into invoices
Preventative maintenance service
Customer updates
Automated job reports

Business Growth with your Field Service Management Software

Field service management software is growing businesses through automation, tracking and workflow management.

Your operation can run smarter and more efficiently, all while empowering your field technicians to do their job smoothly.

If you haven’t turned to a field service management software yet, you’re missing out on chances to grow your business.

Check out FieldElite to help grow your field service business today!

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Which Services to Share?

It often makes sense to pool resources. Farmers have been doing so for decades by collectively owning expensive combine harvesters. France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain have successfully pooled their manufacturing power to take on Boeing with their Airbus. But does this mean that shared services are right in every situation?

The Main Reasons for Sharing

The primary argument is economies of scale. If the Airbus partners each made 25% of the engines their production lines would be shorter and they would collectively need more technicians and tools. The second line of reasoning is that shared processes are more efficient, because there are greater opportunities for standardisation.

Is This the Same as Outsourcing?

Definitely not! If France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain has decided to form a collective airline and asked Boeing to build their fleet of aircraft, then they would have outsourced airplane manufacture and lost a strategic industry. This is where the bigger picture comes into play.

The Downside of Sharing

Centralising activities can cause havoc with workflow, and implode decentralised structures that have evolved over time. The Airbus technology called for creative ways to move aircraft fuselages around. In the case of farmers, they had to learn to be patient and accept that they would not always harvest at the optimum time.

Things Best Not Shared

Core business is what brings in the money, and this should be tailor-made to its market. It is also what keeps the company afloat and therefore best kept on board. The core business of the French, German, United Kingdom and Spanish civilian aircraft industry is transporting passengers. This is why they are able to share an aircraft supply chain that spun off into a commercial success story.

Things Best Shared

It follows that activities that are neither core nor place bound – and can therefore happen anywhere ? are the best targets for sharing. Anything processed on a computer can be processed on a remote computer. This is why automated accounting, stock control and human resources are the perfect services to share.

So Case Closed Then?

No, not quite. ?Technology has yet to overtake our humanity, our desire to feel part of the process and our need to feel valued. When an employee, supplier or customer has a problem with our administration it’s just not good enough to abdicate and say ?Oh, you have to speak to Dublin, they do it there?.

Call centres are a good example of abdication from stakeholder care. To an extent, these have ?confiscated? the right of customers to speak to speak directly to their providers. This has cost businesses more customers that they may wish to measure. Sharing services is not about relinquishing the duty to remain in touch. It is simply a more efficient way of managing routine matters.

Disaster Recovery

Because information technology is now integrated in most businesses, a business continuity plan (BCP) cannot be complete without a corresponding disaster recovery plan (DRP). While a BCP encompasses everything needed – personnel, facilities, communications, processes and IT infrastructure – for a continuous delivery of products and services, a DRP is more focused on the IT aspects of the plan.

If you’re still not sure how big an impact loss of data can have, it’s time you pondered on the survival statistics of companies that incurred data losses after getting hit by a major disaster: 46% never recovered and 51% eventually folded after only two years.

Realising how damaging data loss can be to their entire business, most large enterprises allocate no less than 2% of their IT budget to disaster recovery planning. Those with more sensitive data apportion twice more than that.

A sound disaster recovery plan is hinged on the principles of business continuity. As such, our DRP (Disaster Recovery Plan) blueprints are aimed at getting your IT system up and running in no time. Here’s what we can do for you:

Since the number one turn-off against BCPs and DRPs are their price tags, we’ll make a thorough and realistic assessment of possible risks to determine what specific methods need to be applied to your organisation and make sure you don’t spend more than you should.
Provide an option for virtualisation to enjoy substantial savings on disaster recovery costs.
Provide various backup options and suggest schedules and practices most suitable for your daily transactions.
Offer data replication to help you achieve business continuity with the shortest allowable downtime.
Refer to your overall BCP to determine your organisation’s critical functions, services, and products as well as their respective priority rankings to know what corresponding IT processes need to be in place first.
Implement IT Security to your system to reduce the risks associated with malware and hackers.
Introduce best practices to make future disaster recovery efforts as seamless as possible.

We can also assist you with the following:

What are the benefits of digital forms data collection

Field Service Workers are regularly engaged to collect data or carry out inspections and assessments when visiting customer sites or remote area locations. The data collected by Field Service workers, will be used by businesses who will analyse, process and build reports based on the large volumes of data collected. The accuracy and reliability of data collected is vitally important. Traditionally businesses may have deployed mail surveys, telephone interviews, door-to-door surveys and interviews performed by Field Workers to collect data. Digital Transformation is gradually changing many business operations and a great deal of processes which were traditionally executed manually are now accomplished making use of digital methods. Technology is having a major impact not only how businesses research and analyse data, but primarily how data and information is collected. New tools and processes to data collection are improving data collection and analysis, leading to dramatic improvements and maximisation and optimisation of resources and operations. Utilising Digital Data Collection methods enables organisations to not only obtain results quicker but also use the data to make data based decisions faster.

What is a Digital Form?

Digital Forms, also known as Mobile Forms are electronic versions of paper forms that can be completed using:

Laptop
Tablet
Smart Phone
Any Mobile Device

Why Use Digital Forms ?

Digital forms can be a simple yet highly effective solution to overcome the challenges presented by paper based forms. Digital forms can be filled out directly using Smart phones and tablets in the field

When not connected to the internet or even low speed internet connections
When working in remote locations
To avoid damage, illegible handwriting or even lost and misplaced forms.

Digital forms can also include data validation logic to ensure field workers complete every form as expected and required, which will enforce and ensure data integrity . Field Service teams appreciate these features and help ensure the validity and accuracy of the data and insights they collect and can be confident regarding making business critical data based decisions. Data and Information collected using mobile forms can be accessible in near real-time, helps enable field teams to sidestep potential obstacles to productivity, and act on opportunities and increasing business agility.

Advantages of Digital Forms

Time and Cost Saving

Using Digital Forms instead of paper-based forms provides a significant impact on improving time and cost savings on printing, storing and distribution costs. Businesses also spend a significant amount of time and money in Administration and double data entry processes incurred by paper based forms. Transferring information from paper based surveys is an error prone process.

Digital Forms can save up to 20 man hours a week in administration costs
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Improve data accuracy

Digital Forms can auto-populate fields based on prior data entered and also enable field-level validation. Digital data collection also eliminated data entry errors and data loss. Additional data can also be automatically be gathered such as Username, Geo-location and Time & Date.

Real Time Reporting

The issue with Paper-based data collection is that there will always be a time lag before reports or decision can be made. With a digital platform, such as FieldElite – Mobile Workforce Management , data can be processed and analysed as it is collected. Providing data driven insights to provide proactive rather than reactive reports to improve and optimise operations in real time.

It’s time to go Digital Forms!

Data Collection using Digital Forms will propel your company into the future and transform your data collection, data entry and analysis providing accurate data driven insights in real time. Digital forms are also mobile-optimized, updated in real time, and accessible by multiple parties, eliminating unnecessary meetings and emails. If you have a business and still haven’t used digital forms to gather information, contact Denizon today to organise a Demo of FieldElite – Mobile Workforce Management and discover how we can help you to transform your Field Service Operations

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