5 reasons why every field service business needs job management software

Run­ning a success­ful field ser­vice busi­ness doesn’t just hap­pen over­night. It takes patience, good teamwork, a lot of effort, and the right use of the best tools you can get. When it comes to tools, we’re of cour­se tal­king about field ser­vice softwa­re.

If you run on spreads­heets and emails, and feel inc­rea­singly overw­hel­med with the workload, it might be time to switch to a bet­ter sys­tem. If you feel like you and your team don’t have the time to chan­ge your ways of wor­king, you defi­ni­te­ly want to check out the­se 5 rea­sons on why it’s essen­tial for field ser­vice busi­ness to use softwa­re.

Spoi­ler: Hap­pier teams, more jobs and thus a more success­ful business.

Are you rea­dy? Let’s dig in!

1. Easier Work Scheduling for your team

Your tech­nicians want to get the job done, and not was­te time tra­vel­ling back and forth between the job site and the office. When you use sop­his­tica­ted job mana­ge­ment softwa­re, you can give work details through mobi­le applica­tions wit­hout nee­ding ins­tal­lers to take pho­ne calls or come back to the back office.

Pro­per work sche­du­ling also ensu­res that an appropria­te amount of time is alloca­ted to the job, thus hel­ping you mana­ge over­runs. This makes it easier to track which tasks are run­ning behind and whe­re you can almost call it a day.

All in all, com­mu­nica­tion gets that much easier, because if you’ve got a single source of truth that any­one can access, regard­less if they use a com­pu­ter, tablet or smartp­ho­ne. This also allows you to quickly chan­ge ins­tal­ler or other details for jobs, wit­hout any con­fusion or lost infor­ma­tion.

2. Going digital eliminates paperwork

We use our smartp­ho­nes for vir­tual­ly anyt­hing and eve­ryt­hing - why not make the most out of this power­ful device for fieldwork too? Most field ser­vice softwa­re pro­vi­ders allow attach­ments when fil­ling out forms. This makes it easier for ins­tal­lers to fill out forms on-site with their mobi­les and saves them time with paperwork. One of the big­gest bene­fits of this prac­tice is that your tech­nicians don’t need to bring their work home with them. This also means that ins­tal­lers can fill out the forms as they work, lea­ving not­hing to memory.

Anot­her bene­fit of digi­ti­sing your admin is that there’s no chance of losing data due to dama­ged, or mis­sing forms. This means that data qua­li­ty is main­tai­ned, and helps you and your team make bet­ter busi­ness deci­sions. Your Back Office can see chan­ges being made to the digi­tal forms ins­tant­ly. No need to wait for the ins­tal­ler to come back.

Anot­her bene­fit is that digi­ta­li­sed paperwork needs no phy­sical sto­ra­ge space. Fewer expen­ses because of a smal­ler office space = more money in the bank.

3. Reliable performance measuring

With digi­ti­sed data, it beco­mes a joy to track per­for­mance, allowing your team to iden­ti­fy problems to fix and areas of impro­ve­ment. Abo­ve all, with a top-down view of the progress for eve­ry single job, you can deter­mi­ne whe­re your busi­ness cur­rent­ly is in terms of deli­ve­ry of cont­racts. KPI’s are easi­ly mea­su­red, and it makes it that much easier to meet Service-Level-Agreements.

4. Better Inventory Management & Resource Allocation

Kee­ping track of your inven­to­ry can easi­ly cost seve­ral hours a week for your team. You might sud­den­ly rea­li­se that you’re out of supplies, and have to cancel jobs. Field ser­vice softwa­re makes it easier to see stock levels in the ware­house and allows your back office team to order more befo­re you run out.

Apart from inven­to­ry, you might need to plan ahead for specia­li­ty tools to a speci­fic job. This allows pro­per trac­king, and lea­ves a digi­tal trail for who has which tools.

Final­ly, invoicing gets that much easier if you’ve got a digi­tal sys­tem in place alrea­dy, as all the items used are recor­ded. Most field softwa­re offers inbuilt invoicing func­tio­na­li­ty or inte­gra­tions with exter­nal invoicing and accoun­ting softwa­re such as Xero. They can be added auto­ma­tical­ly with an auto­ge­ne­ra­ting invoice.

5. Easier Collaboration means happier teams

Kee­ping all the mes­sa­ges in a single, per­sis­tent works­pace remo­ves any pos­sible con­fusion for you, your back office team or your tech­nicians. The reduc­tion of this con­fusion in the workplace also reduces rework by your team.

All the com­mu­nica­tion in one tool also means that your staff can always be on the ball in terms of what is requi­red of them. Eve­ry­one is awa­re of how busy a par­ticu­lar team mem­ber might be, making it easier to real­loca­te work.

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The­re you have it. Five good rea­sons why the right job mana­ge­ment softwa­re will impro­ve your per­for­mance, and most impor­tant­ly, boost the hap­pi­ness of your team.

If you’re loo­king for a field ser­vice softwa­re that can be tai­lor-made to your busi­ness needs, con­tact us at Emvisage.com/demo. Emvi­sa­ge is a field workflow softwa­re crea­ted for busi­nes­ses with high­ly complex workflows, such as solar & bat­te­ry installers.