less-systems, better workflow

Less is More: How Consolidating Field Service Systems Drives Efficiency

In the words of Steve Jobs: “Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it.”

At Emvisage, we see this play out daily with field service businesses tangled in a web of tools, trackers, paperwork, and software. One prospective customer put it bluntly a few weeks ago: ‘Why I am paying all this money for software and tools? It still a mission to get work done, it’s still manual taking my team hours, so what am I paying for?’ 

If you’ve had a similar thought, you’re not alone. But your situation is not that common either. Not all field service workflow is like this, but if you recognise your business in this story, odds are you’ve got a decent level of complexity in your field service workflow. This is what Emvisage is built for.  

Across job management or field service software, most platforms start to wobble when real complexity comes in. Fewer still can deliver meaningful automation once you throw in variable work types, nuanced rules, or compliance layers. You’ve probably seen it, that wince from a vendor halfway through your workflow explanation during a demo. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not easy. But this is our wheelhouse — and it’s where we lead.

Consolidating 11 systems with Emvisage

We are talking with a mid sized electrical company at the moment and they are a fine example of how easy it is for systems and tools to proliferate and trigger the question of, are we doing the work, or are we spending more time doing the work around the work? 

Like many businesses in the field service space, their teams were battling to stay on top of the admin, weighed down by more than 15 different tools and systems. These ranged from Excel trackers and SharePoint registers to editable PDFs, emails, and specialist apps. Here’s a snapshot of what they were juggling. 

Consolidate 11 systems/tools

Each tool served a purpose, but together they created what the team referred to as an “administratively intense” process. Their site supervisors, instead of leading from the field where they added the most value, were stuck at their desks updating trackers and systems. What was most interesting to me was not just the admin time drain (which as an automation guy I was pretty interested in!) but the impact on the team doing the work. The way one site supervisor explained it: 

‘It's crippling. I am tradie – I didn’t pick a trade to sit at a computer all day. My expertise is getting max productivity out on site, making sure the guys are safe and a great product to the customer’

The cost of complexity

When your people are trapped behind spreadsheets, emails, and scattered software, a few things happen:

• Growth is choked by inefficiency.
• Errors creep in as data is duplicated or missed.
• Field teams lose valuable time navigating admin instead of doing the job.
• Supervisors are buried in desk work instead of leading on site.

Less is more – especially with complex field service workflow

With this business, Emvisage will consolidate those 11 systems/tools into a single, unified platform — cutting out manual work, double-handling, and fragmented data. Everything from scheduling, field capture, job reports, quoting and safety checks flows through Emvisage.  A streamlined, automated workflow that frees the team to focus on the work that matters. 

Too many systems and tools? 

You don’t have to stay stuck. If the thought of giving the boot to a handful of spreadsheets, trackers, software and soul sucking admin sounds good to you. Then let’s talk. One platform. Actual automation. We’ll help you get back to doing real work, not just managing the work.