As a field service business owner, you know that time is money. For example, the less time your field technicians spend looking for parts for a job or making calls to the office to confirm job details, the more billable hours they have on hand to complete work. However, saving time in a field service business can be a tough challenge as you juggle hundreds of tasks at once. This is exactly what field service management software can help you with.
As a field service business, you have a lot on your plate. Whether you manage a small team or hundreds of employees, jobs and administrative tasks add up. With your packed schedules, you may not see the benefits of adopting a field service management solution right away; it may seem like another task to manage. In reality, though, it is the exact opposite.
Field Promax can save you 33% of your time spent on administrative tasks. Sign up to increase your billable hours.
At first, field service management software may seem only relevant for larger enterprises that manage multiple projects simultaneously. Once you learn of its many uses in small business operations management software, however, you will likely sign up and take advantage of this incredible digital tool yourself! So, without wasting any more time, let’s find out how field service management software can save you time and increase profitability.
What is Field Service Software?
Before you explore the intricacies of time management with field service software, let’s have a quick look at what this software really is and how it works. It will give you a better insight into its time-saving capabilities.
Essentially, field service software is a digital tool that automates and streamlines day-to-day tasks in a field service business. Field service management software features available with this innovative tool enable you to efficiently take care of administrative duties with just a click or two, eliminating manual data entry or delegating tasks individually to staff members – instead, everything can be accomplished effortlessly on either a computer or mobile device. From scheduling and dispatching to generating invoices and monitoring field technicians, it makes running your field service business easier than ever. This saves you a lot of time right off the bat. But there’s more to the story.
Let’s find out more ways field service management software can help you save time in your business.
How Field Service Management Software Saves You Time?
1. Smart Scheduling
Scheduling is a very important part of making the most of your field workers’ time and saving you money if you run a field service business. Businesses often have trouble with scheduling when they double book, book an unavailable time spot, or have to reschedule. These problems can spread to other parts of the business and cost a lot of money. However, the best field service management software solutions enable you to easily overcome this hurdle.
With quick schedule features in software solutions like Field Promax, it’s now easier to keep track of schedules and work orders. It comes with a comprehensive dashboard with color-coded multiple calendar views where you can see all your technicians’ schedules easily and assign them tasks with just a click. It is also possible to create and send work orders digitally, as well as to assign and reassign jobs, set up automatic work orders for routine tasks, and turn service requests straight into work orders. You can organize and classify your work orders however you want with the help of drop-down lists and text boxes that you can change. Thus, it streamlines your entire scheduling process leaving no scope for manual errors. Not only does this save time in administrative tasks, but it also optimizes scheduling so that your technicians are attending to job orders as much as they are expected to do, and they are neither underutilized nor overworked.
2. Seamless Communication
Your customers’ time should be as valued as your own; they shouldn’t need to contact you every time they need an update about an outstanding service request or invoice payment. If you are doing things manually, you will struggle to keep up with them. Instead, use field service management software to make communication easier.
Software solutions such as Field Promax make communication across departments easier than ever. With this innovative tool, you can always monitor your field technicians in real-time, and in turn, they can also stay connected with the office and update the job status, no matter where they are. You can also leverage the automated alerts and notifications feature, which informs your customers about when their assigned technicians are arriving and also reminds the technicians about their scheduled assignments so that they can complete the job site without wasting any time or worse, missing it altogether.
Some of the top field service management software systems also offer robust CRM capabilities, which also make communication with customers more efficient.
3. Routing
The best field service software for small business can also help you cut down on time spent traveling and money spent on gas.
It’s not enough to schedule jobs based on which teams can handle them and how much time they’ll take. You should also consider geographic location—sending one team repeatedly across an entire city or metro area can waste hours each day in travel time.
You can easily cut down on this time spent traveling by using field service management software with smart routing capabilities. Remove a single unnecessary cross-town trip, and you could open up an hour or more in a team’s schedule for the day. This lets you serve more customers. So you make more money by saving it.
4. Paperless Workflow
What takes up the maximum amount of your valuable time? Yes, it is the paperwork. Searching for lost files, adding missing information, and fixing mistakes caused by misunderstandings waste a lot of time when it comes to manual paperwork and reports. Mistakes like these in field service businesses can cost money, make customers unhappy, and damage your image; not to mention all the time needed to rectify these mistakes and get back on track.
A field service management software system gets around these problems and gets rid of the chance that these mistakes will happen. More importantly, the cloud stores all kinds of paperwork and data, so the office staff and field technicians can access any information necessary with just a tap on their smartphones without wasting a second. It is now possible to handle paperwork in minutes instead of days or weeks.
Furthermore, a field service management tool also saves you time with not just access to information but also with important paperwork like billing and invoicing. Make sure you have field service management software QuickBooks supports integration with, and you can generate invoices and send them to the customer within seconds.
5. Time-Tracking
The most important aspect where field service management software saves you time is managing time itself. In other words, it helps you with time-tracking more efficiently. As a field service business, your profitability depends on how efficiently your technicians are utilizing their time. But if you cannot track how much they are spending on each job, you cannot ever know whether your resources are being utilized to their full potential.
You can easily do that with Field Promax. This cutting-edge software features advanced time-tracking technology with integrated time cards for all of your employees. With this feature, you can keep track of how long your technicians work on the job and how many days they take off to make sure billing is correct and scheduling goes smoothly.
Wrapping Up
The time saved when you use field service management software will not only help your business become more efficient, but it will also cut down on unnecessary stress your staff may be experiencing.
With Field Promax, the best field service management software, your company can save money and focus on other important services and resources. Our cloud-based software lets your office staff and field workers talk to each other, store and access important information, and make schedules without any problems.