Why should you use Custom Management Software to run your Field Service and Repair Operations?

Companies involved in sending staff out for services, such as on-site repair often rely on their ERP system rather than a dedicated repair service software to manage field staff. The reason they claim is cost efficiency, but we believe they are only making matters more complex and expensive in the long run. ERP software is designed to help enterprises have a control over their internal entities. But, for field service companies, the game is altogether on a different horizon that ERP software may not be able to handle even with additional field service plug-in apps. So this is where you invest in dedicated field service software, as it brings several advantages over integrated ERP systems.
Let us see the advantages of a custom software over ERP, to manage your field service operations:

Automation

Field service software can bring about a great deal of automation in the management of workforce. This allows for efficient time management, lesser human resource requirement for work planning and scheduling, more productive workforce and ultimately lowered organizational costs for staff management.

Anywhere Anytime Access to Information

The biggest concern for field service operations is the lack of information for field staff in order to rectify faults at customer locations. The information may pertain to hardware or software reconfiguration policies at the customer location or related to potential information about service policies, etc. With dedicated field service software, organizations can offer real-time access to their field agents to acquire information from their centralized information portal. Through designated apps, information can be delegated to the agent’s mobile phone and thus allows the data to be accessed anywhere anytime.

Work Allocation and Management

Field service applications allow managers to trace service requests and organize schedules for field service associates on the go. Work orders can be easily transmitted to remote workforce technicians according to factors such as their proximity to the customer site, availability, skillset, level of experience and many more. The possibilities are limitless.

Faster Service Delivery

Dedicated repair service software systems can be integrated with navigation features of smartphones and hence can effectively charter work schedules to help customers get their desired services delivered in shorter time spans. Based on traffic conditions, field service software systems are able to route consumer requests to the nearest available remote technician and thus lower transportation and logistics overheads for the company.

Transparent Billing

With repair service software systems, customers can be easily offered with accurate invoices as soon as technicians or field service agents complete their work rather than traditional invoice generation practices, where the customer gets the bill by post or by email only after the field associate completes the work and returns to the office after duty and provides details of the work carried out. Also this opens up venues for better customer dispute settlement, since work logs are transparent and can be accessed by the concerned team to evaluate bill discrepancies.

Standardisation

With automated workforce management and work progress measurement, it becomes easy to create a well-organized system for carrying out employee evaluation. Performance improvement tips can be offered to field technicians to do their job better and it becomes easier to identify unproductive work schedules or in other words eliminate idle time during office hours.

Work History Access

While on deployment at consumer premises, technicians and field service associates may face situations that they might not have encountered before. However, there might be customers who have encountered similar issue before and the same would have been rectified by other technicians. The rectification measures and the work would have been entered in their work history and with field service management software, this information is easily made available to the new technicians.

Streamline Accountability

With a well-organized mobile workforce, there is no scope for malicious work time management and undue benefits or under cut wages will become inexistent. There is increased visibility into progress of each assigned work and hence it is impossible to tamper with time logs to perform non-billable or non-priority tasks while top priority tasks are in the queue.

Customer Relationships

The customer is ultimately the King for any service oriented company, be it for field services or online or at office services. When you have a dedicated field service management software, it becomes easier for technicians to interact with customers due to the large amount of information they can readily access about the customer, their previous work history, troubleshooting and service tips, extended remote support and much more. Customers, on the other hand, gets faster service, more reliable choices and above all, transparent billing for the service they received. Data collected from customer premises can easily be transferred to centralized CRM systems that help marketing and sales associates to better connect with them for repeat service orders.

So overall, implementing a dedicated repair service software system is a very crucial step for service companies in order to create a more productive workforce, reduce costs and bolster positive customer relationships. 
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