Do you really need Field Service Management Software?
It’s an important question to ask yourself. When faced with the prospect of taking a completely physical, paper-based business into the cloud, many owners – perhaps yourself included – are faced with a great psychological burden. Is the cost in time and money to my business worth such a drastic change in the form of adopting field service management software?
And, it’s certainly a valid concern. After all, your business does just fine year after year, with the usual peaks and valleys in revenue – or maybe you even grow a little bit each year. And, your staff have grown quite comfortable with the way things are. In fact, they’re all quite good at their jobs. Sure, there are the usual problems that come with running a field service company, but everyone just deals with them, and life goes on.
Of course, you tell yourself, there’s always a better way, and maybe that involves specific software. But, it’s not worth looking into. Things are fine right now!
But, what if there were a better way that was worth looking into? Something that could make things even more than fine, and at nowhere near the opportunity cost you thought would be associated with implementing field service management software?
Before we go into that, let’s take a look at some issues that seem to pervade field service businesses, to reaffirm what we’re talking about.
Does this sound like you?
In our years as Zoho – and general software – consultants, we’ve come across a variety of issues plaguing field service companies. And, these don’t just happen at one stage of the game. They occur at nearly every point in the sales funnel and beyond, into production.
- Scheduling sales appointments is tricky because of having to juggle multiple calendars, write appointment information back to the CRM, etc.
- Getting quotes to customers from in the field is a hassle because you can’t get the quotes approved, can’t calculate accurate labor costs on-the-fly, or can’t collect signatures.
- Managing inventory and forecasting reorder points is messy because of having separate systems for everything – and, for that reason, inaccurate or incomplete data.
- You don’t have a way to formally log time against work orders, so you leave it up to manual record-keeping – which is prone to all sorts of errors.
- With no time tracking system in place for work orders, you have no way of knowing if your jobs are profitable, except by making some educated guesses and tracking the number in your business bank account.
And, that’s only a small handful of issues you might face from not having field service software deployed for your company.
It’s true that you may be able to limp along, or even grow your business somewhat without a system in place for tracking all this. But, the cost to you in extra time spent gathering or correcting information can be drastic.
What if there were a way to help with all of that at once?
Instead, imagine this…
You come to work and check today’s appointment schedule. And, you see that sales appointments have been booked, drive time has been calculated, and everything is already in the CRM. You didn’t have to do any work; instead, your dispatch software did it for you.
You check the status of your crews and see that they’ve already been assigned work orders. In fact, you can tell some of them are already at work because you see they’ve clocked into a job automatically, based on geolocation…
Smooth. You open another tab to view your job costing reports, and you notice there’s an issue with profitability on one of your current projects. But, you can tell exactly why that is based on the data in front of you.
Warehouses are stocked and ready, and it’s been much easier for you to keep them that way because your inventory manager gets reorder notifications from your MRP software module.
You take a step back and see what sales productivity has been like. You’re pleased to see quotes are going out much more quickly than before. Your report shows you approval times have been way down since implementing electronic signature and approval, two features of your mobile quoting system.
Your staff is spending less time managing 10 different browser tabs at once – they only have one or two open now – so they seem a lot less stressed, happier to come to work for you. They’re getting more done in less time, and that’s making your company more money. You’re thinking of putting your extra revenue to use by hiring another technician to get your jobs done even faster…
And just think: all of this is made possible by properly utilizing field service software.
The easiest decision you could make
Of course, you have many options when considering which kind of field service management software to use. The easy part is just knowing you need it to begin with. The difference between using a connected software suite to help you manage – and grow – your business and using a hodgepodge of disconnected programs is like the difference between night and day. And, the difference is even more stark if you conduct your business primarily on paper!
You’re in the right place for Field Service Management software
Maybe you found this page by following a few links. Or, maybe you discovered it because you were actively looking for field service software for helping to manage your company. Either way, you’ve come to the right spot.
FieldTech is a field service management software suite built entirely on Zoho Creator, so its various parts – like scheduling, inventory management, work order management, job costing, and more – all work together, and also plug into various other Zoho apps. That means you can truly use Zoho CRM for field services, specifically. FieldTech even plugs into third-party apps like QuickBooks, so you don’t have to leave your current finance platform in order to use it.
Let’s get to know each other
Unlike the decision to actually use field service software, making a platform decision is a big deal. We’d love to get to know you and your business a little better, then determine whether or not FieldTech would be a good fit for you and your business goals.
Contact us using the form below for a complimentary consultation on your company.