10 good reasons to use field service management software

Because you run a service company, you’ve realized that using paper to manage the activities of field service technicians is no longer enough to ensure you can provide increasingly demanding customers with responsive, efficient and effective service.   In addition, as a business manager, you spend a lot of time thinking about your company’s strategy. How can you reduce costs and increase turnover? How can you retain existing customers and differentiate from the competition? And how can you keep up with the digital transformation underway in your industry?  At first glance, all of these issues are critical enough to cost you at least a few nights’ sleep… However, there is a way to optimize technicians’ field activities and your company’s profitability.

It’s called field service management software, and it can help you solve many of your problems. Using field service technician management software ensures that your operations are streamlined, giving you a competitive edge in delivering high-quality service. Here are the benefits of field service management software.

1 – Better customer satisfaction

Top field service management (FSM) software is designed to optimize the entire lifecycle of service activities, from when the customer makes the request to the final invoice. When the FSM software includes automated planning capabilities, it can significantly reduce customer wait times by assigning service tasks to available technicians with the right job skill set and forecasting spare parts requirements.

With this type of solution, you can put your technicians in the best position to successfully resolve the issue on the first visit to improve your first time fix rate. And make your customers happy. According to a study published by the American firm Aberdeen, customer satisfaction increases by more than 20% when a problem is solved on the technician’s first visit. Field service scheduling software for the service industry is an indispensable tool for achieving this goal.

2 – Higher turnover

An intangible rule of business says it’s easier and cheaper to keep existing customers than to win new ones. Why customer satisfaction is important is clear: improving field service customer satisfaction levels immediately strengthens customer loyalty. In addition, satisfied customers are more likely to spread the word, and good word of mouth leads to new customers. It’s a virtuous circle.

FSM software, you can centralize your customer data and ensure it’s always available to technicians. When technicians better understand customers and their equipment, they can respond more effectively and efficiently to each customer issue.

Technicians can even help to increase business by offering customers additional services. If the customer expresses interest in a particular service, the technician can immediately send the information back to the sales team so they can quickly make a proposal to the customer.

3 – Higher efficiency, lower costs

As we mentioned, field service management software lets you set up automated scheduling and provide each customer with the best technician for the job.   How does it work? Well, let’s use Praxedo’s SmartScheduler software as an example. This software uses artificial intelligence to assign the right job to the right technician at the right time. To do this, it considers:

• Technician location
• Technician skills
• The parts and tools with the technician
• Estimated travel time

In a service-focused world, optimizing human resources is a strategic advantage. Small business field service management software is indispensable to ensure service is provided with maximum efficiency and lower costs.

4 – Helpful new technologies

We’ve been hearing for a few years now that businesses are undergoing field service digital transformation. At some point, it becomes imperative that every company, including those in the service industry, join this digital revolution or risk endangering their future. In fact, continuing to work on paper when the rest of the industry is moving to digital solutions is, in the medium term, the best way to go out of business. By deploying field service management solutions, service companies give themselves the means to compete and deal with customers demanding increasingly high quality service.

• Field service management AI for scheduling
• Augmented reality for on-site problem solving
• The Internet of Things and predictive analysis to anticipate breakdowns
• Virtual reality to train technicians

In the field service industry, these technologies are no longer science fiction. The future of field service management has arrived.

5 – Happier technicians

Today, there’s a generational change happening in the field service industry. More and more young people are entering the industry, and veterans are becoming increasingly rare. How the job is viewed, and the tools used are also changing. In a tight job market, it’s increasingly difficult to recruit technicians with the right skills and keep them. More and more technicians are “digital natives,” used to interacting with smartphones and field technician mobile apps for different purposes. They expect to do the same at work. This generation will not be content to work with pounds of paper, adhere to rigid schedules, or lose time due to poorly planned travel routes.

In today’s service companies, technicians are the first ones to push management to deploy mobile field service management software because it:

• Makes their lives considerably easier
• Reduces their margin of error
• Reduces administrative processing requirements
• Increases efficiency
• Allows them to focus on core business activities and value-added tasks

Thus, a field service mobile app is necessary to meet and exceed modern technicians’ expectations for increasing productivity while they are in the field.

6 – Better cash flow

With FSM software, you can use pre-filled and rules-based forms to gather more reliable data from the field. For example, forms can be developed so that technicians cannot complete field 3 if field 2 is not completed. The report cannot be validated if the technician did not include a photo of the completed job. Collecting more reliable field data and automatically sending the electronic forms directly to your alarm billing software system with a single click considerably accelerates the billing process. Companies that previously required between 3 and 5 weeks to invoice customers can now send invoices within a half day, or even an hour, of service completion with field service invoicing software. Faster invoicing means faster payments. Ultimately, that’s good for cash flow. And it’s all possible with the move to field service management software and its numerous FSM benefits.

7 – Detailed activity monitoring

The best FSM Software provides dashboards that allow you to monitor the progress of key performance indicators. With a global, detailed view of technicians’ activities, you can make the best decisions at the right time. You’re also in a better position to meet contractual commitments for guaranteed service times, repair times, and first-time fix rates.

8 – Increased technician safety

Field technicians are often required to work in complicated and dangerous environments requiring special precautions. With field service technician management software that includes a field service mobile app, technicians can review a checklist of safety rules, equipment requirements, and security measures before starting a job to succeed in their tasks without taking undue risks. This is a very important integration for any field service digital transformation, ensuring safe and efficient operation.

9 – Stronger data security

Besides technicians’ physical security during service calls, data security is also extremely important today. Service companies and their technicians often have sensitive customer information. Consider the case of companies that specialize in installing electronic security systems in banks or in nuclear power plants. Customer data and floor plans showing system locations mustn’t fall into the wrong hands. With field service management software, you can use secure servers and other means to protect electronic data, facilitated by field service software security systems. There are many benefits of field service software, including enhanced security and data protection. You can’t do this with paper, which puts the service company and its customers at risk.

In some industries, field service providers must meet security standards that prohibit using paper. To win in these markets, it’s crucial to follow digital processes and offer certified levels of field service management software security.

10 – Superior quality of service

Finally, deploying the Best FSM software allows service companies to significantly improve the quality of service they offer their customers. In an increasingly competitive economic environment, this is an important capability. Teams ranging from schedulers to field technicians can gather and share deeper insight into each customer.

The FSM Software provides the history of every service call completed at customer sites so you can see statistical trends, metrics, and other data that help you understand what factors contribute to the success or failure of a particular type of service. It also improves customer service through efficient field service scheduling and call dispatch software.

Aside from economic advantages, the cloud based field service management SaaS unites the entire chain of information, from work order requests to billing. At the same time, the cloud paves the way for artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things (IoT).

The word is out about the cloud’s benefits. Unlike with an on-premises software licensing model, the company isn’t responsible for infrastructure management, server security, data backups, or software deployment and maintenance. Instead, the software vendor, working in software-as-a-service (SaaS) mode, provides all this based on a monthly or yearly subscription.

Another upside is that cloud subscribers get the latest application version on all their fixed or mobile devices (e.g., laptops, tablets, and smartphones). The cloud-based SaaS approach is about the user instead of their workstation.

Regarding the financial situation, the cloud-based SaaS approach shifts costs from capital expenses (CapEx) to operating expenses (OpEx). This is appealing to finance departments that typically prefer to avoid investing in capital assets that depreciate, such as servers, routers, and switches.

Enhanced data protection

The last barrier to cloud adoption—security—is also crumbling. Many companies have realized that digital specialists are better at protecting data. These data protection specialists have made significant investments in equipment and personnel that would be too costly for most companies. Also, the new European regulation on the protection of personal data (RGPD) further reinforces the SaaS provider’s data security obligations.

For example, the Praxedo best field service management software is hosted on dedicated servers provided by OVH. The first European cloud provider not only complies with the RGPD, but also meets the requirements of recognized security standards, including PCI-DSS and ISO/IEC 27001, SOC 1 Type II and SOC 2.

The cloud allows information to flow

Cloud solutions offer organizational advantages beyond technical and economic gains. A SaaS platform allows for streamlined information flow among the customer, operations center, and field personnel by centralizing data.

Field service coordination is less prone to error with all types of users accessing the same dataset. Using their field technician mobile app, the technician has an up-to-date schedule and is notified when changes occur. In the same way, the customer is kept informed of the status of the job request.
 

Paperless processes

Digitizing work order management also improves customer satisfaction by increasing the all-important “First Time Fix Rate”. The field technician has all the relevant information—work order history and technical documentation—to make a diagnosis. If that’s not enough, the technician can consult with service center experts using chat, phone, or videoconferencing through their field technician mobile app. Finally, we can say goodbye to the days of paper-based records!
 

Reduced billing time

With digital records management software managing all work order records and reports, all information can be centralized. This zero-paper approach eliminates double-entry errors while ensuring traceability throughout the work order lifecycle, from the request for assistance to completion, thus saving time. Also, the billing period can be reduced considerably. Once the job is closed, the information is automatically entered into the accounting system, which generates the invoice and sends it to the customer.

Artificial intelligence: Part of the digital picture

The cloud is a prerequisite for accessing new innovative services provided by artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT). AI is so powerful that it is expected to take work order management system to a new level. In fact, in its 2017 Magic Quadrant Field Service Management, Gartner predicts that “by 2020, 10% of emergency field service work will be triaged and scheduled by field service management AI.

Did you know that some planners are already using AI? In seconds, the Praxedo SmartScheduler calculates the optimal route given business constraints, traffic conditions, and emergencies. It uses the Praxedo proprietary meta-heuristic algorithm and field service management AI.

Chatbots available 24/7

Chatbots can also improve the customer experience by complementing the usual communication channels, such as call centers, email, SMS, and live chat. Available 24/7, these agents can provide front-line support by answering FAQs. Failing that, chatbots can triage requests, direct users to qualified support staff, or even schedule work orders.

This type of virtual assistant will also support field workers in the not too distant future. Appointment reminders, work order documentation, and assistance with diagnosing problems will be available on their mobile device. Using natural language, technicians will query powerful knowledge bases like they currently consult with experts at the service center via videoconference.

IoT to prevent breakdowns

IoT is also related to AI and cloud. The performance and health status of equipment fitted with temperature, humidity, vibration, or pressure sensors can be monitored in real time. This allows operators to extend equipment service life by improving operating conditions and preventing breakdowns.

Perform predictive maintenance

IoT also paves the way for predictive maintenance AI. Analysis of equipment-related data can identify and anticipate abnormal wear that is likely to cause a breakdown. This way, spare parts are only replaced when needed rather than for precautionary reasons. That’s how predictive maintenance AI optimizes spare parts management software and reduces machine downtime.

In this way, IoT makes it possible to service equipment “just in time.” The maintenance provider triggers a work order only when needed, not too soon and not too late. Thanks to powerful AI, IoT, and cloud technologies, this after-sales service dream will soon be a reality.