FSM or field service management software assists companies optimize and manage various business activities accomplished by field employees. FSM software is mostly used by businesses that produce industrial products that need onsite services like maintenance of equipment, deployment, repairs, cleaning, and others.
Service-oriented businesses and utility companies that repair, deliver, and offer services at the customer’s location utilize field service management software. It assists companies to deliver accurate onsite service by managing personnel, tracking requests, and maintaining transparency into operations. Some of the common features of field service management applications include reporting and analytics, fleet tracking, scheduling, dispatch, inventory management, and work order management. These tools assist in field service automation and perform out of work manual tasks such as skills matching, dispatching, and scheduling.
How Field Service Management Software Helps The Field Engineers?
Most companies are not aware of the features of the field service management application. It is the latest enterprise resource that assists field service businesses or industries to be productive and effective by capturing sufficient information than ever before. Field service management software helps business leaders improve revenue, customer experience, and boost the field workers.
In simple words, the application brings important information at the time of usage. The application offers managers and workers effective tools at fingertips and thus make them masters of their brands. It transforms field service into a mechanized automated process. Field force automation or FFA is an extension or aspect of FSM. It permits field technicians or engineers to document information.
The documented data automatically synchronizes with the main application, offering entire users to access real-time information using a mobile interface. It is useful for automating activities like dispatching and scheduling, functioning with drivers to reach customer’s locations, and collecting certain customer requirements on location. It also offers certain customer service information directly from the main office.
Customer And Business Relationship:
Field service management is approved by many businesses as it helps in a great way of improving customer service. It consists of features that assist your engineers to gather customer history and data to make smooth interactions. Most of the tools are identity-driven. It means the tools can track communication and touchpoints, determine past track records, and show field engineers a clear path.
The application also sends notification messages about shipping status to the customers. It also notifies about delays and various important information to ensure that the customer is up-to-date throughout the process. It is a directive and administrative software that enhances communication and displays both the customers and engineers how the company can serve and what is required to serve the client.
Access Important Data Instantly:
Field service management consists of programming tools and algorithms that track every incoming data and update real-time in the database. The application ensures that the end-users are accessing the latest version of data when offering services to clients.
Big Decisions:
It helps the field engineers to collect sufficient data. When the application just stores the data, it does not help the business effectively. The companies should know how to utilize the stored information effectively. It is possible through business intelligence. It means utilizing existing data to identify analytics thereby enhancing your business. One of the best ways to get accurate information is by getting in real-time instead of waiting until the field engineers reach the office. When the data is reported accurately, the software would automatically detect data and offer immediate feedback.
Proper reporting plays an important part in field service management. When automation is incorporated into the application, reporting will not remain a challenging task. When businesses adopt field service management software, they have to source or build interfaces that support fieldwork. LTE or WiFi kind of connections to smartphones and tablet PCs is an important setup the businesses have to make as the field engineers use them frequently. Every field engineer sign-in to receive and obtain data through the platform. The software interface functions as an intranet.
Resolving Real-Time Data:
When implementing field service management software, it is important to see that the application assists in obtaining field data, merge with central data repositories and internal databases. Certain field service products come with robust integrations like reporting tools, in-house services, and CRMs. Real-time data permit you to enter and pivot in the field as the data comes instantly. Tactical details like routing data, tool usage, customer satisfaction rates, and response times are utilized by back-office managers. So that, they can utilize real-time information and analyze with integrated dashboards.
A Good Field Service Management Software Helps Field Engineers In Various Ways Like:
- Complex routing and scheduling optimization
- Order management, ticketing, and customer appointments
- Driver safety and automatic vehicle location
- Activity management such as job status updates, time tracking, driver logs
- Support accounting, inventory and back end systems integration
Advanced FSM application consists of tools like customer relationship management, project management, automated customer appointment notices, and complex document management. Certain field services management software provides wide capabilities for an exclusive function such as dispatch. But most systems come with generalized features such as call center management, fleet management, and customer portals management. Before making a purchase, the company has to analyze, research their requirements and goals and select the features that are essential for their business services.
What Are The Advantages Of Field Service Management Software?
- Eliminates paperwork: When your workplace is cluttered with paper sheets, you have the chance to lose important data. Moreover, Excel is not recommended for maintaining and structuring information. It does not offer real-time analytics and dispatching. FSM software eliminates massive paperwork and also prevents duplicate entries and data loss.
- Workflow standardization: FSM software permits business workflow standardization from forwarding to invoicing.
- Cost reduction with route optimization and fuel control: One of the expensive items in business is fuel consumption. You should track the fuel or depend on employee’s words when there are suspicious numbers. Longtime drives are not profitable for the business. When employees stay between orders or change from the client’s route could cost you money. By integrating route services or Google Maps in FSM software, it is possible to control the system and create the best routes. This way, the system would schedule assignments automatically and consider account time windows to reduce travel times.
- Dynamic scheduling: Equipping vehicles or specialist’s devices with GPS permits to determine their position and take close by orders to save effort and time. As you can update the system in real-time, it eliminates the chances of duplication and overlapping of tasks. It permits users to determine whether employees are available for urgent calls. Furthermore, the application can be customized to automatically assign engineers for important tasks or when the existing technician could not fulfill the current task because of certain emergencies, feel sick or late arrival. If you are receiving a complaint from the client about the late arrival of the technician or failure to arrive, you can easily check the GPS tracker status and find out the truth. It serves as evidence in the conditions of the lawsuit.
- Quicker invoicing: One of the important tasks is invoicing. It is also a frustrating part as it has to be performed accurately. In some companies, it takes weeks or months to determine whether the assigned work is completed. It will be assessed after collected all data and manually calculating it. But when you have an integrated field service management app, the engineers can instantly send job reports from the field once they complete the task along with other data like materials and used parts, spent time, client’s electronic signature, and job results photo. So, the FSM application will immediately calculate the price considering the discounts, special pricing conditions, and account warranties.
- Knowing your business: Field service management improves your business efficiency since you can access important metrics on business anytime such as:
- Return visits
- Travel time
- Idle time
- Time spent on a work
- Number of jobs accomplished per day
- Number of jobs booked per day
These details will help in determining the weak points and plan actions to improve the processes.
- Keeping client history and knowledge base: A company’s treasure is maintaining a well-organized database of clients, technical information, and order history. If the employee retires, gets sick, or withdraw from the company, the working processes will not face any issue since another employee will substitute a previous job history.
- Exact task matching: By utilizing field service application, the tasks will be assigned exactly to the skills or specialties of the engineer. It means the right specialist will be transferred for the right job. Moreover, having a client history and client base helps in assigning specialists to the customer whom he/she already recognizes. It helps the engineers to grasp the issue quickly and prepare for the job order. Thus, there will be no chances for misdiagnosis. Moreover, the engineer can arrive at the client’s destination with the necessary parts, materials, tools, etc.
- Equipment tracking: It is possible to control the equipment’s location with the FSM app. Certain latest technologies like 4G and more would help the application to connect with the machine, collect information regarding its maintenance state, condition and who handled it. If you can track the location of the machine, you can also determine whether the equipment is utilized in an unauthorized method or stolen.
- Inventory and parts management: Companies offering repair services completely rely on inventory management applications. FSM app helps your employees by offering real-time stock balance status in the field. The parts management feature notifies in situations of materials and parts shortages. This way, you can always maintain full stock and purchase everything in advance.
What Are The Features Of Field Service Management Software?
Some of the features of field service management software include:
Dispatching and job scheduling: Field service management software considers factors like geographical location, skill level, and availability into account when allocating jobs. Once the job is scheduled, the technicians will get notifications regarding the location and type of job.
Work order management: It is an excellent feature that helps the engineers to record the particular work. They can take photos, record audio, and video, and take notes. The details can be accessed by different technicians or office staff in the future. Once the job is assigned and received, the technicians can know who has assigned and who is in charge of completing the task.
Mobile access: The engineers can receive dispatches and view their schedules on their phone. They can also mark the work order as complete directly mark in phone after completing. The engineers can utilize these features to efficiently resolve and diagnose errors.
Contact, case, and order management: It is well known that customer management is important for any business. FSM software provides a customer database consisting of contact information of clients, previous work, and notes with special considerations. By having all these data in hand, it is possible to improve both customer satisfaction and customer service.
Parts inventory management: Inventory management feature in FSM helps in monitoring the inventory levels. It records when the engineer uses a part and maintains a real time record of the stock. If the parts reach a scheduled level, it sends alerts to the users.
Nonstandard Features Of Field Service Management Software Are As Follows:
- Analytics and reporting
- GPS integration and route planning
- Messaging
- Automatic phone call or text notifications
- Multiple calendar views
- Rule-based or automatic scheduling
- Payments
- Team job view
- Quotes and contracts
- Invoicing
Selecting The Field Service Management Software Is Simple with Zed Axis!
Field service management software is utilized by customer support staff, financial staff, dispatchers, team managers, and engineers. It is a complex application with several options to select. If you are thinking to get a field service management software for your business, you need to consult Zed Axis. We help you in finding applications with the necessary features for your business. Call us for free software assessment. Just share the features you require, we will suggest recommendations that suit your budget.