Field service management (FSM) refers to a company’s oversight of resources used in the field. Any company that delivers products and services to the customer on their doorstep, such as home repairs or goods delivery, is concerned with FSM. Without it, a company will often struggle due to inefficient use of field technicians or equipment.
While it affects the business, FSM also has implications for its customers. Scheduling jobs for field personnel, tracking field teams’ movements, enabling convenient payment methods—all these and more benefit from reliable FSM. Customers want nothing less than timely delivery and easy payment for products and services.
If not for modern technology, managing FSM would involve a really long paper trail. Here’s a look into FSM software and solutions and how they give businesses such a boost in productivity.
Productivity Metrics
Any concerted effort into improving business operations always requires determining the areas that need improvement. Business productivity is no different: the primary goal is—and always has been—to maximize results with minimal costs. As far as relevant metrics are concerned, the key performance indicators (KPIs) will mainly look into process performance.
In the case of FSM, time is of the essence. Making customers wait for an unreasonable amount of time can cause problems in a business’s workflow. Believe it or not, it’s an issue that costs companies around USD$900 per team member every year. The industries with the longest wait times are banking, home services, and insurance. (1)
Therefore, time-based KPIs (e.g., resource capacity, frequency of schedule adjustments) will be a good measure of productivity. Improving the figures on these KPIs is the focus of field service management solutions such as Jobber and others, particularly when it comes to contracting businesses such as hvac or plumbing, or those engaged in lawn care for example.
Mitigate Booking Issues
Many industries employ booking staff as a way to manage orders, particularly in hospitality and home services. However, they often face booking issues like:
- Overbooking – taking in more demand than the currently available stock allows
- Under booking – not meeting the required number of orders to cover the overhead
- Double-Booking – reserving an order for two different customers
Field service management software can mitigate, if not eliminate, these issues with a streamlined but powerful user interface. It shows an interactive spreadsheet that lets users know the work for the day, work that can be assigned to another day, and pertinent details like the job order and contact information. Teams can receive their tasks in the field, eliminating the need to go back to the office.
Paperless Productivity
Recent research shows that a typical business spends 3% of its revenue on paper products (i.e., copy paper, invoices, file folders). Consider the following:
- Every week, a team member loses eight hours to managing paper documents.
- A single misplaced document can cost a business USD$122 to find.
- Mid-sized companies can lose up to 750 paper documents every year.
- A file cabinet can cost USD$540 to maintain (and 54 sq. ft. of office space). (3)
Field service management software is able to integrate a number of different systems into one single platform, resulting in a solution that has everything a business needs from bookkeeping to invoicing – all in one place.
Conclusion
Proper use of FSM software means small businesses can effectively compete with large ones in providing quality service and customer satisfaction. Its integration of various solutions helps workflows operate smoothly and even improve their efficiency. It also makes tracking KPIs easier by showing real-time data on relevant metrics.
Sources:
- “The Cost of Customer Service Wait Times (Infographic),” https://www.inc.com/graham-winfrey/the-cost-of-customer-service-wait-times.html
- “OVERBOOKING,” https://www.iata.org/contentassets/2e46aace261040b9a47fb7b9da18efc9/overbooking.pdf
- “The True Cost of Paper in Your Business Operations,” https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/true-cost-paper-your-business-operations-joe-alvarez/
