Service managers need to understand the quality and effectiveness of their service delivery. The lack of service measurements is one such area that lacks in paper base or simple home grown systems. This article describes how field service software can help you better understand the effectiveness of your service delivery. Using extensive analytics information of Field Force Tracker’s reporting module, you can measure the effectiveness for field services in your organization.
Service companies are trying to move to electronic model of providing services. Paper based operation is too slow to address customer concerns and cannot provide suitable data analysis. Field Force Tracker is the most comprehensive software for field service management. It takes care of everything from customer management to the payment collection for a service company. By using this software, our clients can see major improvement in their productivity and the customer satisfaction.
We have described in our previous article that an improved understanding of what is happening at any given time can help managers make better decisions. Through the improved visibility that field service solutions deliver, managers and other staff can have confidence that they have the right information and, as such, can make the best decision based on this. Nobody wants to leave anything to chance or to give answers based on gut feel so being able to see at-a-glance the information that is most important to them means they are on top of performance.
For you to track the performance of your service operations and understand your business, in the immediate term and longer term, you’ll need visibility of the right information, when you need it and in a way that is meaningful to you.
Making Use of Reporting Capabilities of Field Service Software
A day in field service operations can often change and be unpredictable as even the best laid plans are affected if emergency work comes in or jobs overrun. On-the-spot decisions need to be made to keep up with and manage those changes and get the day back on track.
Lack of visibility into what is happening out in the field may mean poor decisions are made, which can have further impact on the day’s work. Having access to information can mean that better decisions can be made then and there, keeping the most effective plan for the work. The impact of making changes can be seen immediately and decisions can be based on that, taking into account this impact and any potential outcome on service performance, cost and the rest of the day’s work.
So, field service management technology gives you greater visibility into your field service operations. With that visibility comes a lot of data which is useful to the business, but the amount of data can often feel overwhelming in where to start or how to analyze what is needed. It can sometimes feel so overwhelming that data then sits unused.
Understanding your Business Metrics
You don’t want to be overwhelmed by data, neither have the time to wade through masses of numbers, so let your field service management solution organize the key information for you to identify the crucial stuff you need at any time to make decisions.
With this view into your field operations, you will be able to answer questions like:
- Which services are most profitable?
- Which are the most productive crews and technicians?
- How are changes affecting specific operations?
The visual presentation of data in dashboards needs to be easy to understand and should be easy to filter by service type, individual, crew or any other data point collected.
Business intelligence (BI) dashboards do just that and organize key metrics about your company’s service operation so that you can make fully informed business decisions.
Longer-Term Planning Based on Service Data
Day-to-day access to data is critical to the management of daily performance, but business intelligence is also vital in the longer-term view. Week-to-week or month-to-month comparisons can surface meaningful trends that can help fine-tune a service organization to run at maximum productivity – while maximizing profit.
Identifying business trends is critical to growing revenue, retaining customers and increasing the productivity of field workers. It’s important as a means of discovering problems before they can impact the business.
Improved visibility from field service solutions brings greater understanding of what is happening. Straightforward reporting and being able to access the relevant information easily and quickly is fundamental. This information will then help manage not only the day’s operation, but also feed into the more strategic business planning around budgets, resources, targets and areas to focus on driving performance in the future.
For the best results, you need a field service solution that meets these business needs. Field Force Tracker simplifies field service management to generate a large number of reports.
Mobile enabled, cloud-based field service software was designed to provide ease of use with incredible flexibility. Along with the ease – and speed – of our implementation and the ongoing support service that we provide we enable companies to take full advantage of today’s mobile field service.
Field Force Tracker’s power mobile apps for iPhone and Android are available to all new and existing Field Force Tracker customers. They can extend the feature set with the enhanced mobile forms capabilities, and better system integration. Field Force Tracker, a mobile enabled web-based field service management software, streamlines technician scheduling, dispatch, customer management, vendor and employee management, work orders, equipment maintenance, inventory tracking, contracts, estimates, invoices, payments and accounting. It is considered one of the most feature rich software of its kind.
About Field Force Tracker
Force Tracker (http://www.fieldforcetracker.com) is a leading global provider of its award winning mobile workforce solutions for service-based businesses of all sizes delivered as software-as-a-service (SaaS). Its solutions enable businesses of all sizes (from 1 user to 10,000 users) to meet the challenges associated with managing and running complex service operations. It helps in improving the productivity of their mobile workforce.
With Field Force Tracker customers can create service schedule and route quickly, dispatch sooner, collect correct information at once in the field and invoice faster. The field service software makes it easy for users to eliminate waste, get more done in less time and be more profitable.
Field Force Tracker is a wholly owned unit of Rapidsoft Systems Inc. (http://www.rapidsoftsystems.com). Rapidsoft Systems, Inc. has its main office in Princeton, NJ, USA, a US R&D Center in Mercerville NJ, and sales, support and development offices in Palo Alto, CA, USA, Singapore, Dubai (UAE), Bombay, and Noida (India).
