Field service companies: the 5 benefits of service management software for your competitiveness

Have you heard about the digital transformation of businesses? It's a process that's been underway for several years now, affecting every sector of the economy. To respond to an increasingly demanding market, companies are constantly seeking to improve their performance: responsiveness to customers, employee productivity, enhanced customer experience, etc.

To stay competitive, companies are increasingly digitising the way they operate. Little by little, digital technology is replacing paper, making organisations more fluid, both internally and in relation to their customers.

The service sector is also affected by this digital revolution.

In order to remain competitive with their competitors, reduce costs, increase sales and win and retain customers, technical services companies must also adopt new organisational methods that are more efficient, faster and more productive.

However, although they are aware of the need to take steps to improve the way their business operates, many service company bosses are overwhelmed by the day-to-day management of their technicians' activities.

So how can they take a step back? How do you sit back and think things through? How can they analyse the benefits of dematerialising their service management for their business?

In this article, we've decided to make it easier for heads of field service companies to think things through, and to set out in simple terms, using a few very concrete arguments, the immediate benefits that a service management solution can bring to a service company with technicians in the field.

See all software Field Service Management

Benefit no. 1: Secure cash flow

The first benefit of installing a service management software solution in a service company is that it secures cash flow.

Reduce invoicing times

No more technicians with notebooks. No more paper work orders. No more waiting days for technicians to bring their reports back to the office. With service management software, all service reports are digitised in the technician's mobile application, and once they've been completed, they immediately appear in the service management interface. They can then be exported or transferred to the company's central IT system for invoicing.

In this way, the invoice can be sent out on the same day as the technician carries out the work, considerably speeding up invoicing times.

Reduce customer disputes and the risk of non-payment

Short invoicing times, combined with features such as the inclusion in service reports of before-and-after photos taken by the technician using his smartphone, help to reduce disputes with customers and therefore the risk of non-payment.

Just as beneficial for the company's cash flow, a service management software package can be used to monitor the consumption of spare parts and consumables, so that nothing is forgotten when invoicing customers. This monitoring also helps to improve parts stock management and to place orders at the right time.

Benefit no. 2: Improved operating margin

Adopting a service management solution also helps to secure and even improve the company's operating margin.

Increase back-office productivity

Using dedicated software increases the productivity of your back-office staff, and in particular reduces the time spent planning call-outs. Drawing up a daily schedule for technicians, mixing recurring maintenance work with emergency repairs, is generally a very time-consuming task for business managers. A job management solution can automate part or all of the scheduling process, by proposing the best mix of recurrent and emergency work for each technician.

A service management solution also reduces the administrative burden on office teams. The reports drawn up by technicians on their mobile application are fully computerised. The information is legible, consistent, complete and usable. Once the work has been completed, it goes straight into the management interface. Administrative staff no longer have to re-enter information from poorly written paper work orders. They waste less time on tedious and unproductive tasks.

Optimising technician workloads

As a result, each planner has more time to manage the schedules of more technicians. Managing schedules via the web-based planning interface also means you can better manage technicians' working hours and the number of operations to be carried out, depending on the type of operation, its location, etc. Generally speaking, a service management solution helps to optimise the workload of each technician in the field. Technicians can also declare their working hours directly in their mobile application, making it easier to manage overtime, on-call duty, etc.

Finally, a service management solution helps to secure the service company's operating margin by reducing the number of kilometres travelled, by optimising journeys in real time : less wear and tear on vehicles, less fuel consumed, less time lost in traffic jams, etc.

Reduced risk of penalties

The company also secures its operating margin by providing its customers with concrete proof of the work carried out: before-and-after photos are included in the work reports. Detailed work reports are immediately e-mailed to the customer. No disputes are possible. And fewer disputes mean fewer penalties.

Benefit no. 3: Building long-term customer loyalty

For a field services company, building customer loyalty means improving communication with them. Nowadays, with the uberisation of services in the private sphere and all the VTC or home delivery applications, customers are used to being informed in real time of the actions of their service providers.

Customer communication in real time

In the professional sphere, it's the same thing. You need to be able to communicate with customers in real time about what's happening on your site. If they are not present, they want to be notified when the maintenance technician arrives on site and to know when the work has been completed. They want to receive the full service report as quickly as possible, with before-and-after photos, etc. This kind of proactive customer communication is not possible if the service company is not equipped with a high-performance service management solution.

At customer service level, a service management solution enables information to be fed back in real time between the technician's mobile application and the operator who answers the customer's questions. The operator can access the history of work carried out on a piece of equipment and also see in real time the notifications sent out by the technician on the progress of his work. For the customer, it's very reassuring to have this precise information available in real time if they so wish.

Legible, 100% usable service reports

What's more, with a service management solution, the reports are entered by the technicians directly into their application. They can be configured upstream, so they are more complete, more detailed and 100% readable. The quality of the communication thus contributes to the increase in the quality of service perceived by the customer. This quality and transparency in communication helps to build a relationship of trust with the customer, thereby increasing loyalty over the long term.

Benefit no. 4: Secure and develop sales

Equipping your field technicians with a mobile application to manage their service reports is also an interesting way of developing additional sales with customers. A service management solution allows you to set up forms in the application to enable the technician to issue an additional estimate to the customer, directly on site, if the need for a second service on another piece of equipment, for example, is identified by the technician or even the customer.

The technician can fill in a form to produce an estimate, have the customer sign it electronically, then create the new job himself in his application, specify the consumables used, and draw up a new job report which is automatically sent to the service centre for invoicing. It's responsive, it's fluid, it's fast, and the customer is satisfied because his problem can be solved immediately. And for the service company, it's additional billing that boosts turnover.

Benefit no. 5: Motivate and retain technicians

A service management solution and its mobile application give more autonomy to technicians in the field and reduce their administrative tasks. They don't have to return to the office too often to file batches of service reports. In this way, they avoid unproductive journeys. Secondly, as mentioned above, the mobile application can enable them to self-generate service calls when necessary.

Reducing the administrative burden on technicians

It's also easier for maintenance technicians not to have to handwrite pages and pages of forms in the cab of their vehicle. With a mobile application, they can enter all the information quickly and easily into pre-prepared forms, usually using tick boxes and drop-down menus, with very few text fields to fill in. This means they can work faster, and they are also guided in filling in the information by so-called "constrained" forms, where it is necessary to have answered step 1 before being able to access step 2. This saves them time on their administrative work, leaving them free to concentrate on the job in hand.

No disruption to business thanks to offline mode

In offline mode, the mobile application also allows them to continue working even if they are in a place where there is no network, such as a tunnel or a white zone. This doesn't prevent them from completing their form, with data synchronisation resuming automatically once the mobile terminal has regained the network. In this way, technicians don't waste time and don't have to go back to paper at the end of the day.

A lever for recruiting the next generation of technicians

Finally, the technician profession is currently undergoing a generational renewal. New recruits, who are younger and more accustomed to working with smartphone applications, are naturally reluctant to work on paper. They expect to find the same technological uses in their job that they use every day in their leisure activities. Equipping a service company's technicians with a dedicated mobile application is therefore a real lever for human resources, both in terms of recruiting technicians and retaining them within the company.

See all software Field Service Management

Conclusion

In conclusion, to remain competitive in an increasingly competitive economic environment, service companies began their digital transformation a few years ago. But far too many small and medium-sized enterprises are still working the old-fashioned way, with outdated methods that will not enable them to stand up to the competition or to the increasingly high demands of their customers. It's time for them to take the plunge too.

Sponsored article. The expert contributors are authors independent of the appvizer editorial team. Their comments and positions are their own.