Why is it High Time to Apply to Field Service Management?

Why is it High Time to Apply to Field Service Management?

They more or less learned how to control the work of office and other stationary employees of a small and medium-sized business — these are various KPI systems, spyware, scrum meetings, checks using the “secret customer” technology, and good old reports on the work done. But as for the field staff, it is more difficult to control them. This article is intended to tell you how to improve the efficiency of the mobile staff and avoid customer dissatisfaction due to poor-quality services.

What is FSM?

Field Service Management is intended to increase the efficiency and productivity of field workers, dispatchers and their managers. It allows you to customize the process of dispatching the application to the Contractor, the system for controlling the movements of the Contractors, standardize work execution processes and switch to electronic reporting on the acts of work performed. In addition, the system allows you to measure the performance of service departments and company employees, increase customer loyalty, and establish a process of obtaining feedback.

Field workers — employees of enterprises (service engineers, maintenance crews, mechanics, inspectors, etc.) most of the timework outside the office at geographically distributed objects.

The work of field staff must be managed to:

• Make plans for the use of staff with the optimal allocation of resources;
• Manage the workload of employees so that there is no downtime and enclosed tasks;
• Quickly make daily lists of tasks and routes (the right employee in the right place);
• Monitor the execution of tasks, movement/location of field staff;
• Provide mobile workers with a professional mobile application that eliminates paperwork and allows them to communicate with the office locally: receive a list of jobs, a route of travel, operational messages, and keep records of spare parts;
• Analyze the work done to make it better next time.

FSM is a multi-industry solution which automates the above processes.

How does it all work?

The mobile application is installed on the smartphone of an employee engaged in fieldwork. Now, the employee is always "visible" to the dispatcher and managers — they can track the route of his movements during the day and his place of stay at any time. The total system monitors the work of mobile employees for more than 30 indicators.

The dispatcher with the help of the system is able to quickly distribute tasks among the executors taking into account their location, current employment, and other parameters. Transfer of all data to the mobile employee is carried out with control of the message delivery time and time of its reading. This is done in order not to hear from the staff the phrases "I have not received" or "I have not seen."

The system also allows the field employee to promptly report on completed tasks. Moreover, each of his actions is accompanied by time and geo-tag. If an employee, while sitting in a cafe, establishes in the application the status “Came to a customer”, they recognize deception in the office. All this disciplines the staff and encourages it to work according to the rules of the company.

Most organizations use any available means of communication to interact with field staff: email, SMS, phone calls, paper documents, instant messengers, etc. As a result, information on tasks is fragmented, it is difficult to gather in one place, and it is difficult to work with it. The Service Scheduling Software allows you to leave only one "communication channel"abandoning all other.

The versatility of Service Scheduling Software

The field work in different industries is based on the same pattern. And many of the functions embedded in the system can be useful in various areas of activity. In many companies, management would like to control when the employee arrived at the client, how much time he had and when he left him.

The system is designed in such a way that 70% of the functionality is universal solutions suitable for automation of employees in any sphere. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a fitter, courier or cleaning agent. Another 20% of the possibilities are customized to the needs of the customer without programming — with the help of “flags” and templates. And the remaining 10% — this is just the improvements that are performed under the individual tasks of the client. They mainly concern reporting forms — each industry has its own requirements for them.

Results of Use of Service Scheduling Software Solutions:

• Controllability increases during emergency situations with objects (failure, breakdown, etc.);
• The number of errors in the work of the field staff is reduced;
• The productivity of dispatchers and field staff increases;
• Costs are reduced by saving time on familiar operations by building optimal routes and efficient distribution of work;
• All information in electronic form is in a single system;
• Applications, outfits, work results, and much more are always at hand.
• The full picture of what is happening with the fieldwork;
• No more long approvals, finding out the reasons and finding the guilty ones. You see all the work in real time;
• More opportunities for better performance;
• It not only makes the current work better but also provides new opportunities for development;
• FSM works both independently and with information systems that are already used in the company.

The configuration is protected and contains code fragments that are not subject to change by the user, has hardware protection against unauthorized use. At the same time, the principle of the maximum possible openness of the code is implemented in order to enable the product to adapt to the needs of end users.

We genuinely hope you find this article informative and useful. Don’t waste time and start to coordinate your business beneficially with the best FSM solutions!