The specifics of field services enforce a different approach to constructing IT systems. What features should an effective field service management solution include in order to bring tangible results?
The “field services” term covers a wide spectrum of niches, from construction and telecom infrastructure management to food delivery. Each of these sectors has different requirements – however, there is one thing they all have in common. Since they’re mobile, the companies struggle more to control the work standards, results, and issues. The employees carry out the work in various locations, making it hard to have it all under control in the headquarters.
For decades, the companies would deal with this issue in a traditional way, using phones and standard offline reporting, but these methods are far from efficient. Fortunately, modern field service management software offers an alternative, enabling organizations to control all the processes and the quality within one system.
Mobile field service management – why is it so crucial?
Field service management is much less of a challenge once the companies take advantage of smartphones’ potential. They can use it to enable a smooth information flow between the field staff and other employees. It allows the field workers to have their schedule under control and follow changes in bookings/orders in real-time. At the same time, they can take advantage of such a system to quickly review the information once they take over someone else’s duties and deliver exceptional service.
For the companies, using such a field service management system for mobile is an opportunity to improve quality control. The field staff can use it for detailed reporting, which is much faster when automatized. Then, this data can serve for identifying errors and areas for improvement.
Which features should your field management software have?
To make the most of the software’s potential in fieldwork, we recommend choosing field service management software with the following features:
- automatized planning and scheduling – reduces the workforce demand and increases accuracy and customer satisfaction, speeding up the service delivery and excluding the scheduling errors and downtimes
- IoT for field service – extends the connectivity, making the service management processes even smoother and more proactive
- corrective, preventive and predictive maintenance – allows preventing the errors and breakdowns from happening, reducing the probability of downtime, and thus, increased expenses
- third-party workforce management – essential for the companies using external support, it allows controlling and monitoring of the outsourced service workers during field service operations
To maximize the benefits of such a system, we recommend cooperating with the field service software partner that enables feature modification accordingly with the client’s needs.