If you run a field service business, then certainly you must have heard the buzz around field service management software. These are the software suites designed to help field service businesses overcome operational challenges by simplifying the field workforce management. As a new-age tech enablement, field service management software for technicians and contractors improves field workers’ productivity and efficiency, enabling them to produce throughput.
These tools help businesses automate their operations and processes, considering that automation is the much-needed field service management solution for any business that operates through a mobile workforce or field services. This justifies why businesses increasingly rely on field service management apps to improve their field operations. Aiming to achieve the digital transformation, businesses depend on these software suites to end the numerous dragging and slow manual processes prevalent in field processes. Automation speeds up processes, makes everything measurable and trackable, and keeps them error-free.
Field service businesses that have yet to adopt field service management solutions must shift to eliminate the degraded and low-profile legacy ways. As you choose a field service management software, you are likely to come across a range of similar products, and it gets confusing which one fits your requirement. So, here listing seven key features of a field service management app to help you choose the right software for your business.
Seven key features of a field service management software
Scheduling & dispatch
Field service businesses require automation in scheduling and dispatching to assure accuracies in scheduling, such as:
- To dodge scheduling conflicts like overlapped schedules, duplicate schedules, missed schedules, etc.
- To confirm a precise distribution of work, ensuring no one is overburdened or no resource is left underused.
- To ensure skill-based job distribution for achieving maximum first visit effectiveness.
- To provide territory management in job distribution, ensuring field technicians don’t face productivity leaks because of extensive traveling or detours.
Thus, choosing a field service management software with the job-scheduling automation capacity is important. Automated job scheduling means the software can assess the technician’s availability, proximity to the job site, and skillsets and automatically assign a job to the nearest available rightly skilled technician or worker.
Route planning & tracking
As technicians visit different job locations, the field service mobile app designed for service techs must help them optimize real-time route planning to avoid traffic congestion and detours. Also, the software must real-time track the locations of the field technicians, keeping a check on their performance and productivity.
Work order management
The software must help ensure that everyone in the team is doing what needs to be done at the right time by facilitating proper communication. It automates standard communication and ensures no communication gap among the stakeholders. For instance, the software must send an automated schedule notification to the technician as soon as a schedule is made. Similarly, it must automatically send location details, service details, client details, etc. Also, it must automatically update job statuses like technician checks-in and check-out time.
Time-tracking & timesheet
A field service management app helps facilitate time-tracking through time stamping and remote timesheet filling. It provides easy and convenient real-time tracking of the mobile workforce performance and productivity.
Data management
The field service workforce requires remote but real-time access to data for accessing enterprise data like Contract & warranty reports or downloading invoices, or uploading data like pre/post inspection reports. A cloud-based field service management software helps with real-time data collaboration and facilitates remote access along with online and offline support.
Inventory management
Field service management solutions for inventory management are essential to field services. The inventory management ensures that the inventory is not pilled up with unnecessary stock blocking up the capital. For this, it is essential that technicians can directly check the availability of parts and tools in the inventory or raise inventory requirement requests on a real-time basis. Inventory management ensures that the inventory is well provided with project-specific items, tools, equipment, parts, etc.
Reporting & analytics
Data analytics is integral to new-age business systems as it provides detailed insight into business metrics and helps decision-makers make the right decisions for your business. A field service software with built-in analytics and reporting modules captures field data at different touchpoints and creates visually representative business reports.
Conclusion
Have a clear understanding of the capacities of a field service management software and understand your business need for field service management solutions. If you don’t find a product with the exact built-in solutions to cater to your business-specific requirements, you can easily go for customization. The right field management software is the one that has basic must-have features and has the scope of customization feasibility.
