What Are the REAL Advantages of a Homegrown Field Service Application?
Is your company thinking about developing or upgrading a homegrown field service application? If the answer is “yes”, we think it’s important to understand how homegrown applications compare with cloud-based, made-for-mobile solutions. Solutions that can be customized to meet the needs of almost any field service organization.
Homegrown Field Service Application versus Cloud-based, Made for Mobile
At first glance, a homegrown solution might seem to be very appealing. After all, who understands the needs of the organization better than the people who work there? So designing a solution based on existing technology (like an Excel Spreadsheet or a Microsoft Access database) might seem a quick, easy and inexpensive way to go. However, we believe a cloud-based, made-for-mobile solution (that’s customizable too!) – like FieldAware – has real advantages over homegrown solutions (and many of our current customers believe it as well!).
The table illustrates how a homegrown field service application and a cloud-based, made-for-mobile solutions stack up.
| Homegrown Field Service Application | Cloud-based, Made for Mobile Application |
Implementation Speed | Months to years (testing, frequent delays) | Thirty to sixty days (depending upon the state of existing data) |
Cost | High – (development, servers, storage, back-up systems) | Moderate (subscription-based, “pay-as-you-go” pricing, no servers or storage systems; back-up is the responsibility of the provider) |
Application and End-User Support | Must be provided in-house (additional cost) | Included |
Updates and Improvements | Additional cost and development time | Included |
Application “Bugs” | Moderate | Very low (tested and proven by thousands of existing users) |
Scalability | Limited (difficult to support more than a few users) | Unlimited (built to scale to tens of thousands of users) |
Mobile Device Support | Limited (development required for new devices, operating systems) | Extensive (ongoing development supporting multiple devices and operating systems with native apps and apps designed specifically for smartphones and tablets) |
Customization | High | High (using customizable fields) |
Business Risk | Moderate to High | Low (tested and proven by thousands of existing users) |
Functionality | Limited by development time frames | High (continuous development of new features and capabilities) |
Cloud-based, made-for-mobile field service automation solutions not only deliver the functionality field service organizations need, they do it faster, at a lower cost and with higher reliability. And, because they were created to accommodate the latest in cloud and mobile technology, they are infinitely scalable and designed to help field service organizations improve productivity, increase revenue – and grow as your business grows.
Before you invest significant resources in developing your own field service application, make sure to discuss the cloud-based options available.