Ten Ways that Improved Visibility will help your Business: Part Two

Field service organizations know that improving visibility in their business is key to their success. From knowing what jobs are being worked in real-time to tracking weekly trends with accurate reporting, it is only through knowing what is happening that businesses can start to run the most, effective, efficient organisation possible.

Here in part two, we look at the next five ways field service solutions can help improve visibility:

6 Improved Customer Service

Access to information in real-time, significantly helps the back office and field workers and through providing the service team with this improved visibility, ultimately produces greater levels of customer service. Through integration with other back office systems, such as ERPs and CRMs, the field worker has access to the job history and customer records allowing for a more detailed understanding of not only the task at hand but also what has happened before and why. This means better decision-making and ultimately improved resolution for the customer.

7 Time saving

Inevitably a field service organization’s daily operation changes and the business has to adjust to what happens in the real world as it happens. Field service solutions streamline operations; schedules, for example, can be adjusted in a matter of seconds, rather than hours. Once a job is scheduled, technicians instantly see all the information they need to complete the job and with systems being updated continuously operations can keep tabs on jobs at all times.

Field workers can then document the work from the job site much more quickly, as they simply use drop down menus on their mobile device to complete the job detail then capture the customer’s signature electronically to verify – all significantly reducing the time taken to close out work orders.

8 Benefits Across the Business

The benefits that improved visibility brings to an organization goes across different areas of the business.

For the business owner or manager the health of the business is easily monitored as customizable reports can be run, allowing focus on driving higher overall revenue and increased margins.

The service manager sees real-time status updates of all jobs across the teams and for the field technician critical information can be accessed and shared in real time in the office and the field.

For those in the finance team invoices can be automated immediately upon job completion, achieving a quicker payment cycle through this order to cash automation.

9 Storage in the Cloud

Once data is collected, a business needs to have confidence that storing the data is not an issue, that the data is secure and can be accessed whenever it is required.

Cloud-based solutions provide a number of benefits and they can be implemented quickly and easily. Importantly data is automatically backed up by the service provider so storage is not a worry and pushing data into the cloud makes it easier to share.

10 Visibility when Working Offline

Working offline is an issue which needs to be taken into account when looking at improved visibility. There is always field work which has to take place in non-connected environments with the limitations of some networks still or when work is deep in the bowels of a manufacturing plant or up on a wind turbine. Field service solutions that are designed specifically for the mobile environment have the ability for mobile workers to use their device and the field service software app offline, which ensures that there is no loss of data while out in the field.

FieldAware helps companies to identify where they need improve the visibility they have of their business and simplifies field service management, so the right field service solution is used.

For more information on improving visibility see our infographic on The Key to Visibility in Field Service: Twenty Questions to Ask Yourself.

To find out more about FieldAware watch our overview video here.