Getting To The Bottom Of Your Questions…
What is Field Service? What qualifies as a field service industry? And what the heck is field service management software? If you’re asking yourself these questions, you are likely a field service business. Field Service is a broad term, but generally, it applies to any business that requires its employees to physically go to their customer to provide maintenance, installation, or consultation services.
Organizations most commonly associated with Field Service include:
- HVAC Installation and Repairs
- Manufacturers
- Medical Equipment Service and Repairs
- Construction Subcontractors
To better understand what field service management software does, we need to understand some of these businesses’ challenges.
Field Service Challenges
Challenge #1: Reactive Maintenance
When a piece of equipment breaks or begins faltering, Field Service businesses will be called in to fix the issue— this is reactive maintenance—waiting for the absolute last moment for servicing means higher costs to repair and increased customer frustration with your product.
Field Service businesses are looking increasingly towards solutions that will help them conduct predictive maintenance whereby they can provide a fix before the system shuts down.
Challenge #2: A Low Number of First-Time Fixes
Customers want hassle-free servicing. They have busy schedules and cannot allocate hours or days to fix something simple. This frustration is harder to tide over if the equipment is critical to their home or business functions.
From the technician’s side, the inability to fix on the first visit is usually a result of a couple of factors:
- Don’t have all/the correct background info about what needs to be serviced
- Don’t have the right tools to complete the fix
- Are unsure how to fix the problem
Challenge #3: Little Data = Slow Dispatch
Scheduling customers in with a technician should be easy and instantaneous. Knowing who is where and when helps efficient scheduling. Manual scheduling also makes it difficult to match technicians with appointments based on specific geographic areas for faster service. There are so many other challenges Field Service businesses face today, which is why they are increasingly looking at software solutions to help. In fact, a report by Zion Market Research revealed that the Field Service Market would grow by $6.68 Billion by 2023. Most enterprise-level organizations have already made a switch to mobile field service applications.
Field Service Management Software
A Field Service Management Software (FSM), is an application that works to automate a lot of field service processes. These applications’ features can vary from routing, inventory information, invoicing tools, contracts, etc. Some applications will work on the cloud, enabling field workers to access all the information they need on a mobile device with data connectivity. All the features aim to solve some of the challenges we outlined above.
Did you know? 89% of clients want on-demand, modern technology for technician scheduling, and almost as many would be ready to pay more.
One such solution is Evron Advance Field Service for Acumatica, a comprehensive platform designed specifically for the field service industry. This software is natively built within Acumatica ERP, offering a unified system for managing financials, contracts, quotes, and overseeing crew activities.
EAF is user-friendly and can be accessed from any device, making it easy to manage your business on-the-go. With its powerful features and intuitive interface, Evron Advance Field Service for Acumatica is the ideal choice for companies looking to streamline operations and achieve success.
There is much more to FSM, but this post serves as a primer. Hopefully, your understanding of Field Service Management has expanded a little more. We’d love to talk to you more about it, so please reach out!
