9 Benefits of Digital Transformation in Solar Field Service Business

Is your solar field business management revolving around maintaining data in paper-based systems and making multiple phone calls to monitor the job progress? If yes, most of your business time gets wasted on this. It’s high time to upgrade the systems and increase your productivity.

The digital wave has fostered an evolution in business norms. And customers are more inclined toward businesses adopting digital solutions. 

Digital transformation in solar business simplifies all parts of your solar field service business and its operations. Scheduling solar service technicians, managing work orders, tracking assets, generating invoices or monitoring your business processes, digitalization can streamline the entire workflow of your solar repair services. 

Digitalization helps your solar maintenance and repair company to deliver better customer experiences, manage your finances and improve business profitability. 

If you’re unsure whether to go for digital solutions or not, here is a quick guide on the benefits of digital transformation in solar business.

1. Eliminate the Inefficient Paper-based Processes

Field service businesses like solar repair services have traditionally maintained customer records and job details in pen and paper-based systems. The customer service tickets, technician schedules, fuel receipts, invoices, payment receipts and feedback – every business data gets maintained in paperwork.

These paper-based processes are time-consuming, and nearly 70% of service managers’ time gets wasted handling paperwork. When your company grows, so do the paper documents related to it. It may be necessary to hire another employee to handle these papers. 

Not only are these time-consuming but highly inefficient storage systems. Multiple people involved in the business make notes and forward the paperwork to the manager. Now, the handwriting may not be legible which may cause miscommunication. 

Secondly, humans tend to make errors while writing that cause operational errors. Having multiple copies of data wastes office space.

Use digital data entry solutions like Customer Relationship Management (CRM software) that stores all your data. You don’t need more computer resources if you use cloud-based CRM solutions.

Store the customer and service job data, mark the solar service technician schedules on the digital calendar, generate digital invoices from the service report uploaded on the CRM and update service history without duplication. 

Thus your solar equipment repair business becomes paperless. It saves paper costs and the extra space required to store these paper files. 

2. Streamline Lead & Customer Management Processes

It is tough to acquire leads and convert them into customers. But, with manual methods, you might miss converting these leads without proper follow-up systems. If you have only one or two leads, you can somehow track their progress. But when your business gains visibility and more leads come in from different sources, you miss out on maintaining the lead data. 

The data entry errors or unorganized leads data hinder your lead conversion process. Not only acquiring new leads but getting recurrent business from existing customers also becomes difficult without a proper follow-up mechanism. 

For a solar maintenance service task, you maintain many documents, photos and service reports for the recurring preventative maintenance service. Maintaining these documents manually is inefficient. Sometimes, a particular customer’s documents get mixed up with someone else’s, causing too much confusion.

Retrieving a particular piece of information from these piles of paper records is like finding a needle in a haystack. Papers get mixed up, writings get faded, and papers are prone to wear and tear. These issues lead to data loss or impossible data retrieval. All this leads to your solar repair business missing out on great opportunities.

Digital transformation in solar business involves using solar CRM tools to automate data collection from various customer touchpoints and organize it in cloud-based storage. You can access any customer’s or any service task’s holistic data within a few clicks on the CRM platform. It not only saves you time but with better data access, your field service engineers complete tasks with better operational efficiency. 

3. Track Your Field Workforce in Real-time

With manual methods, how do you track your solar engineers? The solar service engineers come to the office every morning to mark their attendance. They get their schedule from the in-office service manager and return to the office at the end of the day to give the report.

You need an extra person to keep track of where your employees go and inform them when they’re needed at a job site, and also inform customers of the ETA of the solar technician’s arrival. It not only takes up your employees’ time but also complicates things.

Imagine if a field worker engages in a freelance job during office time, how will you track him? There are many loopholes in the business model when using manual systems that reduce your business efficiency.

Use GPS-tracker-enabled field staff management software like Unoservice. The GPS integrated into the field worker’s Unoservice mobile app allows you to track their real-time location from anywhere at any time during work hours. It leaves no room for trickery. 

4. Improved Operational Efficiency

With manual systems, the manager calls the solar technician to inform him about a new job and shares the customer’s contact. The technician contacts the customer to reach their location. While performing the job, he contacts the inventory manager to order inventories and calls the service manager to access the customer’s previous history. Later, he reports the payment collection to the finance team. 

Too much time gets wasted in unorganized, standalone conversations, limiting employees’ productivity and completing only a few jobs. 

Solar service business management software streamlines communication and hosts all data in one place which make the process more efficient. Anyone can check the business performance within a few seconds on the software. 

With Unoservice, employees in the field communicate directly with their colleagues in the office through mobile devices. They get instant job instructions, job reminders, customer data and route changes without contacting the back office support staff or customers.

Receiving the schedule in advance hints to the field service engineers about the inventories and tools they might need. They fetch those beforehand, saving time and completing jobs faster.

The solar service professionals quickly repair the solar panels with immediate access to service history and knowledge portals. Later, the field engineer updates the job completion status on the Unoservice portal for the in-office service manager to make a record. The technician can move to the next assigned job rather than waiting for the manager’s instructions. It lets them complete more jobs in less time and increases the business output. 

5. Deliver High-quality Customer Experiences

Traditionally, service businesses involved slow processes where the client had to call the shop to schedule an appointment for the solar service technicians. After making several phone calls, the clients would finally receive an estimate of when their technicians could arrive at their location. 

During the service, the technician makes frequent trips to the office to fetch a spare part or get the invoice, etc. It extends the service time, making the whole experience frustrating and tiring. 

A Gartner study found that 73% of customers think valuing their time is the most important aspect of service.

Faster service response with quick scheduling, shorter service time, recurring service reminders, personalized messages, on-site invoice generation, and payment collection improve customer experiences. 

Happy customers keep returning to your business and bring new customers via word of mouth. 

6. Higher Data Security

Storing data in papers is prone to data leakage and data loss when papers get flown away or torn. Data security is one of the basic priorities for any business. 

Using cloud-based systems can keep your data safe and secure with regular data backups and high-end encryption. Only authorized users can access the data, and you can control who can access what type of data.

For instance, you can give a particular customer’s data access to your solar service professional when assigned to the job. The company stakeholders can have access to business performance reports, employee reports and all customer data.

7. Track Your Business Performance KPIs at Any Time

Manual processes take too long to calculate important metrics for your business. You need an automated system to get instant results.

Digital systems give you an instant overview of your business performance anytime, anywhere on the move. For instance, using Unoservice field service business software, you can instantly view important business metrics on the dashboard. 

It displays the daily job records, income generated, service tasks completed, etc. You can customize the time frame and view the metrics for any day, month or year.

All data gets stored in CRM that forms the core of the field service tool, Unoservice. It generates quick reports like employee performance reports where you can view how many jobs an employee completed, the income earned, etc. You can view customer reports, your business expense report, finance reports, etc. in a few clicks without wasting time or effort.

8. Save Time and Money 

One of the biggest advantages of incorporating technology in business is saving time and reducing expenses. For instance, optimising travel routes and on-site data access helps reduce travel time and fuel costs. 

Earlier, data entry and invoice generation were manual, fuel receipts would get ordered and filed, and time cards were written out. 

Today, automation tools and invoicing software, travel management tools and time-tracking apps can quickly handle these time-consuming tasks. The one-click dashboard and reports let you monitor job progress, manage assets, track technicians’ history, track business expenses, etc. 

You can view these reports to cut down on unnecessary expenses and make better data-driven decisions to improve your business output. Service teams can convert more leads and complete more jobs instead of wasting time organising data.

9. Easy Business Management from One Place

Separate files used to maintain service tickets, customer data, invoices, work-site documents, photos, fuel bills, travel expense reports, employee reports, etc. scatters data across various systems. It becomes tedious to make data-driven decisions. 

Field service management technology like Unoservice field business software integrates all the essential tools that solar maintenance service business needs like solar CRM, service reminder software, GPS-tracker, etc. into one platform. This makes it easy to manage your entire business from one tool and, you can do it on your mobile device too. 

The centralized database auto-generates vital business reports that help you get a better overview of how your business is performing and where it is heading to. The free data flow between all systems creates seamless data connectivity, reduces errors and improves internal workflow. You can make better-informed decisions with these key performance indicators or KPIs. 

Conclusion

“At least 40% of all businesses will die in the next 10 years… if they don’t figure out how to change their entire company to accommodate new technologies.” — John Chambers, Cisco System

True to the above quote, technology is an integral part of business in modern times owing to the flexibility and efficiency that it brings to the business workflow. 

Digital transformation in solar business by using solar service software not only saves you time and money but helps you scale your business.

Field management software leads to a successful business, happy employees and satisfied customers. Unoservice solar service software brings every functionality to manage your solar panel maintenance service. Book a demo or avail a free trial of the tool.

Frequently Asked Questions on Digital Transformation in Solar Business