Field service is one of the fastest-growing sectors in the world today. In fact, it’s expected to grow up to $1 trillion by 2025.
The field service industry includes companies such as construction contractors, solar panel maintenance companies, pest control companies, plumbers, electricians, HVAC technicians, painters, etc. Field service providers provide repair and maintenance services for equipment at customers’ locations.
A field service business is highly in nature as the workforce is mobile and scattered across the field. To ensure good coordination between the in-office customer support teams and the field teams, efficient field service management is necessary.
Let’s dig deeper into what is field service management.
What is Field Service Management?
Field Service Management (FSM), also known as Field Operations Management (FOM), is an important part of a field service organization’s strategy. It helps field service companies manage their operations effectively and efficiently.
Field service management is the process of managing a team of field technicians working remotely to perform maintenance, repair, installation, and upgrades on customers’ equipment. These teams constitute field service organizations or FSOs.
Field service management includes everything from scheduling and dispatching to billing and invoicing and reporting. A field service organization may consist of multiple employees, contractors, vendors, and consultants. Field service management ensures good coordination between various moving parts of the business.
Why is Field Service Management Important?
In a field service business model, most of your employees stay in the field providing services to customers at their locations. While a part of your workforce is mobile, there are back-end teams and employees who manage technician schedules, perform data entry work, manage inventory, manage invoices and expenses, generate reports, etc.
When all these teams work in silos, there are chances for service delays, miscommunication errors and conflicts. For example, assume the field service representative might schedule three jobs for a particular field technician for the day. But the technician could complete only two jobs due to the complications in the repair job. Without proper management, the service rep does not know that the technician is lagging behind and he/she keeps assigning further jobs.
At the end of the month when the field service provider makes service reports, he finds a mismatch between the jobs allocated in the service rep’s book and the jobs completed by the technician. This mismatch further leads to chaos, reduced service quality and missed opportunities in the field service business.
Not only this but there are many such cases where in the absence of a central field service management, the business begins to suffer.
However, a field service management system oversees all the field service operations and makes the ends meet with consistent real-time communication between various departments.
Field service managers oversee the entire process, ensuring that the right resources are available and that the job gets completed correctly.
A good field service management strategy keeps everyone in the field service organization in sync and on the same page. This will allow you to improve customer satisfaction, increase revenues, reduce costs and improve your operational efficiency.
What are the Components of Field Service Management?
Basically, field service management is handling field service projects right from the beginning to end. A field service manager oversees whether all the field service operations are in sync and up to date. The field manager ensures integrity throughout the field service organization by performing the following field service management activities.
i) Field Service Scheduling:
Maintain a centralized record of field technicians’ schedules to quickly assign new jobs based on technician availability. This prevents the chances of overbooking or double-booking technicians.
ii) Technician Dispatching:
Inform the technician about new jobs assigned along with customer data, location and job instructions. Monitor the technician activity right from job assignment to job completion.
iii) Work Order Management:
Monitor the jobs in progress, check if the technician requires additional support on-site and mark the job completion status and the corresponding technician availability to avoid conflicts. Maintain the job documents and service history of customers for further use.
iv) Inventory Management:
Collaborate with the inventory manager to keep up with the daily status of spare parts so that the technician has all the necessary tools and spares necessary for a job.
v) Back-end Finance Management:
Generate invoices based on the customer service request and the job report submitted by the technician. Update the payment status of every job in the finance books. Validate the technician bills and reimburse the expenses.
vi) Report Generation:
Collect all the necessary data across the field service organization and generate reports that give better insights into business performance. It highlights if there are any discrepancies in the data.
vii) Customer Contract Management:
The field service manager monitors the SLAs (Service Level Agreements) and annual maintenance contracts of customers and schedules technicians accordingly for recurring service business.
Signs You Need Better Field Service Management
- There are frequent delays in service jobs due to miscommunication.
- You are not able to meet the deadlines and miss out on business opportunities.
- Erroneous data entry causes scheduling conflicts and chaos.
- Your field technicians do not have sufficient data.
- Your customers complain about poor service quality.
- You are not able to upscale your field service business.
- Your field team’s productivity is lowering impacting the efficiency of your business.
Appoint Qualified Field Service Managers
The best way to ensure success in field service management is to hire qualified field service managers. These individuals are responsible for managing the day-to-day activities of field technicians. The field service manager job role requires strong leadership skills since it involves dealing with customers, vendors, and internal departments.
Project management is a crucial skill for managing the entire process, including scheduling, budgeting, quality control, and communications. A well-managed project ensures that everyone involved understands what needs to happen and how to accomplish those tasks efficiently. The field manager must ensure all the team members are well-trained to understand the new systems and procedures.
It is quite a huge responsibility for a field service manager to handle all the field service operations. However, adopting field service management solutions makes things easier. Via field service automation, you not only save your field employees’ time but also increase field service efficiency.
Field Service Management Solution
The term field service automation refers to field management software designed to help companies manage their field technicians. These tools track work orders, schedule jobs, automate repetitive tasks and provide real-time visibility into progress. Field service management software solutions typically include the following components:
- Work Order Management — Providing a centralized location for tracking and managing field technician assignments.
- Job Scheduling — Automating the process of assigning jobs to field technicians based on the availability of equipment and resources.
- Technician Tracking – Stay updated about the technician’s live location and track the field workers’ mobility.
- Customer Data Management – Access all the customer data from anywhere and on any device at any time.
- Reporting — Giving field managers and supervisors a view into how well their team members are performing and allowing them to make decisions about scheduling future jobs.
- Dashboards – Display data in graphs and charts, so you can easily spot trends and identify problems.
- Mobile Apps — Mobile workers can access knowledge articles, workflow guidelines, and task lists via their smartphones. Making field service management accessible anywhere there is internet connectivity.
Field service management software allows companies to save money by reducing labour costs and increasing efficiency. For example, one study found that companies that implemented FSM software saved $1 million per year on average. In addition, some studies show that FSM software increases employee productivity by up to 30%.
Field service automation technology is becoming increasingly popular because it allows businesses to optimize their operations while improving customer satisfaction.
Customer satisfaction is directly related to the quality of the field service program that you run. When you set goals and measure performance, you can ensure that you are providing your customers with the best possible experience. And, when you do that, you will attract more customers, and retain existing ones.
Another advantage of the best field service management software is that it provides a centralized system for communicating with employees. If you want to communicate with your employees about upcoming projects or changes to policies, you can do so without having to send out emails or make phone calls. Instead, you can simply update the software program that controls your workflow.
Read our guide on Field Service Management Software to find out how it can benefit your field service business management.
Conclusion – Try Unoservice Field Service Software
Efficient field service management helps you overcome the field service challenges like downtime, low efficiency, high overhead costs, miscommunication and others.
Unoservice field service management system automates your field service processes, allowing field service managers to focus on other aspects of running a successful business. It can improve your field service efficiency and scale up your field teams.
Try Unoservice for free and explore its functionality.
Frequently Asked Questions about Field Service Management
How to Implement Field Service Management?
The implementation of field service management requires a lot of planning and preparation. This includes defining what needs to be done, who should manage things, and how much money it costs. After defining these things, the next step is to create a plan for implementing the process. Finally, you must execute the plan.
What are the benefits of field service management?
Field service management helps companies reduce costs, increase productivity, and maintain customer satisfaction. The main benefit for customers is the ability to access high-quality services at lower prices. Companies also benefit from reduced employee turnover, increased customer retention, and improved customer loyalty.
What is Field Service Management Software?
Field service management software helps field technicians track customer orders, schedule jobs, and communicate with customers through text messages and phone calls. This allows field technicians to focus on what they do best – servicing customers – instead of managing workflows and paperwork.
How to choose the best field service management solution?
The first step in choosing the right Field Service Management Solution is to identify what features are necessary for your business needs. Once you know what you need, then you should consider which vendors offer these capabilities. There are three main categories of solutions available today: Cloud-based, On-premise, and Hybrid. Each has its advantages and disadvantages.
What are the activities in managing field services?
Field service management includes planning, organizing, directing, controlling, coordinating, and evaluating the performance of field operations. These include everything from scheduling employees’ shifts to ensuring that equipment is properly maintained.