How does Field service management software Help Reduce Field Service Costs and Increase profits?

Are you sending too much money managing your field service business? Are your expenses going on par with the revenue generated? 

At his stage, you might be looking for the best ways to reduce field service costs while increasing profits. Field service providers try to cut down their technician count and reduce service quality to simply cut down expenses.

Do you also get stuck in a trade-off between service quality and rising costs? 

You cannot risk reducing the quality of your service to cut down on costs. Because reduced service quality will have a direct effect on your customer satisfaction and consequently your customers might start leaving your business.

At the end of the day what matters to the customers is the quality of service they receive and according to research, there are customers willing to pay premium charges for higher quality services. And higher quality services again come at increased operational costs. 

You can instead try to improve the efficiency of your HVAC service business processes such that your costs get reduced. Figure out what parts of your HVAC service operations are eating up too much money and find ways to curtail them. 

You need a field service business management system in hand that keeps a record of all your service tasks, costs, income and expenses. This is where field service management software can come in handy to reduce field service costs and increase profits.

What is Field Service Management Software?

Field service management software is a powerful tool for field service organizations (FSOs) that allows you to manage all field service operations from one place. Right from creating work orders to scheduling jobs, dispatching technicians, monitoring job progress and reporting, the field service software lets you stay ahead of your service business processes. 

Field service software benefits field service companies in many ways. Automating many of the tasks associated with managing a field service business, field service business software helps FSOs save time, reduce errors, and streamline operations, all of which can lead to increased profits.

Read our blog post to find out the signs of whether your business needs field service management software.

6 Ways Field Service Software Helps Reduce Field Service Costs and Increase Profits

How do you manage various field service tasks like customer data entry, scheduling, reporting, etc? Are you using the traditional manual methods yet? 

If yes, you are not the only one!

According to an industry survey, 52% of companies still use manual methods for most of their field service tasks, such as scheduling and work planning.

Are these manual methods efficient enough? do you sometimes get frustrated with the chaotic processes?

Manual field service management activities almost always have a negative effect on time optimization, and therefore operational costs. This is the reason field service companies are making a move towards technology and FSM software solutions.

Gartner predicts that by 2025, algorithms and bots will schedule over 70% of field service work, up from less than 25% in 2019 – a trend that will further help reduce field service costs.

If you are still wondering how this happens, here we explain in detail how HVAC service software helps reduce field service costs and increase profits in 2023.

i) Improve Job Scheduling & Technician Dispatching 

Scheduling and dispatching technicians lie at the heart of field service businesses. Poor scheduling can have a negative impact on technician productivity and increase operational costs. 

Scheduling technicians with manual methods like maintaining a whiteboard to mark schedules creates confusion. Imagine once all the technician view their schedules and get to work in the field and if for some reason the schedule has to be changed or there is an emergency, it becomes tedious to communicate the rescheduling changes to all the technicians.

Additionally, manual processes are prone to scheduling errors like underbooking, overbooking and double-booking technicians. These errors in turn incur losses to the field service company.

The technicians also waste their time commuting to the office to fetch their schedules, wait for the manager’s instructions and customer data to get on the next job and move back and forth to the office to submit job reports. All the time wasted on these activities can otherwise help technicians complete more jobs.   

Solution:

The field service management software comes with intelligent scheduling features. Unoserviec FSM software displays all the checked-in technicians’ locations on the map. The field service scheduler can assign jobs to technicians based on their availability and proximity to the job location. This helps technicians reach locations on time and shorten the service response time. 

The field technician dispatching software notifies the technician about their schedules and job assignments. It also shares the job data and customer data that help field service professionals plan their service process accordingly. 

ii) Optimize Technician Utilization via Automation of Field Service Tasks

Are your field employees spending too much time on non-billable activities? 

Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA) estimates the average technician utilization rate at just 73%. This means that technicians are spending too much time on non-revenue-generating tasks, reducing overall business profitability.

Using manual methods wastes your field service employees’ time as they must input every data manually into the records. For example, the field service manager makes a copy of customer data, job instructions and other details to hand over to the technician. Even for recurring service jobs, the field service dispatcher has to copy the data in the service ticker forms. This duplication of data not only wastes paper resources but also time. 

Field engineers keep going back and forth to the office from the field to fetch data, submit reports, fetch inventory, etc. All this time can otherwise help them focus on completing more jobs and other revenue-producing activities. 

Sometimes the field service manager assigns the wrong technicians to jobs, for instance, assigning a maintenance technician for an installation job. This results in poor performance, and wasted time and money. 

Solution:

Working to raise your technician utilization rate allows businesses to get more done with less staff, impacting productivity, and profitability when the operational expenses are kept in check.

Field force management software automates most of the field service tasks that free up time for field employees to focus on improving their service. The customer and job data get auto-populated in the job forms. 

The job scheduling software assigns the right tech to the right job improving technician utilization. Technicians get automated notifications about job assignments and they can access job data from anywhere on their mobile phones, reducing travel. 

Field service employees can submit job reports along with geo-tagged work-site photos on their technician mobile app instead of manually commuting to the office. The next service dates for the customer get updated automatically on the CRM for which the service reminder sends timely alerts before the due date. Thus automation gets embedded into every stage of the field service delivery, improving technician productivity and reducing costs.

iii) Minimize Commuting to Reduce Travel Costs

How many extra miles do your technicians travel unnecessarily throughout the day? For it may be to fetch data and schedules or get lost finding the exact customer location. 

Every extra mile costs extra fuel and incurs extra expenses to your field service business and not to forget the extra non-billable hours.

Solution:

Allow technicians remote access to data via the field technician mobile app. They can not access data but make changes and upload photos and reports on this cloud-based field service software. Cloud-based solutions improve real-time collaboration between the different field service teams.

The unoservice field service app also optimizes the routes for the technicians. Google Maps integration guides the technicians through the best routes to reach the destined job locations quickly and safely, saving extra travel and costs. 

Furthermore, the technicians can mark their attendance by simply checking in to the Unoservice field technician mobile app from anywhere. On check-in, they receive their schedule and at the end of the day, they can check out to close their day’s work.

Field service technicians’ real-time location gets monitored by the field service manager in the office via a GPS-based live technician location tracker. This helps them monitor technicians’ mobility and activity to prevent any type of trickery.  

iv) Increased Real-time Visibility into Inventory keeps Technicians Well-equipped 

Technicians get to the job locations and begin the repair task. During the repair job, they find the need for a particular spare part. They go to the office to fetch the part only to find that it is not available. Commuting to the warehouse they find that the required part is out of stock. 

Having left the repair job mid-way, the technician purchases the required spare from an outside shop at a higher cost and finishes the job. The task that could have been completed in an hour took extra three hours, delaying the further schedule of the field tech. It causes a whole lot of chaos as the field technician could not reach the next job location on time, upsetting the customer.

At the end of the day, all the technicians report to the office. Meanwhile, a technician returns a few spare parts to the field service manager that he had carried in the morning but remained unused. It also contained the particular inventory that the other technician needed during the day and had to purchase at a higher cost. Had he known about the inventory location and usage status, he could have fetched it from his colleague. 

This is only one example, however, with manual processes, field service businesses suffer many such issues that incur unnecessary additional expenses and service delays. 

Solution:

Field service organizations must use inventory management software that gives field employees real-time visibility into the inventory status. The field inventory management software can help businesses better manage their inventory, reducing the need for excess inventory and helping to avoid stock-outs. 

It alerts the inventory manager about understock and overstock conditions so that neither the FSO runs out of stock nor do they splurge on unnecessary stock.

When a field service technician needs a particular inventory, he can quickly check on the inventory management app for availability and order the needed parts. Also, once a technician uses a part he updates it on the app so that the inventory manager gets notified and also the stock details get updated. Modern field service management software comes integrated with inventory management features that make service processes smoother. 

v) Improving First-time Fix Rates to Complete More Jobs

Imagine there are 10 jobs to be completed in a day and the technicians could only complete five out of them, your business efficiency gets reduced by 50%. Additionally, all your schedules get disturbed as the pending work gets postponed to the following day. 

One of the reasons for the service delays is poor first-time fix rates. The technicians keep visiting the same job location multiple times to complete a single job. You can easily calculate FTFR by viewing your daily business reports. 

Find out how many jobs your field service technicians complete in a day. Find out how many visits they take to complete every job.

For instance, a trip to a particular job location costs around Rs.500. If the technician cannot complete the job in a single visit but takes an additional trip, your business suffers additional costs of Rs.500

So every additional trip increases your business expenses while also wasting your technician’s time and lowering customer satisfaction. In such cases, your revenue remains the same but your expenses keep piling up. 

Solution:

Take a closer look at your service business operations and figure out what is hindering the technicians from completing the job within a single visit.  

Do they lack proper tools, the right information or efficient training? Once you know the underlying issue, take the necessary measures to rectify the issues. Improve technician training to guide them better on how to provide quality services in less time.

FSM software helps field service professionals improve customer service. By providing field service technicians with real-time access to customer information, service history, and other important data, the field service mobile app can help technicians resolve issues more quickly and effectively. 

With all the data, they can pre-plan their service process accordingly and fetch the right tools and inventory even before going to the customer’s place. They can seek the help of a colleague or access the knowledge base to look for further information.

This way the technicians get fully equipped in advance and on visiting the customer’s location, they can quickly complete the job. This can help improve FTFR, and reduce the number of callbacks and repeat visits, which can save businesses time and money.     

vi) Monitor Business performance in Real-time to Make Relevant Improvements

Are your field service managers wasting time collecting field service data, organizing them and generating reports?

Why don’t you give up on these frustrating tasks and simply view all your field service metrics at the click of a button?

Solution:

 Unoservice field workforce management software records all field service data and displays it on the dashboard. It lets you view your business performance in real time on a single screen. For instance, you can view the number of jobs completed, income earned, technicians’ attendance, working hours, etc.

Furthermore, you can also generate custom business reports from all the collected data. The field staff management software also verifies the claims submitted by the technicians on the field mobile app against the pre-recorded data. If the claims are true, it reimburses them or notifies discrepancies to the manager.

With all the instant business insights and reports, your field service company can make data-driven decisions that support your business improvement to increase profits and reduce expense leakages.   

Conclusion

Whether you are a small field service business just starting out or a larger established company looking to improve efficiency, field service management software is a valuable tool that can help you achieve your business goals.

Unoservice field service business software comes with all the necessary features you need to manage your FSO. Try Unoservice for free to explore its functionality and see how it helps you reduce field service costs and increase profits.

Frequently Asked Questions on How to Reduce Field Service Costs with FSM Software