Greatness Does Not Come Easy
The world is experiencing a massive paradigm shift with each business sector slowly digitized. From the agriculture industry to the transportation sector, nothing is being left untouched without a spark of automation in them. But at the base of it all, every service requires some form of price. To automate the payment process and increase accessibility, companies are creating state of the art technologies to ease the payment process for users across the globe. However, the achievement of every great thing comes at the cost of many hurdles. One such company has been trying to create value for its target customers through its electronic payment services by providing devices across the country at business outlets.
The Upgrade They Needed
Nevertheless, all electronic devices require maintenance - especially if it requires upgrading through repair, service, and replacements. The field engineers are assigned to the task of carrying out the maintenance procedure. However, this particular company was facing struggles when it came to delivering maintenance service for its products. To understand their issue, we had a long discussion with one of its key operations personnel.
“Our work is very dynamic. We are always having to shift our focus from one customer to another, to ensure the best service possible. However, that wasn’t possible with our previously used software. Spreadsheets are great for keeping tabs on everything going on but at some point, you begin to lose track of it all, you know? Especially if your field engineers have to go to various locations to provide maintenance to the customers. There was no single source of truth for us to know how our customers are responding to our services. Moreover, the system was cluttered with information which caused us to lose track of the actual problem at hand.”
To cope with the dynamic shift of the current business world, they needed a better software to tackle the following issues as per their concern:
Replace the use of spreadsheets and other software with a single source of truth.
Get relevant information about customer engagement and service cycle.
Get real-time updates of the field service agents instead of them having to report.
History of maintenance work done, previous discussion on each task, records of photos and documents attached for respective job orders.
Visibility of the relevant reports in the dashboard while filtering the outdated ones.
While such demands were only made in science fiction novels once upon a time, it is no longer the case. In fact, the organization got a hold of a field force system that managed to resolve all their hindrances and create a seamless flow of work process. The key personnel further said the following about their current solution to the problems:
“After incorporating field service software in our organization, the management and the field engineers alike had it better since. The three broad spectrums that we were looking to improve on have been done by Custella. There is clearer visibility, better decision making, and reduced cost. We are now able to see the activities of our field engineers in real-time - whether they have completed a particular task and what route they took to complete it. This is a great option for us because we are now able to find out the most efficient route to serve our customers. Also, it has become a lot easier to assign tasks to correct field engineers because we can view their skills and expertise and assign them to tasks accordingly. Our agents are also able to request the required pieces of equipment from our inventory at the click of a button. Last but not the least, our software cost for this purpose has dropped - a 70% decrease annually. It is great that smart tools can make such wonders.”
Smart Decisions with Smart Softwares
Just as that key personnel from the organization put it, a field service management software can make your overall business operations run smoothly. In their case, a field service application was necessary to combat the three pain points:
Increased Visibility: with each team member having access to support, field engineers, device maintenance, and dashboard view via a smart tool, the company is able to monitor and have better visibility on individual activity such as:
Location of the field engineers in real-time
Actual travel route and distance for accurate mileage calculation and payout
Status of Tasks and Job Orders in real-time
Past history of maintenance work done, previous discussion on each task, records of photos and documents attached for respective tasks/JOs
Devices delivered and collected for the purpose of Device Maintenance tracking
Better Decision Making - with features such as Smart Assign & Auto Assign as well as the Reporting feature from the software, the company can make better decisions on some of the following:
Assign the appropriate field engineers based on their skills, location, and utilization
From daily/weekly/monthly reports - identify top-performing and poor performing field service agents based on the number of completed job orders and time of completion for each task
Quicker access to maintenance, terminal termination, and terminal balance declaration forms (from hardcopy to digitized form on the app) will allow them to take better and efficient future preventive actions from such insights
Reduced Cost - although the organization has more licenses than they used to on their former system, it has benefitted from the following cost benefits:
Close to ~70% reduction in cost annually from the adoption of a smart software for the purpose of this Field Service Management process.
Time To Elevate
No matter which industry you are operating in, your business will have to adapt to the dynamic environment of the world. To do that, you will need automation to guide you through. Think of Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, and his advocacy for efficiency in automation. Science fiction is indeed turning into reality and such mobile application will help you achieve it. So are you ready to boost your performance?
Need a field service management application like Custella? If you’re in Malaysia, Indonesia, or the ASEAN region, drop us an email to schedule your demo: ask@custella.com.
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