15 Ways a Field Service Platform Can Make Your Business More Efficient
In today’s competitive business landscape, every business owner and manager is seeking more efficient ways to optimise their operations. What may seem shocking is that around 52% of service companies are still doing things manually, making them slow and sluggish in responding to customers. This is where software for service businesses comes to the fore as a major solution to this problem.
In fact, with field management software, you can expect to see greater efficiencies in your business operations as your business becomes more agile, lean and streamlined.
If you are still wondering if this type of software is for you, the 15 benefits discussed below will help you get more clarity on the situation so that you can optimise your business.
15 benefits of field service management software
It is true that some of the best ways to improve your business include using field management software. This is especially the case for service-based businesses that have field employees who carry out work at their customers’ premises instead of doing so at the business’ headquarters.
With this in mind, we have curated some of the best-known benefits of using a field service platform so that you can make your business more efficient. Let’s take a closer look.
1. Improve your customer service
Since the customer experience is the defining factor in a business’ success, it’s critical to focus on this area first. With a centralised field management software or platform, all of your customers’ data is in one place.
This means that whether your team needs to attend to an inquiry, a request or provide support, they’ll be able to do so from one platform where all the customer’s data is securely stored and easily accessible.
In turn, this leads to faster response times and greater operational efficiency as it also helps boost the customer experience and ensures they receive greater levels of service satisfaction.
This is in stark contrast to handling customer matters manually, which takes up excessive amounts of time and can slow down both the service delivery and your team.
2. Boost your business’ and employees’ productivity
Because field management software is in a centralised platform, it’s easier to access by multiple employees at the same time.
In addition, it also offers a broad range of functionalities in one place. The members of your team will be able to reduce administrative tasks that are associated with managing multiple separate systems or processes manually.
In fact, research shows that a whopping 50% of teams that adopted a field management software recorded an increase in productivity.
This means that mundane tasks can now be performed much faster and more efficiently from a single platform and opens up more time and opportunities for engaging with customers and taking advantage of new sales opportunities.
3. Enjoy the security and accuracy of data storage
Field management software is designed with security in mind. Despite the fact that it is designed for a cloud platform, it has all the necessary security features in place to ensure that no data is leaked, accidentally lost or maliciously stolen.
In addition, there can be greater coordination between different departments using updated and accurate information such as marketing and finance, for example.
It also means that your team will not be working with outdated information but rather data that is not only secure but as up-to-date as possible.
4. Automate your sales process
Sales processes that are automated tend to see much greater levels of success, lower costs and increased team productivity and efficiency. How does this work?
It’s because your field management software offers an automated sales tool that includes drip campaigns. This means you can enjoy much greater levels of control when it comes to how your potential customers are contacted and what type of follow-up is required after initial contact has been made.
Additionally, your team will be more efficient in knowing who is responsible for what part of the sales process and will eliminate confusion and double efforts.
5. Turn leads into clients
Many businesses still create a strong dividing line between sales and marketing even though the benefits of joining team efforts have proven to be beneficial. However, with the right field management platform, these efforts can be combined.
As such, you can streamline the communication process with your leads (marketing efforts) and work on turning them into customers (sales efforts).
When you are targeting the right prospects the right way, your chances of obtaining new clients are that much greater. You will also be able to increase customer retention this way.
6. Avoid manual data management, automate instead
We already alluded to the fact that many businesses still use the old-fashioned way of data entry, doing so manually and on paper. But both time and resources can be saved through a centralised field management system.
Once leads are automatically captured in your platform, you can save your team hours of manual data entry time, avoid duplication of data and ensure greater data accuracy.
In addition, repetitive tasks will essentially be eliminated from your organisation and this can help make your business leaner.
7. Foster more sustainable relationships with your customers
Every small business owner knows the importance of taking good care of your customers. However, as the business grows, it becomes more difficult to keep track of customer challenges or schedule the right contact details to ensure that they are kept in the loop when important developments that affect them take place.
For example, if you have a field service employee who is running a bit late for a customer appointment, your field management software can quickly set up a message to let them know this.
In turn, this means that the customer will be informed, you’re less likely to receive a complaint and the customer will trust and appreciate your honesty and efforts as opposed to simply arriving late and wasting their time.
8. Get more detailed analytics and reports on sales processes
It is often hard to pinpoint exactly which customers are bringing in the most revenue, which campaigns performed better than others or where you could identify opportunities for future growth and make better decisions.
However, with a centralised field management platform, you’ve got the chance to do all this and more so that you can quickly and accurately identify what is working and what is not.
9. Gain a bird’s eye view of ongoing tasks and campaigns
The faster your business scales, the harder it is to manage everything at the same time. But with a field management system at your fingertips, you’ll be able to manage and monitor what is happening at every stage and department in your business at a single glance.
This means you can make informed and timely decisions where necessary, put an end to harmful practices quickly and become more efficient when you are able to examine in depth every aspect of your business from one place.
10. Optimise your resources and talent pool
Many field service businesses rely on employees out in the field taking care of customers’ needs. However, with a field management platform, you can improve your team’s scheduling, optimising everyone’s use of time as well as make the most of your tangible resources in an optimal way. Therefore, by automating certain tasks, you can do much more with less.
For example, you can improve your team’s coordination, remove information silos and ensure that your team can access all the relevant customer data to make the most informed decision possible.
11. Reduce your costs
When your team is operating at maximum efficiency and your business is leaner due to a field management platform’s use in your organisation, you are essentially doing two things at the same time:
- you are saving on significant operational costs, and
- you also have the opportunity to earn more from a more streamlined customer service process.
12. Approach emergencies with ease
Emergencies happen to the best of us no matter how well we may plan. Whether your service employee assigned to a job calls in sick or a vehicle breaks down, you’ll immediately be able to assign another member of your team to the right customer so that you don’t lose the job and so that your team is as efficiently placed as possible.
13. Generate invoices and get paid faster
Your invoices and their payments are the greatest business asset you have. It is true that the more invoices you issue for work done, the more you’ll get paid. However, invoice generation can be a time-consuming process. But with the right field management software, it doesn’t have to be.
Invoices can be automatically downloaded and sent to the right customer, while ensuring you get paid that much faster. You can also manage discounts, outstanding amounts and other aspects related to your pricing at a much speedier rate.
14. Minimise your waste output
Small things quickly build up to be costly expenses for a business. If one of your field employees gets lost, this can mean wasted petrol costs. If two or three of your employees get lost, this means even more wasted petrol costs which you can’t really recover.
With the right field management platform at your fingertips, with GPS tracking and mapping options, you can reduce the waste of important resources mentioned above and in other scenarios as well such as the need to print all customer data, store it and keep it safe.
15. Operate your field management system remotely
Finally, the beauty of a field management system is that the software can be operated remotely and even from mobile devices. As such, you, your employees, contractors, partners and administrative members of staff will be able to operate it from any location and in real time.
Final remarks
As you can see, field management software can help you streamline your business operations and increase your productivity and efficiency. With a platform like ServiceOS, you are in good hands. This is because the software has multiple functionalities that are specifically designed for field service businesses.
Whether you run a handyman, plumbing, gardening, mobile beauty or any other type of field business, relying on ServiceOS will make your business leaner and enable you to scale much faster so that you can improve your bottom line and operational efficiency.