3 Ways to Achieve Operational Excellence
Great service organizations have perfected organizational excellence. They have adjusted processes to reduce costs and maximize output. Whether service organizations are striving to be innovative or just keeping up with the competition, they have embraced digital platforms that help their teams be as productive as possible.
Service technicians typically have multiple jobs in a day, making the task of correctly remembering the details associated with each job more difficult. Whether it is forgetting to write down information or misplaced forms, these errors lead to incomplete and incorrect information, creating organizational inefficiencies. These inefficiencies cost service organizations thousands and even millions of dollars each year. Fortunately, there are solutions that address these gaps and provide service organizations with a way to work more efficiently.
A mobile field service software solution enables organizations to focus on their goals by empowering their service staff. Technicians have the information they need to serve their customers, while dispatchers have a complete overview of their service team. A mobile field service software allows service organizations to increase productivity, eliminate errors, and enhance communications.
Let’s look at these in detail:
Increased Productivity
Service organizations are constantly looking for ways to maximize productivity. When technicians make multiple trips between service jobs and company offices, it decreases their productivity. Additionally, a substantial amount of time is spent on planning and coordinating service jobs for technicians. When planners or dispatchers don’t have a complete overview of where technicians are, and what job they are servicing, this task becomes very time consuming. Using a mobile field service solution ensures the right technician with the right tools has the information needed to complete the job the first time. Planners and dispatchers have a complete overview of where technicians are and what job they are servicing. A mobile field service solution increases first-time fix rates and boosts productivity, and as a result, organizational efficiency is improved.
Eliminating errors
The human brain is powerful, but subject to its limitations. When technicians are out in the field performing multiple service jobs in one day, they are more likely to forget information and make errors if they aren’t documenting information right away. This creates additional problems for team members at the service organization. For instance, if a technician fills out a paper form on a service call, the planner must re-enter that information into their database. Not only is there a duplication of work, the process of re-entering information is where errors are made. With an integrated mobile field service solution, once information is recorded, it is recorded forever. This eliminates errors and reduces wasted time which enables service organizations to become more efficient.
Enhanced communications
Great communication between all parties involved is crucial for service organizations to thrive. Often, technicians, dispatchers, and customers all have different information about the same service job. Without a connected system, communications between parties becomes difficult. With a mobile field service solution, technicians can communicate directly with planners or dispatchers. In the case that an unexpected issue was to arise, such as a road closure, planners and dispatchers can quickly adjust to accommodate any issues. Planners can factor in traffic delays, or road closures and re-route the scheduled jobs. Technicians simultaneously see any updates that were made to their scheduled jobs. Alternatively, customers can also communicate with technicians and planners from the service organization. Great communication allows service organizations to streamline operations.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, NAV, F&O/AX, and GP are powerful ERP systems. When combined with a mobile field service solution from ExpandIT, service organizations can optimize business operations by streamlining the service flow.
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