As field service operations increment their achieve and client base, their field service software capabilities need to abound with them.

Excel sheets and paper task tickets might suffice a small solo operation, just growing businesses need at least basic specialized software to keep operations moving.

Where many field service operations (and small businesses in general) autumn short is waiting also long and existence indecisive in choosing software.

  • If software is adopted too belatedly, customers can exist lost to inefficiencies and negative experiences.
  • If businesses accept on software too early on, valuable resources that could go to other parts of the business concern might be sunk into unnecessary features.

That's why we've analyzed the many conversations we take with field service business concern owners to create a software Needs Cycle for Field Service Software.

This tool will assistance field service software buyers by showcasing top-requested applications and features within three sizes of business organisation.

With this data, nosotros've put the ix most popular field service software features establish on our field service software page in order based on what's needed when you start, when you abound and when y'all need to optimize your business organization.

field service scheduling and dispatching needs cycle graphic

3 Field Service Software Features You Need to Commencement

This section is for field service businesses who are just starting their field service software journeying with one to nine software users.

1. Scheduling and Dispatching

What it does: Scheduling and dispatching capabilities enable field service companies to create and manage task schedules, assigning and directing technicians every bit needed.

Why you need it to start: You need to ensure scheduling and dispatching capabilities are included in your get-go field service software purchase considering they provide the organizational bedrock on which your service company is congenital.

Calendar and date management is paramount if your business is ever going to take on more clients. With new clients and jobs coming in on peak of existing work, just one missed appointment could result in significant losses.

And providing technicians with their own schedule and tasks for the twenty-four hour period enables them to prioritize accordingly and stay on track for the rest of the twenty-four hours'due south appointments. Punctuality is crucial for service industries.

Our information shows that 67 percent of customers will never rehire a service business if they're over an 60 minutes late to an appointment. And 36 per centum wouldn't rehire after 30 minutes late.

chart showing percentage of field service businesses requesting scheduling and dispatching capabilities

Cardinal considerations:

  • Consider a system with Google or Apple Calendar integration, as these are mutual scheduling platforms that might require less onboarding for users.
  • Smart scheduling capabilities enable users to optimize technician routes based on several factors, such as the location of each chore or the skillset of the technician.

2. Contact Management

What information technology does: Contact management capabilities enable users to input and organize valuable contact information (names, numbers, emails, social handles, etc.) as well every bit track previous communications and even automate future outreach.

Why you need it to start: Your clients are the lifeblood of your service business. And having easy access to their contact information is critical for efficient outreach. Contact management systems, if nothing else, offering an efficient means of storing, labeling, and filtering this information.

For example, many systems enable you to tag/label a contact so that they can be filtered for current, past, or even potential clients.

This level of detail enables contact management tools to offer automated outreach. This frees up operators to spend more than time on getting quality work done. Automated contact, or even just contact reminders, also makes it easier for service industries to nurture past clients for time to come business organisation.

chart showing percentage of field service businesses requesting contact management capabilities

Key considerations:

  • Look for contact direction capabilities featuring automated outreach through email scheduling.
  • Many systems contain notification capabilities to send reminders for customers that oasis't been contacted in some time.

3. Work Order Management

What it does: Piece of work order management helps your service business rail the status of a job from initial inquiry, through proposal and beginning, on to condition updates and completion.

Why yous need it to start: Work social club management capabilities take all those written job tickets and invoices and conveniently puts them into one hands attainable and manageable organization.

When a client wants to cheque in on the status of your piece of work, you can easily access the work social club to encounter contempo notes from technicians. This arrangement too helps hold technicians accountable for staying on track with their work.

Work lodge systems tin also help technicians stay new work orders for existing jobs. For instance, what if when cleaning an air vent (the stated chore for a work society) a technician finds that in that location are much bigger issues with the A/C unit?

With work guild software capabilities, the technician would be able to notation this and (upon consent of client) open up a new work order to ready the major issues.

chart showing percentage of field service businesses requesting work order management capabilities

Fundamental considerations:

  • Templated mobile forms tin enable technicians to easily record details on valuable chore and customer data. In the case of the example above, preset mobile forms could be used to record customer consent and open a new work social club.
  • Piece of work order software automatically organizes by work orders into hands attainable documents that can be pulled to reference by work for specific customers.

3 Field Service Software Features Yous Need to Grow

This section is for businesses looking to grow and calibration their business organization with anywhere from 10 to 100 field service software users.

4. Billing and Invoicing

What it does: Manage customer balances and transport invoices for payments.

Why you need it to grow: Your billing and invoicing process is the concluding step between yous and your coin. It needs to be executed flawlessly. And if you're looking to grow and constantly take on new business, that will put major stress on manual invoicing. This is a step that needs the efficiency and reliability of an automated system.

Think nigh the potential stages necessary to close out an invoice. There's the invoice generation, the initial sending, notification of receipt, potential followup communications or disputes, payment finalization and finally close out.

Well what if it's a repeated service for an account that pays a ready monthly or quarterly amount? The signal is there'due south a ton of moving parts to this virtually crucial task. Information technology needs to be automated as soon as possible.

chart showing percentage of field service businesses requesting billing and invoicing capabilities

Key considerations:

  • With customer consent, some systems enable you to relieve customer payment information so that you can simply consummate the transaction once the job is complete.
  • Some systems actual enable technicians to take mobile payments. This eliminates the demand for invoices all together and gets money to your business concern immediately afterwards a job is complete.

v. Mobile Capabilities

What it does: Enables communication between the back part and customers with technicians in the field. Provides technicians with tools and information necessary to optimize operations at each job site.

Why you need it to grow: Field service technicians are innately mobile, so it makes total sense that they'd be supported with mobile admission to data and tools from your field service management organization. These mobile capabilities might be phone-driven or tablet-driven, or even both.

But regardless the device, the capabilities and access to disquisitional data are becoming crucial for the connected success of mobile employees.

Only wait at how impactful the power to access contact information and contact customers can be.

Customer Likelihood To Rehire Late Technicians If Notified
chart showing customer likelihood to rehire late field service technicians if notified
Customer Attitudes Toward Late Technicians If Notified
chart showing customer attitudes toward late field service technicians if notified

Obviously you don't desire your technicians to be belatedly. But if they are going to be late, simply letting customers know is crucial to ratifying the negative implications. Mobile devices are enabling this.

Key considerations:

  • Many field service businesses opt for ruggedized tablets and phones. These are designed to take a beating externally while keeping all the internal gears inline and running fine.
  • Determine how exactly mobile employees will gain net access to utilize your business organisation' mobile apps. What would a data plan await similar for that? Or would it make sense to enable WiFi in your vehicles so that employees aren't using a ton of data?

half dozen. Reporting and Analytics

What it does: Collect, shop and analyze business data (customer/performance/financial etc.).

Why y'all demand it to grow: Information rules the concern globe these days. And rightfully and so, proper data analysis provides businesses with unprecedented insights and information for making informed, strategic decisions.

Reporting and analytics can also build crucial accountability into a growing field service business organization that'southward bringing on new talent. These individual functioning metrics can be compared against benchmarks to keep employees in the field accountable for their work.

chart showing percentage of field service businesses requesting reporting and analytics capabilities

Key considerations:

  • Many systems come up equipped with abiding, easy to read dashboards that can be customized to showcase central metrics and business concern functioning.
  • Mobile access to reporting capabilities can come in handy for checking up on the day'due south performance without logging into a computer.

three Field Service Software Features You lot Need to Optimize

This section is for firmly established service businesses looking to optimize their operations with more than than 100 field service software users.

7. Inventory Direction

What it does: Runway and manage the quantity of products and tools used for service.

Why you need information technology to optimize: Once you accomplish a point where you're servicing a bunch of customers across a wide expanse, you lot're going to need to have pinpoint accurateness on your inventory. If employees run out of a supply or a tool breaks, they need to know if they tin can come up back to the business to re-upwardly or if they need to acquire goods from a shop.

Some systems utilize this feature on a vehicle-to-vehicle level so that mobile employees and the back function knows what's stocked in each vehicle in the fleet. This helps the back office assign and dispatch jobs throughout the mean solar day.

For instance, if a van doesn't have a ladder listed on its inventory for whatever reason, they probably wouldn't be the best to assign for climbing on a roof.

chart showing percentage of field service businesses requesting inventory management capabilities

Central considerations:

  • Many service businesses piece of work with hazardous chemicals. These need to be carefully managed and possibly even regulated to encounter compliance standards.
  • Inventory levels should be able to be assault a vehicle-by-vehicle basis then mobile employees are alerted if they need more goods or specific tools in their vehicle.

8. GPS Tracking

What it does: Track vehicles throughout the day to aid with proper routing as well every bit ensure company property is existence used effectively and efficiently.

Why y'all need it to optimize: GPS tracking capabilities enable back offices to keep eyes on their employees and assets in the field. An accurate display of who is where and when allows dispatchers to orchestrate optimized job assignments and routing from job to job. This level of sight into the field also holds drivers accountable for coming together company standards while using company vehicles.

Even though GPS-enabled consumer mapping apps might work for smaller operations, our data shows the impressive financial implications of adopting service-oriented GPS tracking software.

Revenue-Boosting Benefits of GPS Tracking for SMBs
diagram showing the revenue boosting benefits of gps tracking for small and midsize field service businesses

As you lot tin run across, GPS tracking capabilities promote positive, profit-boosting performance. Many of these metrics also all touch on client experiences, which promotes greater referral rates and retention.

chart showing percentage of service order businesses that complete more work orders using gps tracking

Key considerations:

  • Some GPS tracking systems characteristic driver monitoring capabilities to measure speeds, acceleration and other metrics to ensure safe driving practices.
  • Some in-vehicle GPS capabilities can provide alternating routing to account for traffic.

nine. Mobile Payments and Signature Capture

What it does: Enable field technicians to procedure payments onsite upon the completion of a task likewise as tape client signatures acknowledging the work washed.

Why you need it to optimize: Invoicing for payment is an incredibly slow form of payment processing. Our previous report on the affair shows but how slow:

Full Days to Receive Payment Based on Frequency of Invoice Submission
diagram showing the total days to receive payment based on frequency of invoice submissions

So that's four days at the very to the lowest degree that a payment volition take, bold your service businesses invoices daily. These unpaid jobs can put stress on a service organization. Not to mention they innovate take a chance of non-payment.

One the other hand, the ability to complete the payment procedure immediately following the completion of a task enables businesses become that money equally presently as the bank processes the transaction.

Key considerations:

  • Depending on the nature of the task, mobile employees could upsell or schedule follow-upward appointments and add together that to the full.
  • Service businesses completing large transactions in the field on a regular basis might want to consider adopting EMV card readers to shed the liability of fraud coverage.

Next Steps For Field Service Businesses

Congratulations, you made it through and hopefully now have a meliorate idea of what field service management software capabilities yous need and when. This should get in much easier to assess all the field service management options out in that location and brand the best software decision for your operation.

We tin can actually relieve you even more fourth dimension in your software search. Check out the following resource to expedite and optimize your software selection process:

  • This free questionnaire volition assistance united states of america create a shortlist of the best field service direction systems that see your needs and conform your upkeep. Just tell the states about your business, and we'll narrow down all the products in our database to those best suited for you.
  • Bank check out the FrontRunners quadrant for field service management software. This is our proprietary list of top performing service solutions based on value and adequacy scores.
  • Visit our production listing folio to read user reviews from your field service operating peers. See what they have to say most the systems you are considering for your business organisation.