TechnologyAdvice Buyer's Guide to Field Service Management Software

Updated: Dec. 7th, 2018

What is Field Service Management Software?

Field service management software (FSM software) is a system that helps companies deliver effective onsite service by tracking requests, managing personnel, and maintaining visibility into operations. Common field service management software features include work order management, inventory management, dispatch and scheduling, fleet tracking, and reporting. These features serve to increase the coordination between home office, warehouse, and field technicians, saving the company time and money overall and speeding transactions. What many of these tools strive for is to increase field service automation (FSA) to take the manual work out of scheduling, dispatching, and skills matching. The hope of all FSM software is to enable the company to move information more smoothly between the home office, warehouse, and field workers.

Three main pain points exist for field service management companies:

• disjointed communications
• over-scheduled resources
• under-skilled technicians

The technology covered in this guide, when used properly, can address all of these issues. This guide introduces the overall market, benefits, and functionality every FSM solution should offer.

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The Best Field Service Management Software

FSM systems aren’t limited to companies who need to manage installations, services, or repairs of systems and equipment. Though telecommunications and cable service providers, utility engineers and inspectors, and HVAC workers are most commonly associated with field service work, the industry is much broader. Healthcare companies that provide mobile nurses, plumbers, maid services, pest control, window cleaners, and any other service company with field workers all need tools tailored to the unique challenges field work presents.

Field service management requires continuously balancing critical tickets, upset customers, and dynamic service routes and schedules. Furthermore, the addition of vehicles brings safety and driver concerns, as well as fuel and maintenance costs. The promise of FSM is that implementing specialized software that automates and streamlines tasks will enable executives to focus on growing the business, not managing minutiae.

Simply put, FSM software combines many functions into one unified solution that helps schedule and track field operations. At minimum, a field service management system must be able to receive service requests, schedule and assign a skilled technician, enable technician mobility, and provide real-time visibility into job status.

A good FSM system provides tools for:

• customer appointments, trouble ticketing, order management
• complex scheduling and routing optimization
• managing worker activity (driver logs, time tracking, job status updates)
• automatically locating vehicles and ensuring driver safety
• integrating with inventory, accounting, and other back-office systems

Advanced programs will offer complex document management, automated customer appointment reminders, and project management or CRM tools. Some solutions may focus more heavily on one function— like dispatch — while other systems will offer customer portals, fleet management, or call center management. A company’s goals and needs will ultimately determine which features are essential and what type of solution is best.

Vendor Analysis

Field Service Management Software Comparison

• Product
  
  Field One
  • category
    Enterprise
  • pricing tier
    quote
  • mobile app
    yes
  • free trial
    no
  • analytics
    yes
• Product
  
  ServiceMax
  • category
    Enterprise,
    SMB
  • pricing tier
    quote
  • mobile app
    yes
  • free trial
    no
  • analytics
    yes
• Product
  
  Jobber
  • category
    SMB
  • pricing tier
    average
  • mobile app
    yes
  • free trial
    yes
  • analytics
    no
• Product
  
  ServiceFusion
  • category
    SMB
  • pricing tier
    average
  • mobile app
    yes
  • free trial
    no
  • analytics
    yes
• Product
  
  mHelpDesk
  • category
    SMB
  • pricing tier
    quote
  • mobile app
    yes
  • free trial
    yes
  • analytics
    no
• Product
  RazorSync
  • category
    Enterprise,
    SMB
  • pricing tier
    average
  • mobile app
    yes
  • free trial
    yes
  • analytics
    yes
• Product
  KickServ
  • category
    SMB
  • pricing tier
    average
  • mobile app
    yes
  • free trial
    yes
  • analytics
    yes
    Premium
    
• Product
  Verizon Connect
  • category
    Enterprise,
    SMB
  • pricing tier
    quote
  • mobile app
    yes
  • free trial
    no
  • analytics
    yes
• Product
  Synchroteam
  • category
    SMB
  • pricing tier
    average
  • mobile app
    yes
  • free trial
    yes
  • analytics
    no
• Product
  Fleetio
  • category
    Enterprise,
    SMB
  • pricing tier
    average
  • mobile app
    yes
  • free trial
    no
  • analytics
    yes
• Product
  ServiceBridge
  • category
    Franchise,
    SMB
  • pricing tier
    quote
  • mobile app
    yes
  • free trial
    yes
  • analytics
    yes
• Product
  CollectiveData
  • category
    Enterprise,
    SMB
  • pricing tier
    quote
  • mobile app
    no
  • free trial
    no
  • analytics
    yes

The FSM Market

The global field service management software market remains strong, with a valuation of $1.7 billion in 2016 and an expected compound annual growth rate of 10 percent through 2025.  While FSM adoption has increased significantly over the past decade, the market itself is highly fragmented and may be underreported because FSM software is often privately held or reported as part of the ERP market. No one clear vendor leader stands out in any regional market or globally for these systems, which can take a variety of forms:

• Best-of-breed vendors that offer standalone field service management solutions for field workforce optimization, dispatch, or fleet management processes.
• Vendors that provide most of an end-to-end FSM suite (although all components are not necessarily best-in-class).
• Niche vendors offering add-on field mobility solutions to enterprises, or platforms focused primarily on a single industry or small-to-medium businesses (SMBs).

Historically, CRM and ERP solutions have failed to address the explicit needs of the field service industry. Out of necessity, FSM technology was created to help automate field service operations to improve both efficiency and visibility with these features:

• Complex scheduling and dispatch
• Remote inventory management
• Customer and work order management
• Tracking and performance

Rapid adoption from businesses across industries and of every size is fueling FSM software market growth. The combination of increased automation, lowered price, and higher mobility have fueled the technology’s adoption and made it so that companies who delay implementing the software are left behind.

Customers notice the difference as well: they experience shorter wait times, better customer service, and faster time to completion with companies who use field service management tools, and now come to expect those norms. In response, companies now demand real-time tracking, strong collaboration between office and field workers, and other tools and enhancements that allow technicians to accomplish their tasks without any delay or interruption— all at an affordable price.

Features and Benefits of FSM Systems

Successful field service management operations play a critical role in customer satisfaction and loyalty. These apps help field service companies communicate with technicians in the field, electronically manage work orders, order and balance warehouse inventory, and more. The effect of these management tools is to increase technician time with customers, reduce the technician’s back and forth between the site and the office, and speed time to delivery and payment. According to Oracle, companies who implement a field service management solution complete nearly 50 percent more jobs in a day and increase customer satisfaction rates to 98 percent.

Customer Service and Experience

According to Forrester Research, 73 percent of customers in 2016 said that the most important point of customer service is time: those companies that appear to not value the customer’s time risk losing even the most loyal of customers. A field service management tool not only increases the accuracy for scheduling and dispatch, but streamlines the processing of quotes and work orders between the technician and the home office, which pays off in positive customer experience.

Before today’s advanced integrated and mobile field service systems, the technician or company representative in the field worked pretty much alone and cut off from the home office where jobs, parts, available labor, and payments are coordinated. To request a part from the warehouse, the technician would need to call in. If they finished a job early, coordinating an early arrival to the next job was tedious and time consuming. Not to mention the technician had to check in to the office every morning and afternoon to pick up work orders and file paperwork, no matter the location of the job site. All of this back and forth resulted in increased wait times and a higher likelihood of human error–frustrating situations for the customer.

Modern FSM systems provide seamless communication through mobile apps including electronic work orders, automated dispatch and scheduling, and real-time updates to inventory management systems where technicians can request parts instead of racing to the warehouse. By streamlining the office-critical processes both in the field and at the office, technicians are freed to give timely and helpful service with minimal delays and increased customer satisfaction.

Inventory

Inventory management tools have come a long way from spreadsheets and 3 AM counts. Using barcodes and scanners, RFID tags, and Internet of Things (IoT)-connected devices, companies are keeping better track of their material assets than ever and running warehouses leaner. How does all this innovation affect a field service company’s software? A real-time view of the company’s available and on-order inventory lets technicians better judge the time to complete a job, reduce the number of trips to and from the warehouse, and even carry a store of commonly-used parts.

Inventory management features within an FSM software give field service companies the freedom to reduce warehouse stores. Field service management software can provide essential data on the parts that need restocked most often, those that sit idle on the shelves, and those that are constantly under order. These data help home offices order intelligently to reduce inventory and overhead warehousing costs.

Move to preventative maintenance

One of the most exciting trends driven by FSM software is the move from reactive to preventative maintenance, fueled by the software’s analytic capabilities and the proliferation of data from connected devices and IoT products. Using IoT-connected devices, the service company can collect feedback about a machine’s working systems. The software then uses machine learning to better understand the machine’s status and can alert the service company to any potential threats to performance. This technology goes beyond ensuring that the service company’s vehicles stay in top shape, but can extend to IoT-connected private and industrial HVAC, medical devices in hospitals and private practices, and any other mechanical, internet-connected device used by a service company. The company then has time to repair or replace parts when it’s convenient rather than when it’s an emergency.

These innovations are driving the move from emergency repair to just-in-time maintenance across the service industry. This means that customers no longer have to wait in a sweltering office or reschedule a much-needed medical procedure because of mechanical failure. Service companies spend less time responding to emergencies and can spend more time providing actual services that enhance their customer experience.

Work order management

Work orders have been both the lifeblood and stumbling block for service companies since their early days. Work orders help communicate job details and invoicing between technicians, office workers, and customers, but as with most paper filing systems, they are notoriously unreliable. Without a highly organized filing system, work orders quickly stack up, get lost, or go unfulfilled.

FSM software seeks to solve many of the problems companies encounter with paper work orders by digitizing the whole system. Digital work orders are easy to create by all office and technical staff, and the databases where they live are easily searchable. Automation further eases the work order process by sending completed work orders directly to invoicing or the customer when completed, and a few clicks of a button can assign the right technicians to the right job.

The real promise of digital work orders is that they not only remove a lot of the office desk clutter, but they also streamline work for technicians and office crew. Automatic transfers mean that a technician can receive a work order on the go without needing to physically check in at the office, and when a job is complete the technician can move directly to the next assignment without stopping off to drop off paperwork.

Scheduling and dispatch

You may have noticed that you’re no longer waiting for hours on end for your HVAC service to show up, and your cable guy arrives on time or ahead of schedule now. These upgrades are due to advanced field service management tools that let dispatchers see technician locations and coordinate scheduling more accurately than ever before. Workers in the field can move more quickly between more jobs while still increasing the accuracy of service.

Field service companies reap these rewards in higher customer satisfaction, more technician time on the job, and more jobs completed per day. Oracle’s New Rules for Field Service Management also reports an overall improvement in company Net Promoter Score (NPS) as a benefit of scheduling and dispatch tools that streamline office interactions for customer benefit. When customers are more likely to refer a company to their friends, they’re also more likely to stick around, relieving some of the pressure on sales and marketing teams to make up for customer churn with net-new business.

How to Compare Field Service Management Software

Since systems vary significantly from vendor to vendor, it’s important to understand your needs before you conduct a field service management software comparison. By identifying pain points at the outset, you can decide which features are non-negotiable for your FSM system. Vetting vendors is a difficult process, and many solutions begin to blur together when evaluating options. After you’ve identified your features requirements, it’s important to examine the following key factors when selecting FSM software:

Price

In order to determine your budget for FSM, it’s important to understand the possible pricing models. Cost can depend on a variety of factors, including:

• Number of users, admins, or seats
• Company size (multiple locations or franchises)
• Pay-per-employee / field worker
• Business needs
• Training, setup fees, data storage needs, technical support
• System customizations
• Deployment type

It’s best to estimate costs a few different ways so you’re prepared to compare pricing and avoid surprises. Depending on pricing structure, costs can range between $75-$2,000 per month. However, pricing could be higher for enterprises or businesses with complex processes that require customized systems, or in some cases lower for a business simply looking to automate dispatch. When determining a budget, it’s helpful to have a range in mind, rather than a firm number.

Deployment

Software can be deployed on-premise, hosted through a web browser as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), or a hybrid of the two. The proliferation of mobile technology and demand for affordable solutions for small businesses has fueled SaaS adoption. SaaS solutions are not only attractive to SMBs looking for their first system, but also enterprises ready to upgrade their existing methods. Data access, customizations, long term total cost of ownership, and the need to integrate with existing software— like CRM or HR systems — can help determine which solution is best for your business.

Mobility

Mobility is a critical requirement for the field service management industry. A 2017 survey by IDC Manufacturing insights reported that 56 percent of manufacturers use mobile devices to support their field service management initiatives. From supporting logistics to completing paperwork faster, mobile apps and devices are now an expected tool, and FSM companies have started using mobility to:

• Improve communication and provide real-time analysis of mobile work status
• Analyze technician skill set and location to send the closest capable worker
• Increase first-time-fix rate
• Enhance customer service and loyalty
• Reduce overhead or administration costs associated with paper-based process and data entry
• Increase productivity, streamline workflow, and shorten billing cycles

Though most FSM vendors offer some degree of mobile access, more advanced systems that offer offline access, geolocation, and other features are becoming commonplace.

Automation

Automation is finding its way into business software and consumer technology across nearly every industry because it’s just so darn useful. Based on a system of triggers and reactions, automation helps businesses get more done faster because it reduces the needs for humans to perform manual actions. So, when a work order is completed on-site or a customer signs off on a quote, the documentation gets sent directly to the appropriate office worker who can then begin the financial processing to get work started.

And automation is more than just sending the right paperwork to the right hands. We now see more complex automated systems in field service management solutions that combine technician mapping, mobile work order apps, and automated task management that can move technicians between jobs and assignments at optimized rates throughout the day, rather than relying on human dispatchers to coordinate each task.

3 Tiers of FSM Software

I. Enterprise

For large organizations, increasing visibility between the field and office is paramount. A field service management system that integrates with existing CRM or ERP systems is critical, as information that is captured in the field often needs to be available across several departments. Enterprises, especially those with multiple fleets, should focus on integrating information across all business units.

Mobile field workers should be able to access back-office systems or information outside the office. Technicians with mobile devices can easily view jobs, service history, and customer information. Additionally, workers in the field should be able to request additional time on a jobsite, record asset details and parts usage, view manuals, and instantly chat or collaborate with dispatchers, managers, and nearby colleagues.

In the office, FSM software allows dispatchers to automatically build service schedules based on technician skill sets, location, and historical job duration data. It should also include travel optimization that factors in traffic to find the shortest route. Customers should be able to choose a service time that is convenient to them, as well as receive notifications on their technicians’ scheduled time to reduce no-shows.

II. Third-Party Field Services

Businesses that rely on outside contractors or third-party service providers for field work require the same functionality as enterprise businesses, but client details and visibility are even more important. Outsourcing field services, whether partially or in full, can help companies reduce labor costs and expand operations. However, these benefits often come at the risk of customer service.

After a job is assigned to a contractor, many companies have no way to know when a service is delivered, how long it took, or even if the issue was resolved— until complaints from customers are received. FSM software for outsourced services provides visibility into contractor service delivery and makes third-party technicians indistinguishable from an organization’s internal workforce.

This is done through third-party vendor portals used to manage contracted work and related administrative tasks. Just like with traditional field workers, contractors need the same real-time access to work order information and parts availability, as well as the ability to report back quickly on service delivery and submit claims. Customer calls that require a technician on site can be dispatched by a company to its own technicians or to a local service partner.

Providing two-way interaction with outside employees allows service companies to issue last-minute schedule changes to the contractors, provide updates to customers about technician arrival times, monitor work orders to ensure SLA compliance, and even create opportunities for optimized scheduling and planning.

III. Small Business

Growing small-to-medium businesses with mobile employees need automated processes and tools to efficiently manage field workers, increase productivity, and increase visibility. Though smaller companies may only require dispatch software or fleet management at first, cloud-based solutions offer scalability and can bring robust functionality to SMBs at an affordable price. For SMBs, ease of use and scalability are important factors.

SMBs have no shortage of vendors from which they can choose. Many niche companies offer solutions specifically designed for non-enterprise businesses, and many enterprise FSM software vendors have launched their own FSM product lines tailored to SMBs.

Functionality for SMB field service management software is very similar to enterprise software, though advanced scheduling, analytics, and technical support may be limited or only offered as add-ons. SMBs can still find great systems that automate processes, let customers book appointments, schedule and dispatch workers, and track time and location.

Choosing The Best Field Service Management Software

FSM software is a highly complex landscape with so many options to choose from, it can be confusing to even begin looking at which vendors might be right for your company. But that’s what TechnologyAdvice does best!

Call our Technology Advisors today at 877.822.9526 for a free needs assessment where you tell us the features you need and we’ll give you recommendations. It only takes 5 minutes! Or get started by clicking the banner at the top of the page.

• • Which Field Service Management solution is right for your business?
  • Find out now