Field Service Management
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What is field service management software?
Field service management software (FSM software) 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
- Scheduling
- Fleet tracking
- Reporting and analytics
These features increase coordination between home office, warehouse, and field technicians, saving a company time and money while speeding transactions. These tools increase field service automation (FSA) to take the manual work out of office tasks like scheduling, dispatching, and skills matching.
Field service management companies experience three main pain points:
- disjointed communications
- over-scheduled resources
- under-skilled technicians
Field service management systems, when used properly, address all of these issues. This guide introduces the overall market and outlines the benefits and functionality every FSM solution should offer.
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The best field service management software
FSM systems help companies who manage installations, services, or repairs of systems and equipment, but they also benefit any company whose workers spend time in the field. Though telecommunications and cable service providers, utility engineers and inspectors, and HVAC workers are most commonly associated with field service work, the FSM user base is much broader. Mobile nurses, plumbers, maids, pest controllers, window cleaners, and any other kinds of field workers all need tools tailored to their unique challenges.
Field service management means juggling critical tickets, upset customers, and dynamic service routes and schedules. Furthermore, company-owned vehicles pose safety concerns, as well as fuel and maintenance costs. FSM systems promise specialized software that automates and streamlines tasks and enables 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 to the job, enable technician mobility, and provide real-time visibility into job status.
A good FSM system provides tools for:
- customer appointments, ticketing, order management
- complex scheduling and routing optimization
- worker activity management (driver logs, time tracking, job status updates)
- automatic vehicle location and driver safety
- inventory, accounting, and other back-office systems integration
Advanced programs offer complex document management, automated customer appointment reminders, project management, and CRM tools. Some solutions provide deep capabilities for a single function—like dispatch—while other systems offer more generalized features like customer portals, fleet management, or call center management. A company should asses their goals and needs and decide which features are essential before making a purchase.
Vendor analysis
Field service management software comparison
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The FSM market
The global field service management software market remains strong, with a valuation of $2.56 billion in 2018 and an expected growth rate of 16.6 percent year over year until 2023. While FSM adoption has increased significantly over the past decade, the market is ripe for innovation and movement to the cloud. As of 2016, nearly ¾ of the FSM software market was held by on-premise solutions, and the Americas held the greatest market share.
Software vendors who provide cloud solutions and cater to global customers will likely see the largest growth as the market expands in the next several years. We can also expect to see field service companies move from sales and operations software like CRM and ERP to FSM tools with the specialized features that best serve this growing industry.
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 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 of every size across industries fuels FSM software market growth. The combination of increased automation, lowered prices, and higher mobility have fueled the technology’s adoption and leave behind the companies who delay implementing the software.
Customers also notice the difference in the form of shorter wait times, better customer service, and faster job completion with companies who use field service management tools. Customers now expect better service across the board. 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 one case study in the home health industry a field service management software increased employee productivity by 33 percent, reduced calls to dispatch by 60 percent, and increased fuel efficiency by 32 percent.
Customer Service and Experience
Improving your customer experience has a direct positive effect on customer lifetime value and revenue. A field service management tool not only increases the accuracy of scheduling and dispatching, but streamlines the processing of quotes and work orders between the technician and the home office.
Before today’s advanced integrated and mobile field service systems, the technician or company representative in the field worked alone and mostly cut off from the home office where jobs, parts, available labor, and payments were 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.
Technicians also 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, higher vehicle costs, and a higher likelihood of human error. Reducing any of these problems could result in increased customer satisfaction.
Modern FSM systems provide seamless technician-to-office communication through mobile apps that manage electronic work orders, automated dispatch, and streamlined scheduling. These apps also provide real-time updates to inventory management systems where technicians can request parts instead of racing to the warehouse. Streamlining the clerical processes both in the field and at the office, frees technicians 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 physical stock counts at 3 AM. Using barcodes, scanners, RFID tags, and Internet of Things (IoT)-connected devices, companies keep better track of their material assets and run leaner warehouses.
So 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 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 to be restocked most often, those that sit idle on the shelves, and those that are constantly under order. These data points 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, and 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. Because they receive notifications of potential issues, the company has time to repair or replace parts when it’s convenient rather than when it’s an emergency.
These innovations drive the move from emergency repair to just-in-time maintenance across the service industry. Customers no longer have to wait in a sweltering office with a broken HVAC system or reschedule a much-needed medical procedure because of mechanical failure. Service companies spend less time responding to emergencies and spend more time providing actual services that enhance their customers’ experiences.
Work order management
Work orders have been both the lifeblood and stumbling block for service companies since their early days. Work orders 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. Office and technical staff can easily make new work orders and quickly search existing digital work orders. 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.
Digital work orders not only remove a lot of the office desk clutter, they also streamline work for technicians and office crew. Automatic transfers send a work order to a technician on the go without needing to physically check in at the office, and upon completion of the job, 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 hours on end for your HVAC service to show up, and your cable guy arrives on time or ahead of schedule now. You can thank 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. When customers are more likely to refer a company to their friends, they’re also more likely to come back as repeat customers. And repeat customers relieve some of the pressure on sales and marketing teams to make up for customer churn with net-new business.
Route tracking and vehicle maintenance
Field service companies often run a fleet of vehicles to ensure on-time delivery of services. With those vehicles come the extra headaches of vehicle maintenance, repair, and route optimization. A good FSM software will include features that address all of these issues.
In order to keep company service vehicles in working order, preventative maintenance like oil changes and tire rotations can be tracked and scheduled in an FSM. This lets companies plan for the temporary absence of a vehicle within the larger service schedule. A planned maintenance schedule means that the company doesn’t have to scramble to cover jobs when vehicles go to the shop.
Vehicles that go in for regularly scheduled maintenance experience unexpected major repairs less often. Companies can plan their financial and job schedule to fit upcoming repairs. In the event of an unexpected repair or accident, the company can use a visual scheduler to quickly see conflicting service jobs and schedule appropriate vehicle resources to cover them.
As an added bonus, a field service software that includes route optimization features can quickly plan the best route for daily service or readjust for one-off needs due to repairs and maintenance. Route optimization also saves the company on gas and unnecessary time in traffic by mapping out the best route between jobs.
Why choose field service management software over other options
Field service management software is built for teams that spend the majority of their time outside of the main office, warehouse, or manufacturing plant. But other than mobile capabilities, why should you choose a field service management software over other options?
Field service software vs. enterprise resource planning (ERP) software
Although not necessarily the case, FSM systems often cost less to implement and maintain than enterprise resource planning software solutions. FSM and ERP tools both combine CRM, time clock, payroll, inventory, and even marketing tools into one convenient interface, but industry-specific features set them apart.
Field service management tools include features specifically suited to field service companies. Most FSM software includes a mobile app for technicians and their managers to use in the field, while most ERP systems require a browser or desktop app to interface with the software. FSM tools may also include GPS tracking, geofencing, and route mapping to help field service companies track their technicians. Inventory and supply chain features are more robust for many ERP systems, where they are less fully-featured for FSM systems.
Field service software vs. customer relationship management (CRM) software
While a field service management software will often include client or customer management tools, these systems are built for very different purposes.
Depending on the CRM’s capabilities, this software is designed to manage contacts and communication records as they pertain to those contacts. CRMs can be highly complex databases that track all sorts of interactions on websites, emails, text messages, and even phone calls and can differentiate between leads, prospects, current customers, and former customers.
Compare this with FSM software, which is designed to manage contacts within the context of the services the company performs for them. While many FSM tools include lead management and sales features, they traditionally manage current customer interactions. You’ll find that field service tools track customer information pertinent to the completion of a job rather than the information needed to line up the next sale. Thankfully, many field service management tools integrate with CRM software to ensure a seamless movement from lead to customer.
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 feature requirements, examine the following key factors in your FSM software choices:
Price
In order to determine your budget for FSM, you must 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 (cloud, hybrid, or on-premise)
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 extended franchises, enterprises, and businesses with complex processes that require customized systems. In some cases, costs are 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. With cheap and widely available mobile technology and increased demand for affordable technology solutions for small businesses, SaaS adoption has also risen. SaaS solutions are not only attractive to SMBs looking for their first system. They also tempt 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 actions, automation helps businesses get more done faster because it reduces the need for humans to perform manual actions. So, when a technician completes a work order on-site or a customer signs off on a quote, the documentation is sent directly to the appropriate office worker, who can then begin the financial processing.
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.
What you should look for in enterprise, third-party, and SMB field service management 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 captured in the field 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 more 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 for 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 expense 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 if the issue was even resolved—until they start receiving complaints from customers. FSM software for outsourced services provides visibility into contractor service delivery and makes third-party technicians indistinguishable from an organization’s internal workforce.
Companies can manage their contractors and related administrative tasks through vendor portals within their FSM software. Just as with traditional field workers, contractors need 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. These portals exist outside of the main company interface, so company data remains secure but everyone can access what they need.
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 a wide set of useful features to SMBs at an affordable price. SMBs value ease of use and scalability.
SMBs can choose from a wide range of vendors. 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. Despite the price difference, SMBs can still find great systems that automate processes, let customers book appointments, schedule and dispatch workers, and track time and location.
Who uses field service management software
Technicians
Most FSM software systems include a mobile app where technicians can access all of the pertinent functions right in the field from their mobile device. From the technician interface, individuals can receive notifications from dispatch, log invoices, take payments, order new parts, check inventory, and schedule follow-up visits to the customer. These features reduce the amount of paperwork the company manages, increases the speed between work quoted, completed, and paid for, and reduces the mistakes that happen because of misplaced paperwork or poor verbal communication.
Look for these mobile-ready features:
- Scheduling
- Invoicing
- Quote
- Payments
- Inventory lookup and reservations
Team managers
A team manager’s most important function is to quickly and efficiently coordinate technicians’ movements between and within jobs. From a field service app, team managers can ensure that the technicians are matched with the right job for their skills, that the team makes the best use of their time moving between jobs, and that each member of the team is following safety and company protocols. A field service software will show team leaders the schedule for each of their technicians, an overview of the jobs they are responsible for, and will drill down into the specific tasks expected of each team member. Most FSM apps will provide these views from a mobile app, so the team manager can spend his time in the field rather than in the office.
Look for these mobile-ready features:
- Scheduling
- Team job view
- Inventory
- Payments
- Contracts and quotes
- Dispatching access
Dispatchers
If the field service company is a body, then the dispatcher is the brain. These individuals are responsible for scheduling technicians to the best-fit job while also juggling task urgency, timelines, and team work schedules. The more that these tasks are automated and governed by preset rules, the easier it is for the dispatcher to build a solid schedule. Automated scheduling tools also free dispatchers from time-consuming scheduling tasks so they can manage emergent situations that need quick analysis.
Look for these features:
- Automated or rule-based scheduling
- Drag and drop scheduling
- Multiple calendar views including day, week, month, and job
- Organization by technician specialty
- Automatic text or phone call notifications
Financial staff
Bookkeepers, accountants, and tax professionals need full access to every touchpoint through the financial lifecycle. A field service management software can streamline and digitize the payment process, making transactions searchable and easy to port over to an accounting software. An FSM software can also track digital time cards for all employees and pass this information to a payroll or accounting software, greatly reducing the number of hours the staff spends on payroll every month.
Look for these features:
- Online invoicing
- Mobile payments
- Digital quote
- Accounting or bookkeeping software integration
- Payroll software integration
- Time clock features
Customer experience staff
While technicians deal directly with customers in the field, many field service companies also employ customer experience staff to manage their customer support. These individuals need access to the entire customer profile and job history to understand job status without taking the technician’s time away from current jobs. They should have direct communication and visibility into the scheduling features to take some pressure off the dispatch, as well.
Look for these features:
- Customer relationship management (CRM) module
- Helpdesk module
- Email integration
- Automated scheduling
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. TechnologyAdvice can help you find software with the right features for your company.
Call our Technology Advisors today at 877.822.9526 for a free software assessment. You tell us the features you need, and we’ll give you recommendations that fit your budget. It only takes 5 minutes! Or get started by clicking the banner at the top of the page.
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- Which Field Service Management solution is right for your business?
- Find out now