5 Ways How FSM Software Bolsters Your Field Services

Vadim Zakharikov
PlanadoApp
Published in
4 min readOct 7, 2022

More and more field service providers are now choosing to automate their business processes. According to a recent Markets & Markets report, the field service management (FSM) market will reach $5.7 billion by 2026 at a CAGR of 11.9%.

Why are software solutions for the field industry quickly gaining in popularity? Obviously, there are sound reasons for that, and here are just a few of them.

Get rid of paperwork

Manual reporting and Excel sheets are what many organizations got used to. However, if your employees spend precious time filling out forms and reports after each job they complete, you might want to introduce some automation to speed up this process. Field service management software liberates your staff from the burden of manual paperwork and, therefore, helps increase productivity.

With FSM software, shifting to paperless processes is a no-brainer. Your field employees will simply need to download and use a mobile app to make reports. Some solutions also provide an automatic reporting function that shows statistics on the completed assignments as well as average completion time and other customizable parameters. Such functionality can be extremely useful when evaluating the performance of your technicians.

Upscale field operations easily

If your business is gaining traction, you might want to invest in upscaling your operations, hiring more employees, expanding coverage, and so on. But while doing so, it’s very easy to end up with a mess, especially if your management system can no longer keep up with the company’s growth.

FSM software can help you deal with the increased workload and quickly adapt your resources to the growing needs of the company. Moreover, by bringing together and structuring large amounts of data, such as workers’ schedules and locations, you can increase the transparency and manageability of your field operations.

Another issue when scaling up is providing training to new employees as well as some guidance afterward, which can also be covered by an FSM solution. For example, you can create custom checklists with the required steps for various types of services provided. A job can only be completed when the employee ticks all the boxes on the checklist, thus making sure he or she doesn’t miss anything. This is an easy and efficient way to guide your new employees and help them follow the requirements.

Boost employees’ performance

Poor performance of field workers can become a daunting issue for many field service companies. Sometimes technicians may be lacking the motivation to complete as many jobs per day as possible. In some cases, they may even report that a particular assignment took longer than it did and thus get some extra time for side activities.

FMS software with time- and GPS-tracking features can help you better control field employees and their activities in real time, which ultimately results in the increased number of jobs your technicians can complete a day. For example, you will be able to see that an employee has left the workplace even if they didn’t hit the “Complete” button. You can also check the complete log of their actions in the app, which is helpful for the evaluation process or in case some issues arise.

Enhance service quality

If the quality of the delivered services is a top priority for your company, you probably won’t choose to sacrifice your high standards for a larger number of completed jobs. Instead, you would want to strike the balance between productivity and quality. In the long run, caring about quality is certain to result in customer loyalty and a solid brand reputation.

With FSM software, monitoring and maintaining service quality is made easier, both for managers and employees. For example, guidelines and checklists provide uniformity and prevent technicians from missing any crucial steps.

Another efficient way to ensure high service quality is to take photos of the completed job as one of the required steps. Finally, FSM apps enable technicians to quickly contact managers or customers to get all the necessary information and thus do their best to fulfill the task.

Improve communication

Smooth and unintrusive interaction with customers is probably one of the most crucial points for field service companies. If it’s timely, polite, and meaningful, one can expect that customers will be more satisfied with the services than otherwise. Automating this process might help eliminate plenty of issues such as missed appointments or lack of feedback opportunities.

Luckily, a huge part of interactions with clients can be fitted into standard patterns, and therefore can be easily automated with FMS software. For example, a system can automatically send out sms notifications to customers to remind them of a forthcoming appointment, notify them of a technician’s approaching, collect feedback, and so on.

Final thoughts

Modern FSM solutions like Planado are more than just handy tracking apps. By tapping into greater visibility of the processes and employees’ activities, you can turn your entire field operations into a transparent and easy-to-manage system. This results in higher service quality, improved productivity, and, eventually, increased profits.

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