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F ield Service Management, or FSM for short, is becoming an increasingly important framework when it comes to coordinating organisational productivity. Cost savings combined with high quality, reliability and maximum safety for your field staff are clear advantages.

This extends to minimal waiting times for your customers, the predictability of possible problems and low idle time are positive results of FSM. To benefit from these advantages, it is important that you choose a competent and reliable solution. Learn how to recognise brilliant field service management in this article.

EFFICIENT DEPLOYMENT PLANNING WITH THE RIGHT SOFTWARE

Brilliant field service management goes hand in hand with intelligent staff scheduling software. After all, scheduling is a decisive factor in determining time and financial resources. It is also relevant for the well-being and safety of your staff. Many technicians working in the field usually also mean a lot of administrative work. A very good FSM solution helps you keep an organisational big picture. You know where your employees are at any given moment and which technician is in the vicinity in case of urgent requests from customers. This saves time, costs and also ensures satisfied customers who receive support quickly. Another plus point is the fact that your employees have more time with the customers due to the savings. This increases the chance of completing orders in one visit and not having to make another trip.

COMPLIANT HANDLING OF CUSTOMER DATA

Your customers naturally have demands on you and expect your employees to be on site at the desired time and to attend to their concerns. To remain competent and offer a quick contact person for your customers, collected and pre-processed data will help. Data analysis is an important tool for optimising your own processes. Nevertheless, brilliant field service management also stands for sensitive handling of your customers' data. Good FSM never violates existing data protection laws and is able to manage customer data in such a way that it is always protected and secure.

KNOW AND CONTROL STOCK LEVELS

Stock levels need to be controlled and managed regularly to minimise waiting times and bottlenecks. Good field service management systems therefore include a stock management system. Stocks can be called up and inventories, as well as used resources, can be monitored. Especially when numerous employees are working in the field, it can be a challenge to always keep accurate records of current stocks. An integrated warehouse management system saves you a lot of time here and reports low stock levels.

FAST AND CLEAR ORDER PLACEMENT

Order placement is fundamental to successful field work. Schedules and rapidly changing requirements are just some of the challenges you face. Excellent field service management solutions make order placement much more efficient using software developed specifically for this purpose. Managing orders with FSM not only helps you save costs, but also reduces the time spent by your field service staff. Good field service management can optimise order placement so that your staff are able to take more orders and respond to emergencies and other unforeseen situations.

COMMUNICATION WITH FIELD STAFF AND CUSTOMERS

To run your business to smoothly, strong communication with your field staff, as well as with your customers, is essential. Excellent field service management facilitates communication between you and the employees who are currently on the road. The right software enables you to automatically and directly exchange information with your employees about schedules, changes and completed orders. This is possible, for example, via (push) messages or calls, which are also documented to keep your administrative costs as low as possible. But you can also coordinate and log the receipt of calls from your customers much more quickly with good FSM.

QUOTATIONS AND INVOICES

Customer enquiries require a quick response at best and results in a meaningful quotation. Brilliant FSM enables your field staff to respond quickly to customer enquiries. In addition, intelligent software solutions find the right employee to carry out the order, issue invoices and record the final service documentation and invoicing digitally and in a time-saving manner.

Further reading:
Optimal route planning with Google Maps? 5 reasons this is impossible
Workforce Management drives Field Service efficiency
Route scheduling: outpacing timesheets and Excel