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very Scheduling and Dispatch team knows reactive maintenance and repair works generate unforeseen costs for you and your customers. Customers cannot operate their businesses, SLAs are strict, and budgets are stressed. Field service management software empowers technicians and field engineers to attend emergency callouts and appointments whilst controlling costs. Whether an in-house fleet or a preferred supplier, it’s possible to remain profitable and offer high service standards, even when some maintenance is simply unavoidable. In this post we’ll introduce the basics of cost management in the reactive repairs market.
WHAT IS REACTIVE MAINTENANCE?
Reactive maintenance in homes, housing or commercial premises (facilities management) is a necessary reaction to equipment producing unplanned or unexpected results. When you consider that this can involve storm damage (structural), a faulty door entry system (electrical), or even a gas leak (a danger to life), it’s easy to see how such tickets can arrive 24/7. Often this evokes a crisis response from tenants and building managers, and in certain cases, the knock-on effects mean disruption, such as moving people away from their homes or place of work.
WHY IS REACTIVE MAINTENANCE SO COSTLY TO FIELD SERVICE?
As a provider of skilled technicians and engineers, how an organisation manages its facilities and estate has a direct bearing on your workload and profits. Backlogs, parts, and business continuity costs will escalate when you’re called upon to provide service quickly—it's clearly preferable to mitigate these risks with
scheduled predictive maintenance and the analytics to match. For field service response companies, reactive management practices are known to generate cost through calls to recurrent asset failures, imprecise responsibility, more work for dispatch and scheduling teams, and an uninspired field workforce.
WHAT ARE THE COST RISKS TO HOME AND HOUSING FIELD SERVICES?
Further, for the unescapable, unscheduled repair, you must question the longer-term opportunity costs associated with your contract and how these financial impacts are accounted for on your balance sheet. Which customer appointments will you delay or reschedule to attend this job? What are the travel and time costs in your reaction? Can you meet an SLA? What is the reputational cost? Does the response require a part that you stock, or a unit replacement or loan that requires specialised logistics?