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Why Should Your Company Consider Automating Field Service Operations?

6 min read

Field Service Automation allows you to streamline your field operations to boost the overall efficiency and productivity of your mobile workforce. It also helps you centralize all your company’s data and makes that data accessible to all teams at all times.

Field Service Automation: Why Should Your Company Consider Automating Field Service Operations?
Field service operations are a vital component of any company that provides installation, repair, and maintenance services to customers. However, manual field service management can be a daunting task that can often lead to errors, delays, and reduced productivity. That’s where field service automation comes in, which is the process of using digital tools and technologies to manage and optimize field service operations.

According to TSIA,  around 52% of service companies still use manual methods for the bulk of their field service tasks.  So it’s likely that your competitors haven’t rested their pens and papers yet. Field Service Automation goes beyond savings and productivity gains, it can give a competitive edge to your business.

Field service automation software, also known as field force automation solutions, provides companies with a range of features such as scheduling and dispatching, job management, real-time tracking, and reporting. By leveraging these capabilities, companies can streamline their operations, reduce costs, and improve customer satisfaction.

Here are some statistics that demonstrate the benefits of field service automation:

– According to a report by MarketsandMarkets, the global field service management market is expected to grow from $2.8 billion in 2020 to $5.9 billion by 2025, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 16.2% during the forecast period.

– A study by Aberdeen Group found that companies using field service management software experienced a 27% increase in service profitability.

– According to a report by Salesforce, companies using field service automation software saw a 27% increase in first-time fix rate, a 39% increase in technician productivity, and a 45% increase in customer satisfaction.

By adopting field service automation, your company can improve your service delivery, reduce costs, and enhance customer satisfaction. Further you can enhance your service delivery and remain competitive. Whether you’re a medium size business or a large enterprise, field service automation can help you improve your operations, reduce manual errors, and enhance customer experience.

In this blog post, we will delve deeper into the benefits of field service automation, the key features of field service automation software, and how it can help your company thrive in today’s competitive landscape. So, if you’re considering automation in field service operations, keep reading to learn more.


Field Service Automation workflow

Key Features in field service automation software

Modern platforms include powerful features that encompass all functions involved in field operations. These functions include time and attendance monitoring, payroll, field data collection, employee safety monitoring and escalation, compliance monitoring for regulatory requirements, customized business rules and exception reporting, integration with back-office systems and more.

Field service automation software provides a range of features to help businesses streamline their field service operations. Let’s take a closer look at some of the key features:

1. Work order and job scheduling

Field service automation software allows businesses to efficiently schedule work orders and jobs, assign them to technicians, and track their progress in real-time. This helps businesses optimize their resources, reduce downtime, and ensure that jobs are completed on time.

2. Integrated time and attendance monitoring:

With integrated time and attendance monitoring, businesses can accurately track the time spent by their technicians on each job, as well as their attendance and breaks. This helps businesses manage their workforce more effectively and ensure that they are meeting their service level agreements.

3. Field data collection, including custom forms:

It enables businesses to collect data from the field, including custom forms, signatures, photo capture, QR and barcode scans, and more. This data can be used to improve reporting, invoicing, and customer communication.

4. Location and geofencing: 

Additional features like Location tracking and geofencing help businesses monitor the location of their technicians in real-time, ensuring that they are where they are supposed to be and optimizing their routes.

5. Business logic and rule engine to monitor exceptions:

Field service automation software can be configured with business logic and rule engines to monitor exceptions, such as missed appointments, mandatory lunch breaks, delayed jobs, and incomplete tasks. This helps businesses identify issues quickly and take corrective action to ensure that they meet their service level agreements or compliance requirements.

6. Safety monitoring: 

Safety monitoring features can be added to field service automation software to help businesses ensure that their technicians are working safely, following proper procedures, and using the right equipment.

7. Integration with back-office CRM, HRMS, and payroll systems: 

Field service automation software can be integrated with back-office systems, such as CRM, HRMS, accounting and payroll, to provide a comprehensive view of the business and improve reporting, job costing, and payroll processing.

By leveraging these key features, field service automation software can help businesses optimize their field service operations, reduce costs, improve customer satisfaction, and stay ahead of the competition.


How Can allGeo Help You Automate Your Business?

With allGeo, you can automate your field service operations and streamline your workflows, from job scheduling and dispatch to real-time tracking, data collection, and reporting.

With right field service workflow, all the day-to-day tasks can simply get automated: the back-office operations team assigns jobs to the field technicians directly via the scheduling, planning and work order system. Once the job assignments are dispatched to employees, the FSA system starts monitoring attendance and reports any exceptions and delays to the back office for contingencies.

Meanwhile, the field technicians collect data from the field via the mobile app and make the data available to other teams instantly.  Finally, all the data gets pushed to respective back-office systems such as CRM, accounting and payroll making the entire process seamless.

One of the key advantages is its flexibility and ease of use. With allGeo, you can configure workflows, rules, and alerts to match your business requirements, ensuring that your field service operations run smoothly and efficiently.

Another advantage is its real-time reporting and analytics. With allGeo, you can access real-time data and analytics on your field service operations, including technician performance, job status, and customer feedback. This helps businesses make informed decisions, identify areas for improvement, and optimize their operations.


Automation Setup
Create a work plan for your field techs and assign jobs. If you use a third-party scheduling software, just connect it with allGeo . The system automatically records employees’ attendance and hours of service using Geofencing.  


Daily Dispatch Reminders
Assigned jobs get sent to employees via text, app notification or IVR call. You can also send manual or automated reminders to your employees regarding shifts and tasks at the jobsite.


Field Data Capture
Your field techs can collect on-field data with mobile forms, capture signatures and photographs, scan QR codes and more.


Real-Time Alerts
Set up custom rules to get notified based on any event in the field involving people, place and time, such as arrival or departure from a jobsite, or unscheduled stoppage.


Integration with Back Office
Integrate mGT FSA with your back-office ERP, CRM and FMS systems using web APIs.


Industries allGeo can support

allGeo helps automate field operations for various industries. Here are a few examples:


Healthcare
allGeo deploys a highly customized SaaS and mobile phone solution that complies with EVV. The solution includes IFTTT workflow triggering business actions, GPS location tagged messaging and notes, time tracking, and caregiver performance analytics.


Property Management
The allGeo app combined with geofencing of property sites will automatically record each employee’s time and attendance at the facilities and job sites. Taking notes, scanning QR codes, and integrating with backend property management software are some more features offered by allGeo.


Sales Reps.
Integrates with CRM to set up a schedule on planned visits for the day.  Automates visit tracking and logging back into the CRM. The reps use the mobile apps to fill data relating to customer visits.


Construction
allGeo’s field service automation allows construction companies to deliver seamless on-site services by deploying work orders via app, and managing tools inventory via QR codes and forms. Track your employees’ hours of service and keep track of job-site attendance with geofence, and integrate your Payroll software with back-end.


Conclusion

Field service automation software can help you optimize your field service operations and stay ahead of the competition. Moreover, the global field service management market is expected to grow rapidly in the coming years, which indicates the growing importance of digital field service management in the business world. 

By adopting field service automation software, you can unlock a range of benefits, including improved service profitability, first-time fix rates, field worker productivity, and customer satisfaction.

So, if you’re still relying on manual processes for your field service operations, it’s time to consider field service automation. With the right software, you can take your business to the next level and stay ahead of the curve.


About allGeo

allGeo helps SMBs and Enterprise businesses better manage mobile workforce and field operations with tools such as real-time location, GPS time and attendance, geofence visit logs, Lone worker safety, Mobile forms and more! All the tools can be highly customized to fit each use case. The platform features a powerful rules engine and integrates with popular back-end CRM, HRMS, and Payroll systems to automate day-to-day operations.

allGeo serves customers from a wide range of industries including field service management, trade services, emergency responders, sales reps, transportation & logistics, oil & gas, home health care providers. These customers do report improvement in productivity and savings in payroll.

If you have any questions or need additional information, let us know at sales@abaq.us or call us at +1 415

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