Field service scheduling is hard because it involves both time AND space. You can’t decide “when” until you know “where.” And knowing “where” is not just one location. The scheduler needs to see ALL jobs on a calendar AND on a map simultaneously to make good decisions for the schedule. In most cases, “where” actually determines “when” and not the other way around. “Where” is the variable that makes or breaks job profit due to travel time and fuel expense.
The wisdom of “where” is obvious to anyone that has spent more than an hour planning a field service schedule, or many hours trying to understand why the business is not profitable when the job rates and margins look OK. The “where-wolf” is eating all the profits due to drive time and fuel. If the “where-wolf” is haunting your business, we have a solution.
ServiceTrade designed a highly interactive map into the heart of our application – it drives the scheduling decisions. It took every ounce of clever software engineering we could muster to show where, when, who, and what along with current assignment and schedule status on a single, interactive web page.
But the “where-wolf” doesn’t just prowl around the office eating up profit. It also rides around in the truck with your techs. That’s why the job map, the “sort by distance” job list, and the GPS job clock on the ServiceTrade mobile app are also critical components in killing the “where-wolf.”
When your techs see their work in relation to where they are, they can adjust their schedule on the fly to mitigate the impact of daily foul-ups (customer “turn aways,” traffic, job delays, or faster completions). They can pick up more work because they see everything – jobs, locations, priorities – in the context of the map. And when your office staff can see tech location and status because of the GPS job clock, they will no longer fear the “where-wolf” when emergency calls hit. The right assignment decision is obvious without calling every tech to ask “Hey, where are you and what are you doing?”
If you are ready to drive the “where-wolf” out of your business, sign up to try out our mobile and cloud app. It’s free to try it, and there are no hassles with installing software or managing computers. Give it a shot and let us know what you think.
