Praxedo estimates that over half of all businesses in the field service industry are still managing their scheduling and dispatching operations with outdated manual tools such as spreadsheets, whiteboards, email, text messages, and phone calls.
The companies still using these outmoded forms of field service management are losing out on myriad benefits that service scheduling and dispatch software can provide field service businesses. Overall, field service management software can greatly improve the efficiency of scheduling and dispatching operations and streamline field service management.
Field service management software has been slowly but steadily growing in popularity over the past few years. Between 2015 and 2020, the market size of the field service management software industry grew by 11% per year in the US.
This year has seen massive growth in the size of the field service management software industry. As of 2020, IBIS World estimates the US market to be worth 1.6B USD. Considering the advances that service scheduling and dispatching software now make possible to field management companies, this should not be shocking to anyone.
Why Manual Methods of Dispatch and Service Scheduling Just Don’t Cut It Anymore
It is common in many field service industries — such as plumbing, HVAC, and electrical — to receive urgent calls during the day. These types of calls can be unpredictable but need to be worked into the daily schedule without much notice on the part of managers.
Trying to manage a daily schedule that must be continually adapted to account for emergency calls on the fly is extremely difficult — and in some cases impossible — without the aid of dispatch and service scheduling software.
Simple tasks like allocating field workers to new jobs, looking up a customer’s history, or making changes to the schedule are performed much more quickly and efficiently with service scheduling software.
However, all field service companies — not just those who frequently receive emergency calls — can greatly benefit from the utilization of service scheduling and dispatch software.
How Dispatch and Service Scheduling Software Can Boost Your Business
In the highly competitive landscape of field services, it pays to have an advantage over the competition. Service scheduling and dispatch software can greatly benefit your field service business by giving you live communication channels and complete visibility into work processes.
Businesses that use service scheduling and dispatch software make better use of their resources and are more efficient than field service companies that use paper-based methods. This makes it a great way to gain an edge over the competition.
Here are some of the top benefits of service scheduling and dispatch software that can boost your business:
Spend Less Time Scheduling
Service scheduling and dispatching software can greatly reduce the amount of time and company resources spent on scheduling.
Scheduling may seem simple, but it can take up a lot of time when you are dealing with a large number of field workers. Planning just one day’s schedule for 25 field workers can take up to a day itself. This is before accounting for emergency calls and the further rearranging of field workers’ schedules.
Field service scheduling and dispatching software automates scheduling and provides dispatchers with real-time information on field workers’ routes and schedules. Software that offers these benefits makes it significantly easier and faster to make changes to the field service schedule.
Field workers can receive new work orders and appointments on their mobile devices through a field service application.
For example, Azuga makes a cutting-edge field service management solution that enables field technicians to view real-time schedules, receive dispatches, and even mark work orders as complete when they finish the job — all from their mobile devices.
Create Work Orders Faster and Easier
Field service scheduling and dispatch software allow for work orders to be created more easily and quickly by automating a great deal of the process.
Dispatchers can see unscheduled work orders alongside field workers’ schedules. All of this information is updated live, unlike paper-based methods of field service management.
With field service scheduling and dispatch software, employees can schedule new jobs, create work orders, and dispatch a team of field workers all from one easy-to-use application.
Gain Greater Visibility into Your Operations
Field service scheduling and dispatch software provide businesses with full visibility of their employees. Solutions such as Azuga’s field service management software can track the location of your field workers in real-time through the use of GPS technology.
Knowing exactly where your technicians are — and what each of their qualifications is — helps you to better assign assets to specific jobs.
Efficient scheduling and dispatching of field workers require collaboration. Employees across the organization need to have access to information, including where field workers, equipment, and materials are currently located.
There are many moving parts to field service operations, and changes to the schedule often must be made during the workday. Unplanned disruptions like a change or cancellation of an order, breakdown of equipment, bad weather, material delays, and personnel issues are just some of the problems that can arise. All of this can be difficult to keep track of and adapt to using paper-based and other legacy methods like whiteboards and spreadsheets.
Scheduling and dispatching efficiently without the companywide visibility that field service scheduling and dispatching software provide via GPS technology is nearly impossible.
Having a centralized, Internet-connected system that keeps track of real-time location information benefits employees across your organization, who now have an accurate idea of where resources and field workers are, where they are heading, and where they are most needed.
Respond to Urgent Calls and More with Fleet Management Software
Through more efficient routing service scheduling and dispatch, field service management software can save your business fuel and time. It can also get your field workers where they need to be more quickly and increase customer satisfaction.
One of the biggest benefits of service scheduling and dispatch software is that it allows your business to seamlessly respond to emergency calls.
You can make changes to the current schedule, make accommodations for new work orders, make time for emergent client needs, and update field workers on the new information in real-time — all from one convenient application.
With service scheduling and dispatch software, emergency calls just got a whole lot easier.
