Did you know that Acumatica offers Field Service Management?
Acumatica Field Service Management (AFSM, for short) is designed for those businesses that dispatch personnel to remote job sites, whether they are plumbers, electricians, heat & air technicians, appliance repairers, window or door installers, painters, oil-field service operators, even roadside assistance and towing operators.
Essentially, any business that involves assigning crews and equipment on a-call basis can use AFSM to gather service needs from a customer, identify the appropriate team member or crew with the appropriate equipment, and dispatch them to a specified location. While en-route and on-site personnel can communicate using various methods, customers can be kept up-to-date regarding the impending arrival of the assigned personnel. Assignment modifications can be dispatched in real time if changes arise.
Businesses managing service contract customers may find that Acumatica's Self-service Customer Portals bridge the gap between service scheduling and customer communications. These portals permit customers to view scheduled maintenance, request or make changes in the next scheduled visit, request a non-scheduled or emergency service appointment, schedule a call for a quote, or discuss an issue. Customers can also view open invoices, paid invoice history, change account information, and even pay for outstanding amounts over the portal.
At the office, personnel can easily create recurring service schedules for a customer or initiate new or extended preventative maintenance contracts or warranties. And speaking of the office, AFSM provides excellent tools for office personnel, including assignment dispatchers and supervisors.
Beyond appointment scheduling of field personnel, dispatchers can easily manage single or multi-day appointments using a calendar board system designed to track all active appointments and future scheduled appointments. Both workforce and equipment resources can be viewed on the same calendar, whether on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Resources come together for each work order to be dispatched so that the appropriately trained personnel and necessary equipment can be sent on every job.
To assist in this process, AFSM provides workforce and equipment resource tracking. Capture each technician's certifications, skill set, and the functional capabilities of each piece of equipment. After all, there are 'repairmen' and 'maintenance personnel'; the two aren't necessarily the same, just as an 'arc-welder' and an 'acetylene torch' are not the same. Nor is a 5-ton or a 50-ton wrecker.
Assigning the right personnel and equipment is essential to keeping customers satisfied with your business and maximizing profitability. You don't need to assign a Heat & Air Journeyman and Apprentice in a fully outfitted HVAC service truck if the customer wants a new gas water heater quote. Therefore, functionality that lets you assess each customer call, identify the services required on a work order and see the resources available for assignment is critical to proper dispatch operations.
For businesses with repeat customers, such as service contracts, or where a contractor has furnished equipment under a prior work order and is now maintaining that equipment, Acumatica's related Equipment Management feature tracks all of the customers' equipment, identification information such as make and model number, installation date, service contract date, warrant start and end dates, along with complete equipment service and repair history. Field Service personnel can easily access this information to determine billable vs. warranty work.
If you work in a large area or have multiple locations, crew GPS location tracking is also essential. This data comes from the AFSM mobile App (iOS or Android) that team members or crew vehicles use to access assigned work, customer information, equipment histories, available inventory, and enter time, services, supplies, inventory, and non-inventory products for each job performed. All under the watchful eye of dispatch personnel and supervisors to ensure job-site personnel's health and safety. But just as important, the App enables you to quickly determine where a returning crew is in proximity to a new work assignment and visualize estimated route and route statistics for the next call. Field crews can then receive a new dispatch, location, and the best route from their present location to the on-site work.
As mentioned earlier, the AFSM App also serves as the field personnel's mobile office, allowing them to keep track of inventory whether at the shop, a company warehouse, or on their own or other service vehicles. Parts move in and out of inventory locations based on work assignments and work performed. Field personnel can even generate field purchase orders if authorized or make purchases from approved vendors, capturing essential information to track the cost and the price by which to invoice the customer. Acumatica can even link field expenses to vendor bills payable with or without the use of purchase orders.
And customer invoicing options are just as flexible. Field personnel can capture repair tickets with all billable time and expense, even obtaining a customer's signature to verify work performed. Yet, the final invoice can be generated back at the office after supervisory review if that's how your business wants the workflow to go. On the other hand, if your business wants to accelerate customer payment, field personnel can invoice a customer on the spot for completed work and even capture payment if that's your preferred workflow.
Combined with other Acumatica functionalities like CRM and Inventory Management, as well as basic financial capabilities like accounts receivable, accounts payable, and payroll, your field service business can maximize customer satisfaction, work assignments, crew management, and job profitability regardless of service modality (time and material, contract price, warranty, maintenance agreement, etc.).
Why consider plugging multiple CRM, inventory, and field service management apps into your limited cloud or desktop-based general ledger? Give Acumatica ERP's Field Service Management a look.
Insightful Accountant will look into some of the features we've discussed in this article in greater depth later in this series.