Is your field service personnel always running against the clock to stay on schedule? Do they seem to have very little time left to accomplish assigned work?
Your field service business may be in need of new time management tools.
Consistent machine performance, timely service delivery, maximum uptime, and swift responses to unexpected breakdowns are key to your business success.
This is where time management tools can help your business and its employees manage their work time in the best possible way.
Let’s decode the importance of time management software in today’s business environment and how your company can benefit.
Time management tools help individuals and businesses optimally utilize their time. They track how much time they spend performing and completing different activities in a day, week, or month.
Time management tools provide clear, accurate, and detailed time data to users. They help them organize, prioritize, and schedule their work in a way to meet deadlines consistently without compromising their work-life balance.
The field service industry faces some common time management challenges affecting efficiency, productivity, and profitability.
Industrial field service tasks have an element of uncertainty around them in the form of sudden equipment breakdowns and emergency maintenance jobs.
This unpredictability forces field service managers and technicians to make sudden modifications to work schedules. This could impact upcoming service commitments.
We are witnessing large-scale digital transformation across various industries. Yet, some field service businesses continue to use manual input processes that are time-consuming and error-prone. This can further lead to inaccuracies in payroll processing and customer invoicing.
In a paper-based field service environment, communication flow can be erratic, which affects service delivery and customer satisfaction. Generally, emails and telephone calls are the go-to tools of communication between dispatchers, technicians, and backend office staff.
Sometimes, either of these cannot communicate with each other due to unchecked emails or failure to connect over the phone. This can lead to a lot of confusion, delays, and disgruntled customers.
Scheduling remains a big challenge for industrial field service companies today. Unavailability of technicians, overlapping appointments, and double booking are some factors that can lead to a complex scheduling process.
Field service businesses must have a comprehensive view of their available resources and current status to ensure optimized scheduling.
How many times have you had disagreements with customers over invoicing amounts? Multiple times surely, if you’re not using an effective field employee time-tracking software.
Manual invoicing can be slow and inaccurate, leading to a loss of time and money for field service businesses. Automated billing and invoicing through comprehensive field service management software can solve your manual invoicing issues.
Field technicians often work independently in remote locations. Thus, increasing and maintaining field workforce productivity remains a major challenge due to the lack of real-time monitoring and assessment.
Furthermore, the lack of analytical dashboards and performance metrics can hamper field technicians’ productivity. That’s because managers are unable to identify performance gaps and offer actionable inputs.
Field service operations require a significant amount of money to keep the ball rolling in the field. Think of field technicians’ training, equipment maintenance, and transportation costs, and you’ll get the picture.
Besides regular costs, unexpected ones are likely to arise out of nowhere—workplace accidents and mistakes do happen. So, industrial field service businesses are always looking for ways to reduce overhead costs. Field service time management tools can help achieve this target.
Though scheduling is a vital cog in the wheel, work order management keeps it running. More work orders translate to increased revenue for your industrial field service business.
Therefore, employees must have access to all necessary details, such as name, address, time slot, and job description. They must also complete each stage of a work order in sequence. Else, missed tasks or wrong information can lead to delays.
These challenges can cut deep into the productivity and profitability of any industrial field service business.
To address and prevent them, implement a powerful field service management system. Pick one that offers a single platform from which you can plan, organize, and analyze various aspects of your daily field operational processes.
Using time management software brings various benefits to any organization across any industry.
For industrial field service businesses, gains from implementing the latest technology are too significant to be missed.
Time management software solutions enable field service technicians to make the most of their work time through continuous tracking of real-time data.
Using the software data, they become conscious of their productivity and plan their work to complete tasks in less time. This can further improve workforce performance and productivity.
Time management software enables field service technicians to clock in and out of their jobs through mobile devices when working in the field.
This provides managers with accurate tracking of field technicians’ work hours. This further encourages accountability and ensures accurate compensation to your field service team members.
In-depth analysis of time data allows supervisors/managers to adequately schedule and dispatch field service personnel. They can take into consideration factors such as productivity, skills, availability, and proximity.
Time tracking reduces idle time, which ensures you utilize your technicians optimally for faster turnaround times.
Customer satisfaction never held as much importance before. For any industrial field service company, delivering quality services to customers on time is the key to increased customer retention and loyalty.
Smart time management of your field operations leads to increased efficiency at work. Meanwhile, this elevates your customer experience and improves retention.
So, what exactly makes time management software a great investment?
Its features.
Let’s take a look at some key features you should consider when investing in a robust time management tool.
Since your field service technicians are likely to use the time management app frequently, it should have a user-friendly, neat interface, and seamless navigation. Responsive mobile apps can help your field service workforce to easily clock work hours, organize schedules, and quickly access relevant information.
Generally, industrial field service organizations should choose a time tracking system with third-party field service management integration capabilities. This useful feature allows you to use a single platform for managing all your field service operations for seamless workflow management and streamlined operations.
Detailed analytics and automated service reporting empower industrial field services to analyze current time management trends and performance gaps. So, they can make informed decisions on what further improvements are necessary in your field service operations.
The first step in the implementation process begins with assessing your company’s time management requirements. Identify your current challenges related to time management, such as missed deadlines, delayed service delivery, poor resource utilization, inaccurate invoicing and payroll, etc.
Then, outline the goals your business seeks to achieve after implementing time management tools.
Do your research and shortlist 2-3 advanced time tracking solutions that closely meet your requirements. Check which tool offers the most value for money in terms of features, usability, pricing, scalability, learning curve, etc.
It’s always a good idea to book free demos or trials of shortlisted tools. Then, take feedback from your field service workforce and choose a tool that closely aligns with your time management requirements.
Once you choose a time management software, the next step should be to set up an action plan and implementation timeline. It should define key milestones such as setup, training, and review dates.
Assign key roles and responsibilities to individuals who will oversee different aspects of the training programs.
Provide proper training and onboarding sessions to field technicians and back-office staff. It will help your field service organization reap the benefits of your time tracking software of choice.
Similarly, your employees are likely to need swift customer support services during the implementation phase. Hence, it’s important to choose a tool that offers 24/7 technical support services to ensure quick troubleshooting and resolution of user queries.
Once you implement the time tracking software, it’s up to field supervisors and managers to continuously monitor its performance, usage, and effectiveness.
Collecting feedback from all your employees is important and will help you address any issues they might be experiencing while using it. Thus, you can make the necessary adjustments to further boost its usability and performance.
One of our esteemed customers provides production chemicals to over 5,000 oil wells in Louisiana and East Texas. They approached us due to increasing pressure from their business partners to switch to a digitized process to reduce the cost of services.
Their field service operations encountered several significant challenges that impeded workforce performance and increased costs.
One major issue was the slow data flow between the field and back-office operators, which delayed decision-making and responsiveness. Manual data entry processes further compounded these delays, resulting in expensive labor hours and a higher risk of errors.
Additionally, the lack of alerts for inventory shortages made it difficult to track chemical inventory accurately, leading to potential shortages. The absence of geo-coordinates for wells also posed challenges in accurately locating and managing field assets.
To overcome these challenges, we implemented a series of strategic solutions, such as workflow automation, user-friendly dashboards, and intelligent route optimization for trucks. Master data on the FieldEquip platform created a centralized and reliable source of information.
We successfully delivered these solutions within six weeks, ensuring a swift transition to the new system.
As a result, field technicians experienced substantial time savings each day, allowing them to focus on more critical tasks and boost productivity. Operational efficiency improved as well due to streamlined processes and enhanced data flow.
The quick and seamless exchange of data between the field and operators facilitated better communication and decision-making. Additionally, smart inventory management practices ensured real-time monitoring of inventory levels, preventing shortages and optimizing resource utilization.
These improvements collectively contributed to more efficient and effective field operations.
When implementing workforce time tracking software in your industrial field service company, you will likely run into obstacles. These are common, and with the right strategy, you can overcome them.
Let’s dig deeper into such obstacles along with solutions.
Your field technicians and back office staff have been using current manual timekeeping methods for many years and they have gotten used to it.
The decision to switch to digital field service time tracking can lead to some of your employees resisting adopting the new-gen solutions. This may be due to comfort with current methods or skepticism about its benefits.
Engage all stakeholders in the tool selection process. Address their queries and demonstrate the benefits and how it will help everyone be more efficient in their jobs.
Not providing adequate training will likely result in improper adoption and usage of the tool. This can lead to the misinterpretation of logged time data.
Provide hands-on training and resources for reference, along with prompt customer support services.
Not taking regular follow-ups or monitoring the time management tool’s performance and effectiveness can lead to continuous problems.
Schedule regular tool performance reviews to ensure they align with your organization’s time tracking goals. If a tool fails to yield the desired results over time, be open to replacing it with another tool.
Time management tools have become essential for industrial oilfield services today.
By embracing the latest technology, your business can register significant gains. You can enjoy enhanced employee productivity, accurate time tracking, reduced cost, and higher customer satisfaction.
Learn how FieldEquip can be your “go-to” digital solution for time and work order management, field ticketing, inventory management, and much more. Schedule your demo today.
Would you like to have a free demo or have any questions about FieldEquip?
US Corporate Headquarters 1011 S. Hwy. 6, Suite 117 Houston Texas 77077 US