Operational Visibility
Operational Visibility
One of the main tasks of running any business is knowing where you are at operationally. By having a dashboard where you can quickly see a total of new service orders created, current invoices, past invoices and completed calls; not only helps in resource planning but keeps your mind at ease in focusing on what matters.
A case in point, we recently had our stove fixed at home. At the end of the job, the technician pulled out the paper service receipt and rubbed the face of the credit card for payment. Prior to this technological payment taking process, the technician had come previously and informed us that he didn’t have the part and left saying he might have to reschedule the work for another day. This left the kids and more importantly, left me with no more chocolate chip cookies for a week! Before I Hulk out on how inconvenient this was, as an owner of this business, I would have wanted to know;
- Did the technician make it to site?
- How many visits were made?
- Did the technician have the right part for the job?
- Often overlooked – how was the customer service?
Here and now, there are tools that enable you to have this kind of visibility. With a real time, streamlined process, your sequence of activities would be;
- technician picks a part from the warehouse before going to site
- calls the customer with the estimated time of arrival
- Punch actions for start – stop (travel and Work)
- If work is satisfactory, take electronic payment from customer
- Technician moves on to the next job assignment
With this kind of setup, you are receiving real time information from the field, where the technicians use their mobile devices to provide this info. The real time info ties in to your backend accounting.
Some of the benefits are;
- Improved communication between the office and the field technicians
- Enhanced customer service
- Reduced paperwork
- Reduced time to invoice, by tracking time, materials etc…
- Potential new business by creating quotes while on site
Back to our recent encounter with the third kind, the technician came back the same day and the invoice/receipt charge made it to my credit card eventually.
We are at an age where we can cohesively work with technology to make us more efficient provided our internal processes are clearly defined.
Click Here to see the technology available – Sage Service Operations video
Want to learn more about getting a business management software system or have comments? Contact Asyma Solutions Ltd today.