Without the right data, making critical decisions and knowing that they’ll pay off becomes incredibly challenging. Having the right data on hand is doubly important for businesses that do a lot of field service work.

Not only does this data allow the business to make informed decisions quickly but it also allows it to operate more streamlined and efficiently. It additionally provides the company with the insights it needs to ensure it delivers the best possible customer experience. Given how competitive many industries with field service functions are, bringing those advantages together can be critical to a company’s success.

But, as Anand Subbaraj, CEO of field service management (FSM) software firm Zuper, points out, accessing the right data at the right time hasn’t always been easy. With the right technologies in place, however, it can be made a great deal simpler.

“Regardless of what the company’s FSM functions are, being able to access accurate, real-time data is critical to everything from efficient dispatching to equipment supply and inventory management,” he says. “Historically, that all had to happen manually, making it a time-consuming and resource-intensive process.”

“Advances in technology mean that the time between something becoming a data point and a company being able to act on it has shrunk to the point where it’s almost instantaneous,” Subbaraj adds.

“FSM software has undergone several large evolutionary leaps forward in this regard in recent years. As a result, an organisation with the right FSM software product can use it to operate in ways that are far more efficient and streamlined than would otherwise be the case.

“Good FSM software will, among other things, help businesses optimise scheduling and dispatching, improve their work order management and enhance their inventory management. That, in turn, results in an improved overall customer experience with faster response times, the ability to communicate proactively with customers and ultimately enhanced customer satisfaction and loyalty.”

As important as it is for FSM software to be able to automate those kinds of functions, it’s also vital that it provides actionable insights and analysis. Ideally, the software should include a dashboard that allows faster insights into your workflows, revenues and customers to make data-driven decisions and scale the business.

The analytics tools within an FSM software suite should additionally aid business in predicting future revenue as well as supply robust data into workforce performance, productivity and profitability.

Not all FSM software is created equally. Subbaraj believes there are specific elements that organisations should look for in FSM offerings. When it comes to optimising work order management, for example, the software should be capable of streamlining maintenance schedules across multiple locations for consistent service delivery. It should also be able to track work order details to optimise maintenance spend. Additionally, it should improve efficiency and customise checklists and workflows to fit an organisation’s unique requirements.

“By choosing an FSM software provider that gets all of these things right, businesses with field service functions put themselves in a good position to operate more efficiently,” he says.

As he points out, much of the ability for these features to work the way they do comes from their ability to collect and utilise real-time data from technicians, job sites and other sources.

“Ultimately, achieving true efficiency and streamlining shouldn’t require people within the business to sift through large volumes of data. Instead, the data should be baked into the field service offering that the company uses.

“It shouldn’t just be able to use the data to automate specific functions either. It should also be able to provide real-time analytics on key performance markers such as technician productivity, customer satisfaction and equipment utilisation. And, when reports are needed, the analytics function of the software should be able to deliver that in real-time.”

It should be clear that, by leveraging the capabilities of FSM software, companies can streamline their field operations, reduce costs, improve customer satisfaction and gain a competitive advantage.