Acumatica: Advantages in Field Service Delivery

Field service is an area of business operations that looks easy, but isn’t. That’s because so many companies do it badly. Let’s say your refrigerator breaks. You call for a service appointment. They say they’ll be there between two and four, just in time for hundreds of dollars’ worth of food to go bad. They actually show up at six, only to discover that they’re missing a critical part. They’ll be back the next day, between and two and four... Meanwhile, you’re in a mood to call someone else.

You don’t want to be company that shows up late and forgets the part. You want to be the competitor the customer calls when he or she is fed up. Of course, you then have to be able to deliver great field service. This is partly a matter of culture and organization, but it has a lot to do with having the right field service management software.

How Field Service Management Software Works

Field service management software controls the whole field service delivery operation. It handles scheduling and dispatch. It tracks service contracts and orders for missing parts. In the case of Acumatica Field Service Edition, it does all of these things. As an added benefit, it integrates with the full Acumatica suite of business management and customer relationship solutions.

The Acumatica Advantage in Field Service Management

Acumatica enables field service managers to streamline dispatching and reduce response times. The Field Service Edition links with other Acumatica modules for CRM, sales, inventory, purchasing, accounting and financial reporting. The result is a complete view of the customer—field service managers can get a full sense of who the customer is and what’s going on in the relationship. The account manager can get an instant view of any field service calls or potential issues that might arise from them.

Advantages of the Acumatica field service solution include the following:

• Schedule the right people at the right time with the right skills, ready to perform the work efficiently. Acumatica quickly captures service needs and accesses relevant customer information, product history and other factors that shorten the time between receipt of the service request and job assignment. Acumatica also enables the automatic creation of daily or weekly field service schedules.
• Optimize service delivery, filtering appointments by different criteria. Plot routes In Google Maps for each field service person and include required resources (e.g. equipment, parts, etc.)
• Provide real-time graphical data regarding locations, traffic and so forth. The tool instantly redraws routes and makes changes available on the technician’s mobile device.
• Connect service team members through any device, either with a browser or mobile app. This gives people the ability to access service information and customer data from anywhere at any time.
• Be prepared for emergency service calls, using visual tools to facilitate unplanned service visits.
• Stay on top of equipment’s complete service history and track the status of parts needed for repairs.
• Control and keep track of inventory, including its locations and costs. Shortages can trigger replenishment orders. Send inventory to specific locations and when the parts arrive and alert dispatchers to schedule service appointments for installation.
• Oversee recurring service contracts, getting visibility regarding renewal dates.
• Manage warranties, a normally time-consuming task. Acumatica integrates warranty management with other applications, enabling people to see which parts are under warranty and other relevant data about the customer’s warranty. This helps with billing accuracy and customer satisfaction.
• Acumatica’s field service tools connect with the platform’s dashboards and business intelligence capabilities. This allows all field service stakeholders to stay up to date on the state of the field service operation.

Never Lose Site of Your Field Service Business With Cloud 9 ERP Solutions

If you want to get ahead in today’s highly competitive field service market, you need to deliver exactly what you promised to your customer and more. Get a complete view of your customer, technician, and business with Acumatica Cloud ERP.

At Cloud 9 ERP Solutions, an Acumatica Gold Certified Partner, we have the experience in delivering fully integrated business management software to firms like yours. We know that business management software affects nearly every facet of your operations and therefore has many different moving parts—all of which need to be tailored to your needs and tested to ensure they will make your business better. 

Interested in learning more? First, take a quick tour through Acumatica's Field Services Edition. Click here to watch the demo. Next, take a look at some of our other field service articles: 

Choosing a Field Service Management Software

Can You Afford the Shortcomings of a "Bolted On" Field Service Management Platform

Finally, learn how one of our field service customers moved to Acumatica with the help of Cloud 9 ERP Solutions - resulting in increased sales revenue and improved operational efficiencies. Click here to read the case study.