The service department is all about working efficiently; that way you deliver the best and fastest service for your customers at the lowest cost. It is therefore the department par excellence where you can achieve a high return on investment on your software investment.
Doing more in less time
The right service management software enables you to do more and more efficient work. By setting up processes properly and supporting them optimally with smart and powerful software solutions, you realize:
- A revenue increase by making your mechanics more productive and allowing you to use more mechanics without sacrificing service quality;
- A cost savings by reducing the amount of time your employees have to spend on scheduling, billing and administering service work.
Quick payback
Although the investment in service management software is not small, you will see that it can be earned back very quickly. You can estimate in advance what benefits you expect to gain from the software, what costs you will incur in return and therefore what the expected return on investment will be. For example, calculate the profit you will make on the following:
- The increased productivity of service technicians;
- The increase in billable service hours;
- Reduced overhead costs for planning, billing and administration;
- The reduced time between execution of work orders and invoicing.
Just do the math on what an increase with 5% in the productivity of your mechanics, saves the organization per year and you will see that it is well worth the investment.
Additional benefits
Investing in service management software will also bring you some benefits that you won't immediately think of, such as employees enjoying their work more and customers becoming more satisfied with better service. It is difficult to quantify these benefits in an ROI calculation, but it should certainly be included in the consideration.
So if you, as an organization, are still in doubt about which areas to invest in, take a critical look at the automation of your service department. Do you think you can work more efficiently and raise the service level to a higher level with the right software application? If so, don't hesitate, go for it!
Rahana Soedhoe is Senior Consultant at Dysel and helps organizations work more efficiently through enterprise-wide deployment of software applications.
