In the equipment management industry, a well-organized and well-automated service department has a huge impact on the company’s results. Streamlined processes supported by powerful (field) service software reduces costs, increases profit and leads to satisfied customers. In these 5 steps you make your service department more successful:
1. Improve planning
Service planning is a big challenge. Most of the service jobs are preventive maintenance and periodic inspections that can be planned in advance and rarely cause surprises. But you also have to deal with malfunctions, breakdowns, repairs that take longer than expected, technicians stuck in a traffic jam, employees who are sick, parts that are missing, etc. And it is precisely in those cases that you want to be able to act quickly. What helps is a good (graphical/visual) overview of the open work orders and the availability and skills of the service technicians. And that in real-time connection with the field service solution of the technicians. This allows you to assign work orders to technicians who are available, nearby and/or have the right set of skills.
2. Increase productivity
Better planning contributes to the productivity of employees. But there are more ways to increase productivity. For example, by working with job codes; predefined activities with a fixed amount of time and a fixed set of spare parts. The correct setup and deployment of service contracts also increases productivity. And a mobile service solution that keeps the amount of administrative work to a minimum ensures that technicians are quickly available for their next service job.
3. Reduce overhead costs
With streamlined processes and thorough automation, you can save significantly on the overhead costs of the service department. A few examples of this:
- Automate processes so that they no longer happen manually. This saves time and prevents mistakes.
- Spend less time on service planning with effective service planning tools.
- Save time on administrative handling of service, maintenance, quotations, invoicing and communication through automation and digitization.
- Keep the number of (manual) checks to a minimum with the use of automation in the entire service process from work order (quotation) to invoicing.
"Helping your customers quickly and effectively yields direct and indirect profit. Directly because you work more productively, indirectly because customers are more satisfied."
4. Helping customers quicker and more effectively
Helping your customers quickly and effectively yields direct and indirect profit. Directly because you work more productively, indirectly because customers are more satisfied. Once again, streamlined processes supported by the right software are the key to success. For example:
- In the event of a malfunction or breakdown, you want to be able to immediately send a technician who is nearby at that moment.
- Make a quotation at the customer site to repair another object.
- More one-time fixes by (almost) always having the right parts.
- Converting more quotations into orders by communicating with the customer faster and more decisively.
- Being able to directly invoice digitally.
5. Make decisions based on complete information
Converting big data into information that helps you to make the right decisions. This is extremely important for equipment management companies and especially for the service department. Which spare parts are often replaced? How profitable are the maintenance contracts? What result do you achieve on warranty claims? To have the right information, you need a powerful and complete ERP system in combination with the right reporting & BI tool. This enables you to manage your organization less on (gut) feeling and more on facts and figures.
Are you ready to take (one of) these five steps with your organization? At Dysel we are happy to help you!
