Top 5 Signs You Need Maintenance Management Software

The business landscape is changing fast. First, the digital disruption and then the pandemic has forced the businesses to change their course rapidly in order to adjust and adapt to new market requirements. Where product-based industries face the challenge to tweak the product based on consumer behaviour, service-focused organizations feel the heat of lower demand causing reduced profitability. In such scenarios, they are left with little options other than to reduce field service operations cost, mostly done through lay-offs. While it is a quick formula to deal with market challenges, but it impedes the growth of the companies in the long-run.

In the modern era, maintenance service providers have to understand that there is no way they can distance themselves from digital tools, as it helps them manage operations at a comparatively lower cost and deliver excellent customer experience. If you are still in the dilemma whether to leverage digital technologies such as maintenance management software solution to streamline your process, here are the top 5 clear signs that make it plain for you.

Scheduling Conflicts

If your business is inflicted with scheduling conflicts, it is quite apparent that everything is not right in your scheduling process. The most common reasons for scheduling conflicts are lack of visibility into the scheduling process, field service managers have little knowledge of where is the field rep in the real-time.

Not having such information could lead to poor scheduling, resulting in dissatisfaction among field service reps, reduced first-visit effectiveness, and higher churn rate. Besides, poor scheduling directly affects the performance and productivity of your field service and field sales teams. Are you frequently experiencing scheduling conflicts within your remote field teams? If yes, switch to a maintenance management application that enables your team to perform online scheduling with accuracy.

Missing Deadlines

Field service representatives are missing their deadlines to complete a task could be a clear sign of ineffective communication and disorganized work order management. If you are facing these problems, revisit your field service management process in order to see how your field service reps share and exchange information, how do they access crucial customer information, and how much time does it take to take necessary actions against information. If you find an extensive communication gap between field service managers and field service representatives, including the inability to take corrective actions in real-time, you must seek help from digital tools.

No Time to Find New Clients

If your managers feel they are engrossed in the operations and have little time left to work on managing the sales pipeline, then it clearly indicates that your field sales operations process is broken and need quick fixing. Often the problem is tasks for individuals and teams are not clearly defined and neither the manager has full visibility into the process to ensure that tasks that have been allocated are being completed on time. It is the major flaw in the process but can be corrected by using digital technology for work order management, task allocation, service resolution management, and sales pipeline management.

Paper-based Processes

Where on one hand, a paper-based process keeps the maintenance management service teams engaged in repetitive tasks, on the other hand, it does not facilitate tracking and visibility capabilities. It becomes extremely difficult for the maintenance service managers to generate insight out of the paper-based processes and make the right decision. Even, consumer behaviour has changed a lot. Today, they are mostly using mobile phones and apps to connect with each other. Companies should see it as an opportunity to connect with a large audience base. Using a maintenance tracking software solution, companies can automate the repetitive processes, track the field activities of service teams in real-time and generate insight out of it to make the right decisions.

High Churn Rate

If you are experiencing a high churn rate, it is a clear sign that your customers are not happy with your maintenance services. There are many possible reasons for a high churn rate but until you have the information transformed the right data, you could only assume the possible causes. Decisions based on assumptions and opinions may not deliver the same result as expected and therefore, it is essential to use a software solution that collects and process data and when you add the right context to data, your decision-making capabilities will be strengthened that will help you to fill the gaps in the processes.

Conclusion

Many companies are relying on digital tools and technologies to get a better understanding of their process, increase sales, productivity, and performance, remove biases, and drive profitability. Besides, even consumers across the industries have adopted digital way of life and that makes all more necessary for the businesses to take their process online to better connect with their customers.

Bhupendra Choudhary is Business Head of FieldCircle - a leading field service management software company.