Job tracking is a must-have process to win business and allow for profitability. From that initial enquiry, a chain of events is triggered across operations: job assessment, quote issuing, scheduling, vehicle and route planning, down to accurate invoicing.
Coordinated effectively, businesses complete jobs quickly, the first time and with beaming customers. But, it’s a little smarter than that: Sophisticated job tracking allows field services to shine a spotlight on profits.
How? At a high level, it provides a granular analysis that helps you spot a mix of threats and opportunities… Like inflated labour hours, excessive fuel consumption or capability gaps.
Ready to learn more? Let’s jump in. In this blog, we’ll cover examples of how businesses use job tracking to spot where they are earning or burning money. 🔥💸
And if you’re new to job tracking, don’t worry! We’re kicking off with a quick definition. 👇
What is job tracking? 🔍
Job tracking is the process of monitoring tasks involved in completing a specific job. It involves collecting data from the moment a job is scheduled, through to when it is fully completed:
- Job details: location, description of work, parts and materials required
- Scheduling: date, time, engineers assigned
- Travel time to get to and from the job site
- Actual time spent performing the work, repairs or service
- Parts and materials used for that specific job
- Amount billed to the client for the job
Gathering this detailed information allows field services to see how profitable each job is and where you can boost bottom lines – whether through cutting back on waste or seizing growth opportunities.
So, rather than crossing fingers for profitability, you can confidently track performance, predict setbacks and drive toward growth. 🚀
6 ways job tracking finds where money is wasted 🗑
Before diving into the exciting stuff – the opportunities – most field businesses focus on job tracking when they realise profits aren’t as high as they expected or needed. So, we’ll start with how businesses use job tracking to identify where money is being wasted.
#1. Spot low productivity
Job tracking enables you to see when engineers are underutilised and if there’s a pattern during particular times of the year. For example, waiting for stock to arrive and extended travel times.
In just these two examples you know how this can impact job completion. If you can see when these times occur, you can prepare.
Plus, with clever tech, you can leverage tools like GPS tracking and route optimisation that allow you to reduce travel and fuel costs.
#2. Track job costs down to the pound
Done right, job tracking can account for all the associated costs for each job – including labour and materials used and any expenses. You can then use this to compare the budgeted cost versus the actual cost. This is ideal if you’ve got a leaky bucket scenario and aren’t sure where money is going.
And, it’s a better way to prepare future invoices. You can generate them quicker and with greater accuracy if you know exactly how much resource is required.
#3. Get a handle on maintenance fees
Fleet vehicles tend to be one of the biggest expenses for field businesses. If it isn’t the fuel costs, it’s the maintenance of vans.
With job tracking tools, you can see how much this is costing you. And if costs are high, it may be a sign that vehicles need maintenance – for example, new tyres save fuel and regular servicing saves pricey breakdowns.
Looking for more ideas? Job tracking acts as a preventative measure. You can use it to enforce vehicle checks so that you keep drivers safe and get ahead of any issues with your fleet.
#4. Monitor repeat visits
Why are there multiple revisits? Is it because the stock wasn’t there? Were the right specialists sent to the job? Did the engineer have all the information they needed to complete the job? Or, was it simply out of your control?
If it’s the former, there is something you can do to improve processes. And this is what job tracking can help to highlight.
#5. Know your high-value clients
Some jobs are more lucrative than others. The jobs are smoother to complete. They pay higher than others.
However, it’s not always obvious who these clients are. And this is where job tracking comes in.
It tracks the time and resources spent on each client so you can assess profitability. From here, you can choose to prioritise those with a higher margin and even seek more look-a-like clients when prospecting. On top of this, you also look for other prospects along the route to make it even more cost-effective.
#6. See where scheduling falls down
Poor job scheduling creates a host of inefficiencies. It wastes time on fuel, labour, over and underutilising engineers – the list goes on. With job tracking, you can spot all this so that you can move towards smart scheduling and reduce costs and respond faster.
Summing it all up: Ultimately, job tracking allows you to spot areas of weakness in operations before they start to eat away at profit margins. It’s more of a proactive, than reactive approach.
Now, we’ve looked at savings. Let’s look at something a little more interesting: opportunity.
6 ways job tracking finds the money 💸
Along with cost reductions, job tracking opens your eyes to opportunities to increase profit margins and revenue streams. Let’s dive straight in.
#1. Increases capacity
Whilst there’s a skills shortage and you don’t want to be hiring additional staff due to additional overheads, there’s an option that opens up with job tracking. And that’s the ability to fit more jobs within the day.
This is largely due to smart scheduling fully optimising resources. It significantly reduces manual administration for both back-office and field engineers. In addition to this, you can see how some of the cost-saving flags mentioned above, like monitoring repeat visits, come in.
#2. Faster response times
If your operations are slicker and you can respond faster to job requests – as well as complete them the first time – it’s better for profit margins (of course) but there are other benefits.
For example, if your response rates are quicker you gain a competitive edge, can meet regulatory and compliance needs (depending on your industry), and ultimately provide a better service. And better service naturally lends itself to repeat / loyal customers and referrals.
#3. See which services are more lucrative
We’ve touched on high-value clients. But there’s also your services that should be assessed.
Why? Because some of your practices will yield higher profit margins and you can focus on providing more of these services and even expanding on this sort of work.
And this is where job tracking slots in perfectly. It allows you to analyse the profitability of each service – all without having to dig through lots of spreadsheets and collate it in some similar format for analysis.
#4. Identify upsales
Having a comprehensive record of client history and job details, you can use this insight to spot opportunities for upselling and cross-selling. For example, if a certain profile of client typically takes A, B and C service, clients that look-a-like and only take service A could be hot for an upsell as they’ll likely have similar needs.
A real-life example of this is when clients take out planned preventative maintenance support on top of a boiler installation.
Pitched right, the customer will more likely thank you for being in tune with their needs and making recommendations. It's much better than a cold-sell of an irrelevant service – a major turn-off.
#5. Revenue-generating marketing
Looking to boost the ROI of marketing spend? A combination of upselling and targeting more of the high-value clients is a surefire way to do this.
Job tracking allows you to create more tailored campaigns based on a better understanding of customer needs, preferences and target profiles.
#6. Make decisions based on data, not gut feel
But it’s not just sales and marketing that gain a boost. Leveraging the insight from job tracking allows you to make more informed decisions about things like expansion strategies and service offerings.
Bringing it all together: Job tracking allows field service businesses to improve customer experiences through speed and more consideration of needs, maximises the use of time and resources, and spots areas for revenue generation.
How leading field services cheat
Now, this all sounds very appealing. But, how do leading field service businesses manage all this? The secret? Job tracking software.
There are so many advanced features that automate a lot of the processes we’ve mentioned above and surfaces comprehensive, real-time reporting so that in an instance – and at just the click of a button – you can see how your entire operations are performing.
Neat, right?
Let’s go into this a little more.
How job tracking software works
This clever tech is designed specifically to monitor and manage jobs at an individual level and to fuel business growth. From here, this insight is collected and combined to create the higher-level operational visibility we’ve covered in this blog.
Here’s how:
✅️ Automated data collection: For example, tracking engineer’s time used on a job through features like GPS tracking, capturing arrival and departure times. Stock used can be logged via their mobile device.
✅️ Real-time reporting dashboards: These provide live visibility into job statuses, costs, and engineers’ locations – with minimal manual data entry.
✅️ Smart scheduling: Using features like route optimisation to find the fastest route with the least congestion so labour, vehicle maintenance and fuel costs are kept as low as possible. Plus, it prioritised the high value jobs for you – based on the criteria you’ve specified.
✅️ Software integration: Syncing with accounting software, automated billing makes for faster payments and fewer invoicing errors (as it saves data re-entry).
The end result? You get a centralised hub that manages the entire job lifecycle. Through automation, visibility, and analytics, it provides cost control, finds growth opportunities, and keeps the business proactive rather than reactive to help mitigate disaster.
And it drives higher profitability for greater growth. 🚀
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