Read this blog to learn about six best practices that top field service businesses use for work order software. These tips will help you improve work order management, boost productivity and profits.
For field service businesses that take on new jobs daily, efficient work order management is essential. This includes new quotes, emergency call-outs, and routine services.
Many studies show that productivity improves when field service businesses can easily track and manage their work.
Businesses that use best practices for work orders see impressive results like 92% first-time fix rates, 70% boost in productivity, and 600% growth.
Companies in the field service industry face ongoing pressures. In this blog, we will explain what work orders are. We will also discuss how to manage them effectively in your business. This can help reduce some of this pressure.
Quick definition: What are work orders and why are they crucial?
Work orders are specific tasks or jobs that need completing for field service customers. A work order is also referred to as job management – it’s a way to allocate specific resources, prioritise, and track tasks that need completing.
Efficient work order management helps:
✅ Meet customer expectations: Ensuring you meet client SLAs and resolve client complaints quickly.
✅ Keep costs lean: Better resource management of stock and field teams boosts performance, and therefore profits.
✅ Record whether jobs are complete: Essential for billing, invoicing and business reporting.
For example, if a business does not have a good first-time fix rate, costs can rise quickly. This can greatly affect the business's profits. If the business can send the right worker to a job with the right tools and resources, they won't need to return. This will improve customer experience, increase job profit margins, and allow for instant invoicing.
So, how do industry-leading field services maximise the speed and quality of managing work orders?
6 ways field services can improve management of work orders
In efficient work order management, all industry-leading field services businesses share one key element.
And that’s a solid work order management system.
With the right software solution, job management becomes much smoother. You can optimize job scheduling. And the right people, information, and stock are readily available – all making first time fixes skyrocket.
Here's how the right software can help, and an outline of best practices below.
#1: Leverage real-time updates ⏰
This is a significant benefit for field service businesses and it covers a multitude of features.
To sum up, with real-time updates on work orders, everyone in the business is on the same page.
This means field services can:
- Reduce downtime: Identify issues quicker and dispatch the right maintenance technician to a job. Plus, fit more jobs within a day with efficient scheduling.
- Improve customer service: With quick work order updates, you can enhance communication with customers. Everyone will know the job status and can handle questions and complaints. With some work order systems, you can give customers real-time updates. This will ensure that the business always inform the customer, and they will know when the engineer will arrive.
- Improve cash flow by sending invoices right after a job is marked as complete. Make it easy for clients to pay quickly. This helps ensure prompt payment.
#2: Clear communications between back-office and field teams 🔄
Ultimately, the purpose of work orders is to ensure clear and concise instructions are passed to the relevant teams to ensure jobs are completed quickly and correctly. They outline who is responsible for each task, what are the details, timeframes and what needs completing.
Typically, work orders will cover: a work order or job number, description of work, specific customer information – like location – equipment and stock needed to complete the job and any qualifications that an engineer will need to ensure the right engineer has the right skills to complete the job.
Plus, they allow you to store key information like customer signatures on completion, costs associated for financial management, and updates for prompt billing or rescheduling.
Having one central place to store all the information on work orders is a must-have. This saves confusion and allows collaboration between departments.
For example: With instant job updates issued by an engineer, back-office teams can see if another job needs scheduling in and why the job wasn’t complete so they can order the right parts. And when an engineer returns, they’ll have an electronic record of the job's history and any notes made during a previous inspection.
The easiest way to streamline communications? With the work order software 📴
#3: Integration with other tech ⚙
The best work order management systems are solutions that integrate with your existing tools and processes. For example, inventory management software, CRM systems, and financial accounting tools like Xero and Sage.
This ensures all systems communicate with each other. There is no need to check multiple systems for missing information. You won't have to manually update records in other systems. Double-keying information wastes time and you can easily miss important information through human-error.
On the other hand, an integrated solution for work orders makes data more accurate and current. Everyone can access key information, allowing field service businesses to make better decisions.
Having the right systems integrated keeps your business working more efficiently and makes everything easier to manage.
#4: Mobile-device connectivity 📴
For work orders to be managed effectively by field service workers strong, mobile device or tablet connectivity is essential. It’s how field workers provide real-time updates at any time of the day.
Given these workers often work outside of office hours, in remote locations and are accessing and updating jobs electronically in the cloud, this means instant job updates and no need for manually replicating job details back at the office or losing data by having poor signal.
It also means field workers have the information they need when they need it. So, out of hours, they can access important documents like safety certificates, job sheets, provide signatures and even find nearby inventory providers so they can fetch parts to complete a job.
This is crucial to so many areas of operations; like customer services, finance, and reporting.
#5: Standardising job sheets and job cards 📇
To ensure consistency in service delivery and to make sure key requirements like regulatory compliance is met, a key part of work order management is leveraging standardised templates.
Accessible electronically, thanks to the mobile-device functionality mentioned above, field workers can use these templates to tick off key criteria and capture all essential information – making sure you don’t miss a thing.
It also means you can pass real-time updates back to office teams to support with financial reporting, performance monitoring, and all the other benefits we’ve already mentioned.
Plus, standardised documents look more professional when the customer is presented with them in a report.
#6: Better job tracking and performance monitoring 📌
All of these elements combine to make for better business reporting and insights.
With real-time job updates, engineer tracking, vehicle maintenance tasks and more, field service businesses can better monitor every area of a business’s performance – and prepare for otherwise costly unplanned maintenance.
Ultimately, better reporting allows you to see areas to improve to ensure efficiency and quality so you can squeeze profit margins and deliver high standards of customer service.
Manage work orders more efficiently
To sum up, field service businesses that follow these best practices see increases in productivity and profits.
When managed correctly, work orders optimise operations, reduce downtime, and ensure you deliver the very best customer experiences.
This is all made much easier with the right systems in place and that’s why leading field service providers lean on the best job management software available.
Want to discover how work orders could benefit your business? Book a demo with BigChange today
