Sustainability may have felt like something to prioritise in the near future, but this all got flipped on its head when the energy prices – amongst many other costs – skyrocketed.
In a bid to substantially save costs, all businesses have shifted their focus towards lean and efficient processes. For field service businesses, this is where one particular type of tech comes in: job management software.
With job management software, businesses can enjoy reduced costs, increased efficiency, and reduced environmental impact.
Ready to see how?
Let’s dive in.
Quick definition: What is job management software? 🔎
Job management software is tech specifically designed for businesses to more easily manage operations. It allows you to efficiently manage job schedules, quickly allocate jobs to the nearest qualified engineer, record customer and job information in one place with a CRM, track jobs, instantly communicate updates across your entire team, and so much more.
In short, it gives you complete control.
Ultimately, the productivity gains drive businesses to make the switch. We see it across our own clients. Even BigChange itself significantly boosts productivity using the tech. With real-time data, you can see how the business is performing instantly. Which, as we’ll go into later, is a big plus for managing sustainability.
Given its huge benefits, a vast swathe of field service sectors rely on it, like fire & security, gas & plumbing, facilities management, drainage & waste – and many more!
📕 That was just a quick overview. Feel free to check out more about job management here: What is job management? Your complete guide (with examples)
The fundamentals of job management software for sustainability
There are tons of profit and growth-boosting benefits of job management software. But to articulate how the tech supports sustainability, we’ll focus on areas that most reduce environmental impact and costs for field service businesses.
Lesson #1: Job management software increases operational efficiency ⏱️
In a nutshell, job management software is proven to streamline processes thanks to the abundance of automation tools that run in the background. This saves a shed load of time on administration, for starters.
So, how does this impact sustainability? Put simply, it reduces the amount of energy and resources needed to complete jobs.
For example, when using job management software, you can optimise travel routes based on an engineer's current and home locations, traffic congestion and likely fuel consumption on the routes for different field engineers.
This helps to reduce idling time, unnecessary mileage and vehicle emissions.
Did you know? BigChange has job tracking and job scheduling tools that allow you to manage all this. You can track time, see and update schedules using drag-and-drop on calendar views – and easily manage unlimited projects. Find out more here.
On top of this, you can also reduce the costs associated with stock and inventory. How? You can order just what you need for individual jobs to save on associated storage costs and waste created by excess stock.
Lesson #2: Job management software streamlines operations 🔁
Automation also helps prevent errors and delays. Clients love this feature because they can get more done in the same time, whether it’s booking more jobs in a day or sending out quotes and invoices on the spot.
Now, let’s give you an example of how this impacts sustainability for field service businesses. Take first-time fixes. With a well-oiled job management process, you’ve got comprehensive job records, access to all the documentation and photos your engineer needs (accessible via a mobile app).
This gives you and your entire team all the information that’s essential to ordering the right stock for a job, in advance, and assigning it to the job so that it's on the van when the engineer sets off.
Combined, these factors significantly boost the likelihood of a job being completed right the first time or on a return visit.
This means minimal return trips and the costs and energy use that go with it.
Whilst we’re talking about waste…
Did you know? BigChange’s mobile app and digital forms replace paper-based processes – saving you wasting paper, postage, and postal transport emissions. Learn more about going paperless here.
Lesson #3: It improves team management and communication 📣
Through real-time data sharing, team messaging, and project tracking, regardless of your team members' location, job management software enables you to reduce the need for in-person meetings and travel.
As well as reducing fuel emissions and costs, it also means field service businesses can consider smaller office workspaces.
On top of this, by easily keeping open lines of communication and having digital documentation, you can reduce the likelihood of errors that we’ve mentioned earlier – and optimise work schedules.
Did you know? BigChange is built with team collaboration at the core. It makes it a doddle for businesses to communicate because even when there’s no signal, engineers can still access vital customer and job information.
Lesson #4: It powers scalability and growth 🚀
By optimising resources, this project management software allows businesses to get more jobs booked within a day, without needing to hire additional resources. Perfect when there’s a major shortage in a lot of field service labour skills, across a variety of industries – and a lot of hesitancy in this volatile market.
This saves businesses needing additional outlays, such as more vans, more fuel costs, and more kit like laptops and tools. Which also helps you to keep prices down.
Even better, if you can reduce your reliance on fossil fuels by using electric vehicles and solar power, you’ll eventually see the return on investment and be contributing to net-zero goals.
Did you know? BigChange has lots of built-in features to optimise resource usage so that you reduce waste. For example, it stops you needing to purchase unnecessary volumes of stock (more on this here).
Lesson #5: Job management software provides real-time data analysis 📊
This is a huge selling point for field service businesses. With real-time data capture – and it being fed into a central dashboard – you can see instantly how the overall business is performing.
Through seeing live stock levels, resource usage. and job completion times, you get an accurate view of where to improve sustainability and profit margins. For example, you may be wasting fuel by not grouping together multiple jobs by location.
Another common example is predictive maintenance. Even something as little as tyre pressure can be responsible for around 20% of a vehicle’s fuel consumption.
Did you know? BigChange has all the comprehensive tools you need to create a live information feed between engineers and back-office teams. And our clever business intelligence reporting dashboard – on all things from vehicle, driver behaviour, stock and financial reports – is all plugged together so you’ve one clear view, on one single platform, of how your business is performing against sustainability goals.
In fact, this project management software is so impactful that field service businesses that use it have even been entered into sustainability awards because of it.
Case study: Celsius shortlisted for sustainability award thanks to job management software
Celscius, a plumbing and heating company based in Edinburgh, was a finalist in the ‘most sustainable installer category’ last year – thanks to the use of tech.
Celsius was able to reduce paper waste and improve fuel efficiency, minimise wasted travel time, and help boost first-time fix rates by only sending technicians with the right equipment and skills to jobs.
“Everyone needs to do their bit, and we’ve got the skills and services to make a real impact on both energy bills and carbon footprints.” – Gregg Cameron, Celsius’s Business Development Manager.
You can read more about this here.
Get a handle on sustainability and rising costs with job management software
As you can see, making the move to digital business operations and leveraging cloud-based job management software is a no-brainer for sustainability. Through real-time data analytics alone, you get accurate reports that enable you to see how you can reduce your business’s carbon footprint with things like predictive maintenance.
And while we’re all hoping the sky-high energy costs won’t be forever, it’s clear that leveraging tech will allow field service businesses to scale and grow beyond the next few years.
Not sure where to go from here? We’ve got a couple of options for you:
Ready to see how job management software improves your sustainability? Put us to the test with a quick demo.
Looking for more guidance? Take a look at these blogs:
