The world is still recovering from the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. While the disaster has hit us in multiple aspects of our regular life, it has also accelerated some interesting changes across the globe, the digital transformation being the most significant of them. The advent of modern technology has radically changed the way go about our day-to-day tasks. Businesses are no exception to this changing trend. Organizations all over the world have adopted cutting-edge technology to leverage a wide range of competitive advantages. More and more companies are joining the digital revolution, as they embrace digital transformation. 

For field service businesses, however, there has not been a more interesting time in this regard. While the sector is primarily run by personal skills and one-on-one interactions, the pandemic has thrust the need for going digital upon it. Organizations were forced to minimize face-to-face contact among employees, yet keep the gig up and running. This resulted in the widespread adoption of digital tools and technologies.

While the pandemic played a catalytic role in field service digital transformation, some pioneering organizations were already invested in leveraging the advantages of embracing digital technology. The reasons, however, are obvious. Digital transformation can lead any service business, regardless of its size or capacity, to further growth. From increasing profit to enhancing customer satisfaction, from improving internal communication to optimizing resources more effectively– the benefits are boundless. 

As evident from this, field service companies have a lot to gain from changing the traditional way of doing business. In this blog, we will be taking a deeper look into the factors that make digital transformation a necessity in service delivery and how small businesses can profit from it.

• Optimize Technician Scheduling

The most critical challenge in running a successful service delivery business is to send the right person to the right job at the right time. As you can see, this involves a lot of factors in achieving the goal. Any one of them goes wrong and you end up with a dissatisfied customer, a damaged reputation, and a missed opportunity of making some profit. This is why you need to optimize your scheduling and dispatching with some effective digital tools, i.e., scheduling and dispatching software. As you ditch the manual pen-and-paper method to assign technicians to job orders and switch to software solutions, the chances of mismanagement reduce dramatically. At a time when the business environment has become more competitive than ever, you cannot afford to lose any opportunity to make a profit and keep up your brand value. 

• Improve Employee Productivity

Perhaps one of the most important benefits of digital transformation in field service is better employee productivity and engagement. It enables businesses to connect seamlessly with their field technicians via mobile apps as well as other services (for example, integration with CRM or accounting software). It automates routine admin tasks to bring out better results. Moreover, cloud storage technology lets users access the centralized database practically from anywhere. Be it work order management or invoicing, you can handle everything from one single platform with just a click of a button. Besides, it also allows your field technicians to access customer information right from the field, increasing first-time fix rates and improving overall productivity. As such, digital transformation results in a unified data management system and communication channel that works for everyone in the organization. 

• Make Better Decisions

While digital transformation automates your business processes, it also offers comprehensive reports and analytics on your operations. Empowered with the data, you can easily identify the strengths and weaknesses of your resources and come up with more effective strategize to use them to their optimal potential. 

• Provide Efficient Customer Service

With the changing trends in the industry, customers now have higher expectations from their service providers. If you cannot keep up with their demands, you are likely to miss out on that competitive edge. If they are to wait endlessly for the technicians to arrive not knowing when to expect them or receive erroneous bills and invoices after asking repeatedly, or worse still, they are to make a hundred calls to get a quote or ask for emergency service, they will move on to a different business next time they need service. However, you can address all these concerns only if you have adopted some simple digital tools. They can get every piece of the necessary information right on their smartphone if their service provider is using field service software. That is the power of digital transformation. And the result? Happy customers who are most likely to come back again and again.

• Save Time and Money

Another extraordinary thing about digital transformation in the field service businesses is that it can help small companies save a bucket load of money and time. Doing things manually with the traditional paper-based system means you are leaving ample room for mismanagement and human error. With software solutions, however, things get easier as your system gets more efficient. Besides, digital transformation reduces operational costs and accelerates response time, giving you more ROI for your business. 

Final Words

In today’s age, digital transformation translates into dramatic changes in the way organizations are carrying out their operations. From scheduling and dispatching to monitoring employee location, from creating estimates to sending invoices to the customer, it automates the entire process with just a touch of the button. What used to be complex, cumbersome, and most importantly, an expensive operation could now be a significantly profitable business thanks to the power of technology. Simply put, digital transformation in field business creates recurring revenue streams, increases business opportunities, increases profit, and provides competitive advantages to organizations of all sizes. Therefore, any service organization looking for growth must look for leveraging the benefits of digital transformation. Moreover, with the ever growing competition in the field of service delivery, the time to harness digital transformation has never been more relevant than right now.

Author Bio

Joy Gomez

My world is made up of codes. It is the central element that drives my universe. I am a self-taught, process-driven programmer with a creative bent of mind. Since I was an engineering student, I dreamt of creating something unique. To satiate my creative appetite, I took to coding. Blessed with abundant support and generous scholarships from my employers, I simultaneously worked full-time and pursued my dream. My passion and high productivity helped me in my journey as well. Finally, I created Field Promax to follow my drive of coding and streamlining processes; and do more of what I know best—coding.