What Are the Main Challenges in Field Service Management?

As of 2020, only 52% of businesses are using field service management software. The rest continue to rely on outdated legacy systems and error-prone manual processes to manage their field service operations.

Therefore, it’s unsurprising that field service organisations experience a host of common issues, including miscommunication, delays, and inconsistent cash flow. But, by modernising your processes and using the latest technology to improve your workflow, you could eliminate complications and free up your time to focus on business-critical activities instead.

Also, you’ll be able to stay ahead of the curve. Roughly half of your competitors haven’t yet made the most of technology, so early adopters will find themselves in a highly lucrative position.

In this article, we’ll explore the top four challenges in field service management and share how field service management technology can provide a cost-effective and straightforward solution.

The Top 4 Field Service Management Challenges

1. Scheduling Conflicts

Scheduling and dispatching difficulties present one of the main field service management challenges for businesses today. However, job management is one of the most crucial aspects of running a field service organisation since it ensures that your people know what they’re supposed to be doing, when and where.

Without proper scheduling processes in place, you may find it tricky to keep track of everything, leading to delays, clashes and double booking. Not only are these conflicts inconvenient for both your technicians and your customers, but they also have the potential to affect your bottom line.

However, by replacing traditional manual processes with an intelligent scheduling assistant, you won’t have to worry about allocating resources anymore. Modern software uses real-time data to guide you to the perfect engineer for each job, taking into account location, traffic, job constraints and vehicle type.

Consequently, you can be confident that you’re making the most of your technicians’ time and keeping your customers happy simultaneously. 

2. Asset and Stock Management

It’s estimated that inaccurate asset management reporting results in an approximate $1.1 trillion loss for companies worldwide. As such, your asset and stock management reports must be reliable; otherwise, you could be haemorrhaging revenue.

Businesses that rely on paper-based documentation and spreadsheets may find that, over time, numbers become skewed, and equipment goes missing. As a result, you may have to halt projects because you don’t have the right items available or end up over-ordering on stock that your staff has miscounted.

In comparison, when you use live asset and stock management software, you can easily keep track of all your belongings, regardless of location. Plus, you can assign stock and assets directly to jobs within the system, so your technicians will never be without the correct gear.

3. Communication and Administration

When businesses rely on archaic manual methods of communication, such as phone calls, texts and paper-based documentation, they are missing out on an excellent opportunity to increase efficiency. Poor communication and administration processes often lead to confusion and could destroy your entire workflow.   

In contrast, companies that adopt digital tools to alleviate field service management challenges achieve a 45% increase in the number of jobs completed each day. With a complete job management platform, you can manage the entire end-to-end process on one system, giving your back office staff and your field engineers complete visibility over the information they need when they need it.

The system updates information in real-time, meaning your team will receive live status updates on projects and be able to send automatic, personalised communications to your customers. Then, once your technicians have completed a job, they can simply fill out all forms from their mobile devices and generate an instant invoice.

By making administration and communication methods simpler for your team, you’ll find that they’re able to make the most of each day. For example, your back-office staff can allocate resources based on accurate information, and your technicians don’t have to spend hours completing paperwork. Instead, they can move straight onto the next scheduled job.

4. Invoicing and Payment

Since the beginning of the pandemic, late payments in the UK have shot up, with a 23% increase in unpaid invoices impacting companies nationwide. Subsequently, for your business to survive in a post-COVID world, you must streamline your payments process.

Organisations that don’t receive payments by the deadline could be unable to meet operational expenses, pay vendors, take on new projects or grow their operations. Fortunately, BigChange’s invoicing and financial technology integrates directly with your accounting software to increase efficiency, reduce errors and ensure that you get paid on time. 

Additionally, the system makes all documentation paperless, meaning that engineers can send invoices directly to your customers via their mobile devices as soon as they’ve completed the work. Customers can then pay on the same day using BigChange Pay, which provides them with the speediest and most convenient payment options.

By advancing the invoicing process, reducing the margin for human error and providing your customers with straightforward payment methods, you can rest assured that your cash flow will remain consistent.

Overcome Typical Field Service Problems with BigChange

BigChange is the complete Job Management Platform that’s helping field service businesses across the UK to win more work, take control of their operations and deliver winning customer experiences.

Bringing together customer relationship management (CRM), job scheduling, live tracking, field resource management, financial management, business intelligence into one simple to use and easy to integrate platform your business can run on.

Want to find out more?

Discover how BigChange field service management software can make your business grow stronger here and arrange a free demo today.