Introduction
Mobility and field service: The talk has been happening forever. The idea that real-time information improves customer service and boosts technician productivity is changing the entire industry. According to a Field Technologies Online survey, 33 percent of sampled field service organizations said their top strategic initiative was optimizing mobile operations with the latest technologies.
What is the real problem with paper documentation? How are companies using mobile apps? What are the features that strengthen your business? What’s the best way to transition to a mobile app?
Working with thousands of field service companies, we’ve heard these questions a lot. So, we decided to share our answers in this ebook. We hope this information helps you think strategically about mobile apps and make the best decision for your business.
Chapter 1: The One Thing Robbing You of Billable Hours and Slowing Your Sales Cycle
You work hard to provide the best service. But paperwork orders, service reports, estimates, and other documentation rob you of time and money. Here’s how:
Paper forms make you wait hours or days for information
Paper forms take hours or days to return back to your office. Slow information delays sending out invoices and following up with customers.
Worse, your employees spend too much time getting information. They may have to run to and from the office just to get the details of the next job. This struggle means fewer jobs per day and fewer billable hours.
In both cases, sharing information via paper is a struggle. Going mobile removes this issue; all forms filled out on a mobile app are immediately available in the cloud. Receive information from the field in real-time. With dispatch, you can easily send mobile notifications to employees with information about jobs.
For instance, at the beginning of the day, you can send out mobile work orders to technicians with the time of appointment, the customer’s address, and a brief note about the customer’s issue inside the work order. Your employees immediately receive the information on their smartphone or tablet. Less time waiting, more time working.
You’re wasting that information… again
Even after your reports return from the field, employees have to type up that information. If you spend just one hour a day on data entry, that adds up to over 200 hours in a year.
More than time, data entry creates opportunities for errors. You may have heard about the National Health Service error where 20,000 men were pregnant in Britain. It wasn’t a fluke of nature, just bad data entry.
While hilarious, data entry errors are common. In field service, these errors lead to inaccurate invoices, incorrect purchase orders, and unnecessary work.
Going mobile dramatically reduces these issues. All information is immediately available in the cloud and can be emailed to customers or partners.
Furthermore, that information can be integrated into other software programs and databases. A simple CSV export makes it easy to take your information from the cloud into a variety of programs including QuickBooks, Salesforce, and more.
Paper allows for errors
Even before data entry, paper forms allow for a variety of mistakes. First, there are the forms that never come back at all. They get lost somewhere between the work site and your office. This can be a huge issue: one company found that missing work orders were costing it up to $10,000 a month.
Not only do you have missing forms, but also unreadable text, missing fields, and bad information. This makes billing and paying employees harder and slower. Going mobile ensures you get accurate information the first time. No more handwriting, just clear text. Add automatic time and date stamps to know how long your employee was on site working on a problem. Use your own list of materials, pricing, and more inside an app. With calculations, it’s easy to create an accurate quote on-site.
Tired of forms returning incomplete? Make fields required. One click ensures that these fields can’t be skipped.
Human error is a part of life, but going mobile reduces errors and creates more accurate reports.
You wait to get paid for
Even after onsite work is finished, there’s more work to be done just to get paid. You have to bring back the work order, fill out an invoice, and then send it out to a customer. This can add on days or weeks to your sale cycle.
But what if you could get paid on-site as soon as you finish? With GoCanvas, you can. Simply fill out your form, and calculate the price of the work inside the app. Our mobile payments functionality allows you to charge on-site. Accept credit or debit cards, or take cash or check.
Your customer gets a receipt in their inbox as a part of their copy of the work order or invoice. You get paid the same day your work is done. And that sales cycle that took forever? It’s done in one day.
Using paper for your records costs you time and money. Worse, it often causes more errors along the way. Going mobile allows you to get paid the same day you do your work, and share information in real-time inside your business and with your customers.
Mobile apps shorten your sale cycle, increase your billable hours, and save your office hundreds of hours a year.
Chapter 2: Improve Your Internal Visibility with Mobile Apps
Whether you have two or 200 employees, your business’ success depends on their hard work. Passionate, motivated team players are the difference between surviving and thriving. But in field service, your employees are often far from the office.
So how do you know which employees are carrying their weight? Time cards and field reports can be one way of trying to find out. But paper forms take time to get back, and are limited in information. Mobile apps can improve your internal visibility and ability to make strategic decisions faster.
Time and date stamps
Let’s say your paperwork order says the work took three hours, but what if the customer only remembers the work taking two hours? This puts you in an awkward position with your customers and employees.
By going mobile you can create more accurate records of hours worked. Simply open up a work order or service report, and the time is automatically entered. The app can even calculate the time worked based on clocking in and clocking out.
Time and date stamps ensure better accuracy and fewer issues for both invoices and payroll. Mobile time cards help businesses spend less on tracking employees and more on their actual work.
Pictures
Sometimes, the work you need to do is obvious. You need to fix a major water leak or install a heating system. But for some businesses, like pest control, the work can be less obvious. Or if your work is technical, like pool maintenance, text can be confusing to customers. For the office, text isn’t verifiable.
Adding pictures can be incredibly helpful for your business and customers. With one click, a mobile app gives you a great visual. It’s easier to show termite damage with a photo than with words. Visuals make it easy for both your office and customers to understand. Photos educate clients and build trust in your work and analysis. Your business enjoys visual confirmation that work is either needed or was performed.
Dispatch
Sending out job information to field employees can be a hassle. Either they have to drive to and from the office between jobs, wasting time and gas. Or, they have to constantly check their email or phone for job information. How can you be sure that they get it, and follow through on the work?
A dispatch system improves communication and provides more oversight. Dispatch with GoCanvas can also track the progress of these appointments.
The dispatch feature will show when employees opened the dispatch when they started filling out the work order, and when it was completed. Sharing job information becomes easier, and you know when the job is done in real-time.
Oversight is never perfect. However, mobile apps allow you to have a better understanding of field employees’ work — not only when and where employees work, but also what they do. Being available in real-time also helps you make strategic decisions about your workforce and ensure you have the strongest and most effective team.
Chapter 3: How a Texas Moving Company Saved $175,000 with GoCanvas
Highlights
- Savings of $175,000 in processing and labor costs • Improved information collection
- Stronger management oversight
Apps Used
- Bill of Lading
- Damage Report
Background
Founded in 1996 by owner Kenny Baker, AB Moving has a fleet of 72 trucks, serving customers in Dallas, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio. The company is headquartered in Allen, a Dallas suburb, with 15 office employees, and all moving is done by subcontractors. The company and its 72 mover teams complete as many as 700 jobs each week.
AB Moving has been moving homes and businesses for over 20 years. AB understands they aren’t just moving customer’s possessions, but their lives.
Yet paper wasn’t serving the company well. In 2009, AB Moving started using a sophisticated software application to record customer, job booking, and move data. But drivers were still using paper bills of lading and damage reports.
The result? All movers had to come into the office at 5 a.m. to pick up that day’s assignments. Though AB Moving had sophisticated technology, it struggled to get information from the field integrated back into its system.
Brent Davis, the general manager, knew they could do better. “I was an auto adjuster for 17 years,” Brent says, “and was also the guy who test-piloted all the new technology. I’m just blessed with the ability to see how things can be done in the most efficient way.”
So Brent began looking for a technology fix that would eliminate as much of the paper as possible.
Solution & Results
In January 2014, AB Moving made the switch to GoCanvas, the global leader in mobile apps for business. Thousands of organizations leverage GoCanvas’s cloud-based, software-as-a-service mobile app platform to replace cumbersome paper forms with highly customizable mobile business apps.
Businesses can search from over 16,000 ready-made apps in the GoCanvas Application Store that can be customized to an individual business user’s needs. In addition, GoCanvas offers a do-it-yourself app builder that enables non-technical users to build their own apps in minutes.
Over the past year, AB Moving drivers have stopped using paper and started to use Samsung Galaxy tablets and GoCanvas mobile apps. The company has discovered measurable results, including:
Substantial Financial Savings
Previously, AB Moving took payment with a manual credit card machine or over the phone. However, this process was slow, cumbersome, and had high fees. By going digital, AB Moving has lower fees, and estimates they’ve saved $125,000 in fees alone.
AB Moving’s previous process was also time-consuming for office employees. They would spend hours matching contracts and credit card receipts, taking credit card information over the phone, and printing bills of lading. By streamlining this process, AB has saved another $50,000 in employee time.
In total? AB Moving has saved $175,000 by switching to GoCanvas.
Measurable Time Savings
AB Moving’s drivers work through many parts of Texas, often far from the office. Previously, all drivers would have to come into the office at 5 a.m. to pick up their jobs for the day. Davis recalls with a cringe, “If it was raining outside, they would come in and get the papers all wet. It was awful.”
With GoCanvas, the office can set up all moves the day beforehand. The light dispatch feature allows AB Moving to pre-populate bill of lading forms so movers know where they need to go and what to do. The matching and scheduling process that once took hours or days is now available in minutes.
Dispatch reduces the number of unproductive miles for drivers. AB Moving saves gas and time.
Improved Data Collection
AB Moving also receives stronger and more accurate information from GoCanvas. Previously, it would have to compensate customers up to 90 days after the move, since it didn’t have proof that items were already damaged.
Today, movers can easily take photos of items damaged before moving. With all information in the cloud, the photos are easy to find and always accessible. Photos have reduced the number and costs of post-move damage claims.
In addition, bills of lading are required by state law to be signed. Davis explains, “There are fines for incomplete forms. With the GoCanvas application, the movers can’t upload the form until everything is complete and it is signed. It’s bulletproof now, and that is saving us a lot of money in fines.”
GoCanvas does this by easily making fields required. With paper, nothing stopped a form from being returned only half-finished. A driver can skip a field in the GoCanvas mobile app, but if a field is required, he won’t be able to submit the app until the required fields are completed. So AB Moving no longer struggles with missing information in their forms.
Real-Time Oversight
With a dispersed workforce, AB Moving struggled to get information about its workforce in an easy manner. Who booked the move? How did the customer hear about AB Moving? Were any packaging supplies sold?
Today all reports are submitted immediately, so AB Moving can understand information in real time. The company is even taking this data further: data from each job is integrated with a home-grown application that AB Moving developed.
Through that application, Davis says, “Now I can see exactly what every mover did, who booked the move, the referral source, any boxes and other packaging supplies we sold. We can track anything we need to.”
What once were disparate files are now seamlessly connected and available for understanding not in a week, but the very same day.
Flexibility to Meet Evolving Business Needs
As a cloud-based, mobile platform combined with an easy-to-use mobile app builder, GoCanvas provides AB Moving the flexibility to add new features and functionality to any of its mobile apps. As needs evolve and change, GoCanvas makes editing apps a frictionless process.
For instance, as prices change, it’s easy for AB Moving to upload a new price list into its GoCanvas apps. The company doesn’t need to rely on IT support or have any knowledge of coding. With GoCanvas, it’s a simple drag-and-drop interface that anyone can use.
Today, AB Moving has ditched paper for mobile apps. Having taken back time in the workday, the company can focus on helping people move easily throughout Texas.
Chapter 4: How The Best Field Service Companies Go Mobile
You know going mobile has benefits for businesses. But any change is an investment of time and money. So how are the best companies in the industry getting started with mobile apps?
1. Start with a common form
Choose a form you use every day. Maybe it’s a work order, or perhaps a service form. Choose something that you use frequently and move it to a mobile app. Starting with a form you use daily means you’ll be able to test it often and perfect the process.
There are multiple ways to build your app with GoCanvas. You can build it from scratch with our mobile app builder. Our simple drag-and-drop platform makes it easy and requires no coding.
Another option is to choose an app from our mobile application store. We have over 400 mobile apps in field service alone. All of these can be edited for the perfect fit.
Don’t have time to build your own? Not a problem, send us your form, and we’ll convert it for you.
No matter which way you go, choosing a frequently used form makes the initial process easier, and more sustainable in the long run.
2. Think about the information you need and want
Look at what does and doesn’t work in your form now. Are you consistently missing certain information? Consider making these fields required. Tired of inaccurate invoices? Calculations are a great asset to ensure accurate charges.
With mobile apps, you can collect more information. Why not add a before and after image for customers? Perhaps add a coupon for customers in your PDF receipt. Automate labor, material, and tax calculations so your field techs don’t have to manually calculate the math. Or add barcode scanning to help your technicians understand the equipment they’re working with.
Mobile apps provide endless options to engage customers and improve your understanding of your business. Depending on what you want to know, GoCanvas mobile apps can make that easier to find out.
3. Test it
To ensure your mobile app works best, test with a small group of employees to find any issues before full implementation. Often, companies will test with technologically savvy users and those more comfortable with flip phones. Have these employees use the mobile apps as they would in their day-to-day work.
Test periods also help generate employee interest. Even during a trial, co-workers start seeing that using GoCanvas makes their work faster and easier. Employees begin to ask to go mobile!
4. Be open to feedback
To successfully implement your mobile app, you need to listen to the experiences of employees using it. Even after testing, it’s crucial that all your employees using GoCanvas feel like they can bring up issues.
Sometimes the issue is small. One field service company struggled to implement because technicians had nowhere to put their gloves. With the gloves on, they couldn’t use the touch screen. By giving employees a belt clip, not only was the company able to remove the pain point, but also got more employees to use GoCanvas.
Testing is crucial to help make the process smooth to start. Listening to feedback and addressing employees’ pain points will ensure wider implementation and long-term success.
5. Contact us
Every customer at GoCanvas is assigned a consultant. Available via phone, chat, or email, we are here to answer any of your questions. Something that may seem impossible, could need a simple fix. With years of experience, we’re ready and available to make your mobile app experience and adoption a seamless and easy transition.
No two businesses, even in field service, are alike. However great field service companies use similar tactics to ramp up with mobile apps effectively. These strategies, from starting with one common form to feedback, will help ensure that your whole team uses GoCanvas and that it helps you do business.
Ready to Rethink How You Work?
GoCanvas has helped a variety of businesses across multiple industries transform their safety processes and rethink their efficiency, ultimately saving them money. Why not do the same? Reach out to one of our experts today to kickstart your process revolution.
