Scheduling, Dispatching and Call Center
The visual Dispatch Calendar Board gets the right people to the right service or job every time.
Service Management
Service Management
Maximize dispatching by scheduling the right people at the right time and obtain real-time data for work taking place in the field. Acumatica Service Management provides contract management, appointment schedules, and a full-featured mobile application for service-driven businesses, wholesale distributors, construction companies, and manufacturers for deliveries, installation, or remote service operations.
Key Benefits of Service Management for Your Company
Gain Control of Field Service Technician
Track resource commitments and real-time GPS location. Obtain real-time access to the progress of the appointment with status updates, the material used, and detailed notes and pictures.
Improve Communications
Using emails, SMS or push notifications, notify resources and customers of appointment assignments or modifications.
Accelerate Decision-Making
Improve decisions by using drill-down reports and dashboards to access past information and gain insights into future needs. Define metrics for technician utilization and service performance.
A Look at Field Service Management and Its Substantial Benefits
Field Service Management (FSM) is defined as simply managing your company’s resources and workforce – who are deployed in offsite locations or who do their job at the customer’s location – using mobile field service software. With this in mind, the intent behind implementing field service scheduling software is enabling companies to meet – and hopefully exceed – customers’ expectations in terms of efficiency, timeliness, cost, and satisfaction. Because customer satisfaction is a cornerstone for every business’ success, Acumatica’s Field Service Edition focuses on meeting your customer’s needs through streamlining, dispatching, and reducing response times through our web-based, fully mobile applications. Our mobile field service software is not an additional application but is integrated within Acumatica’s all-encompassing ERP.
The numerous benefits of automating your field services operations make it all worthwhile. Here are a few reasons why:
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Mobile Service Management: Field technicians and headquarters remain connected throughout every service; each technician has complete access to all service information and customer data, whether on a phone, iPad, or laptop. The “field” aspect of field management has evolved from being “out-of-reach” to being “in constant contact” – the ability to autonomously handle every situation with access to easily available resources.
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Scheduling: Efficiently dispatch the proper personnel with the appropriate skills to each unique worksite; service requests, customer information, product history, and required materials are instantly at the technician’s fingertips, equaling time saved for everyone. Schedules are created automatically or by using tools on the graphical dispatch board, identifying the status of service orders easily.
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Route Planning and Map Integration: Dispatchers utilize web-based mapping applications to chart routes, using real-time information to reduce driving time. Emergency service calls are no longer an emergency – add the unplanned appointment to the already planned routes with ease. Notify the technician instantly and send the new service order directly to their mobile device.
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Equipment Maintenance and Inventory Management: Integration of sales, service stores, inventory, and purchasing means technicians manage their equipment and inventory of tools and repair parts efficiently and easily. Tracking records are updated and accessible for every job.
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Dashboards and Business Intelligence: A personalized dashboard takes unfiltered data and transforms it into progress and trend reports.
Important Features of Service Management
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Calendar Boards
Create new appointments or assign resources to scheduled appointments. View your resource schedules by day, by week, or by month and filter calendars based on appointment requirements.
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Appointments
Update technician schedules from the office. Technicians can start and end appointments in the field providing instant status updates to users in the application. Manage single or multi-day appointments and pause appointments for travel or break times.
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Resource Scheduling
Schedule technicians based on workload, location, or by skill or certification. Ensure technicians have the right equipment and inventory to complete the job.
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Flexible Billing
Generate invoices based on estimations or actuals, and group invoices by service order, time frame, or customer purchase order. Define different billing rules by the customer and by service order type. Start contract billing at the start of the period with a fixed rate or time and material billing.
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Route and Resource Tracking on Maps
Visualize estimated route and route statistics by the technician. View actual route history and real-time GPS location to keep track of resources.
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Route Optimization
Use WorkWave Routing Engine integration to optimize appointments to minimize driving time. The optimization considers the working schedule of your resources, as well as lunch breaks. This is an optional application.
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Mobile App
Update appointments on the road or at customer locations using the mobile application available for Android and iOS. Access customer history, capture payments, enter expense receipts and capture signatures directly from your mobile device.
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Multi-Language and Localization
Support multiple languages, date formats, and number formats. Define a default language by user for the web and on the mobile app.
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Warranty Management
Establish warranty offers for your customers, specifying which parts are under warranty to avoid confusion, mischarges, and objections. Multidimensional contracts (different warranty periods for different components of the system) help to track warranties from sales to repair in the field, specifying what is covered and what is not. This helps ensure billing accuracy and improve customer satisfaction.
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Link AP Bills
Simplify cost tracking by linking accounts payable bills to field service appointments for holistic expense management and financial analysis by appointment.
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Copy Quote Attachments
Photos, documents, and other files are automatically copied from service quotes to service appointments to ensure a smooth hand-off for field service technicians.
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Enterprise-Wide Integration
Convert CRM opportunities into service orders and create service appointments from opportunities or projects. Allocate stock items to service orders and create purchase orders from the field. Create appointments for a project and manage budgets and profitability across and project. Capture time for employee timecards used for payroll. Manage inventory with integrated purchasing, requisitions, and robust inventory replenishment logic.
Popular Service Management Resources
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