Today is Christmas Day, a day full of surprises. If you were like me as a child, I spent the weeks before Christmas looking in all the nooks and crannies in my house trying to figure out what my parents had bought me for Christmas. But they were sneaky, and I rarely knew what presents I would receive.
It got me thinking, what things might people be surprised to know what they can do in their work order software? People know about the usual attributes of work order software – customer database and history, scheduling, work order management, field data collection, integrations to popular billing software like QuickBooks – but usually aren’t aware of some of the more advanced features inherent to some work order software.
So with that in mind, here are five things you may not even know work order software can do:
- Schedule and Route More Efficiently – You probably know you can schedule using work order software, but did you know you can schedule and route more efficiently, saving you time and money?
For example, you can set HindSite up to color code days that you have a tech in the area of a customer you are scheduling. If your customer calls and wants to schedule an appointment, you can see if you have any field personnel in the area in the near future, see if they have any openings, and schedule it. By keeping your field personnel in a very small area, you can schedule more jobs per day and save money on gas.
You can also route more efficiently. With HindSite and MapPoint mapping software, you can efficiently route each of your field personnel each day. Many customers report they can schedule at least one extra job per day, per truck, thanks to more efficient scheduling and routing. - Field Surveys. The more data you have on a customer, the better you’re able to serve them. That’s where field surveys, or what HindSite calls assessments, come in. Essentially, you can associate assessments with specific services and collect data on your customers. For example, if you own an irrigation business, you can quickly collect information like what controller your customer uses and market a newer smart model to them in the future. Or, if you own a property maintenance company, you can have your guys complete an assessment after every service asking if there is any additional work that needs to be done to beautify the property. You can then make improvement suggestions and generate more revenue.
- Asset Tracking – Asset tracking allows you to track information about specific customer equipment. For instance, one of our customers repairs forklifts. Their customers want to know specifically which forklift was repaired and see a repair history for each individual forklift. With asset tracking, they can do that within their work order software solution, and then mine that data to suggest times for regular forklift maintenance based on typical breakdown timelines.
- Email Marketing – We recently released a service business marketing add-on to HindSite called HindSite Connect. Essentially, it enables our customers to send common transactional emails – confirmation emails, reminder emails, cancellation notifications, completion emails – as well as mass send emails like newsletters, notifications, promotions and more. Because all customer and prospect data is stored within HindSite, sending email is a natural extension of your work order software. And it’s as easy as a few mouse clicks.
- Contract Profitability Analysis – If your service business is contract-based, your work order software should have all the data you need to determine which contracts are most profitable and which aren’t. You can then compare how much time and material you budgeted for each contract and get real-time information about how much time and material you’ve actually used on that contract. Armed with that information, over time you’ll be able to determine which properties are most profitable and why, and then try to find more properties just like them.
Work order software truly can help you run just about every aspect of your business electronically. Once you’ve mastered the basics of your software, dig deeper to find other ways it can help you grow and improve your business.
Want more tips on how to grow and improve your business? Check out our free eBook, 33 Stupid Things Contractors Do (and How to Fix Them) today!