If you own or operate a business that relies on heavy equipment for tasks such as construction, excavation, or transportation, using field service management (FSM) software, can be extremely beneficial. Field service management software allows you to manage your heavy equipment and jobs more efficiently, improving performance and reducing costs. Redlist’s founder grew up around his family’s crane company, which has a heavy influence on our field service dispatch software. Our software is useful for many industries, but heavy equipment businesses will find the specific features you need with Redlist. Whether you own or manage a crane company, hauling or delivery company, or a rigging and heavy haul company, these are some of the major benefits of using FSM software for your heavy equipment business.
1. Improves Your Job Bidding Process
This first benefit does not apply to every field service dispatch software. In fact, most operations tools do not include any systems or support for your job bidding process. But, your job bidding is where it all begins! Redlist’s field service management software handles everything in your quote-to-cash process. This includes what you could call a lightweight CRM (customer relationship management) platform, which organizes customer data. Our software also has a system for your sales team to put quotes together right within the Redlist app. This creates a stronger foundation for your entire customer experience because everything your customer needs and agreed to is in the quote that then creates the service ticket, all in the same system.
2. Streamlines Scheduling and Dispatch
Once a job bid is accepted, you can generate a digital service ticket to send to scheduling and dispatch. For your heavy equipment business, it is essential to have a dispatch management system within your field service dispatch software. It is hard enough to get the right equipment and the right people on the right job. Your schedulers have to look at what the customer needs, what is on the quote, who is available, who has the necessary certifications to perform the job, what equipment is needed, what equipment is available, and pull all of that together to create a schedule.
Therefore, Redlist’s user-friendly visual calendar collects all of this information so your scheduling and dispatch team can see every piece of the puzzle when generating the schedule. Missing a single, small detail can create a scheduling conflict and derail your customer’s project. So, using field service dispatch software is essential to streamlining this key step.
3. Increases Efficiency for Employees in the Field
Digitizing your service tickets and project information is a huge time saver for your field employees. Your operators, drivers, and field technicians can efficiently record on their mobile device every resource by job/project, including how many hours they worked, what equipment they used, and what parts or materials were used. Basically, with a few taps, they can build a custom report for the day automatically tracking their time, updating your inventory, and building the line items for the project invoice.
Additionally, Redlist’s mobile app provides a centralized location for all of your project information. Project managers or dispatchers can attach certifications, permits, or any other important documents or details to service tickets. So, your field employees who need that information do not have to look at their email, text messages, and a Google Drive folder to find it all. They just open the app, pull up the job, and everything they need is in one spot. This enables them to provide essential permits to customers or regulatory bodies, or quickly digest the project details and get to work faster.
4. Improves Your Invoicing Process and Cash Flow
Revenue management is the lifeline of your heavy equipment business. The sooner you invoice, the sooner you collect payment. That means the sooner you have cash in hand to invest back into the business. However, many heavy equipment businesses across various industries do not realize how much money they are leaving on the table. If your service ticket is not in total alignment with your job quote, then your invoice will be incorrect. Missing line items, inaccurate invoices, and even lost paper service tickets that never get billed add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
How do you fix this problem? Shorten the time between completing a job and invoicing for it. This allows your sales team to approve or edit service tickets, which may include asking employees or the customer questions while the information is still fresh in their minds. That gets passed to your billing department where they can bill customers with accurate information and in a timely manner.
5. Develops Better Communication Internally and with Your Customers
Multiple team members or departments have to handle information and communicate with each other and the customer. So, if they do not all have access to the same information, there is a higher probability of miscommunication. Field service dispatch software consolidates all of your files, spreadsheets, whiteboards, calendars, and/or multiple softwares into a single location. Then, every member of your team can access this information whether they are in the office or in the field. There are already so many details to mobilize your heavy equipment to serve your customers, so make it easy for your team to collaborate on those details with a dispatch management system.
6. Optimizes Your Inventory Management
If you need to manage parts and materials in addition to dispatching the right people and assets to job sites, then you need field service dispatch software. Not only will it allow your schedulers to forecast the required inventory when they schedule a job, but it will also allow field employees to easily update inventory levels. When your inventory is at multiple customer job sites, company vehicles, and the storeroom, it can be an overwhelming task to track it all.
With Redlist, you can manage inventory at every stage of the field service dispatch software. The job quote outlines the needed materials, which get transferred to the digital service ticket. Scheduling and dispatch receive this information and ensure that the appropriate inventory is available when they schedule the job. Also, they can attach a checklist of necessary parts, materials, tools, and equipment to the job. Then, when the field employee scheduled for that job pulls up the project information, they know exactly what they need to get the job done.
7. Provides Visibility into Your Heavy Equipment Business
Paper-based processes mean you are doing a lot of guesswork when it comes to business decisions. If you want reports on critical metrics, it takes hours of manual labor to gather the data and compile a report. So, when something comes up, as it almost always does, you do not have any real-time data to rely on. You are doing your best to put out fires and make strategic business decisions, but it is like driving blindfolded. However, field service dispatch software brings you consistent, reliable data. Job and project tracking empowers your team to better manage project timelines and know the status of every job. Additionally, all of your data auto-populates the reports on your reporting dashboard. This puts real-time business information at your fingertips! Without the need for hours of data entry, you can track KPIs (key performance indicators), business growth, and areas for improvement.
8. Bonus Benefit: Redlist’s Field Service Dispatch Software is Designed for Heavy Equipment Businesses
Not only did our CEO come from a crane family, but also every member of the Redlist team is required to spend time in the field to experience what our customers live every day. There are other operations tools that do not put the end-user experience at the forefront of their software design. That is why we get to know our customers, the problems they face daily, and what works and what doesn’t for the employees in the field. So, while we built Redlist for every company, we have always kept heavy equipment businesses in mind. Regardless of industry, heavy equipment businesses tend to find exactly what they need in Redlist.
For example, our reporting dashboard comes with a downrenting report, which is a specific need of crane companies that we fulfill. Furthermore, we know that field service dispatch software is not a one-size-fits-all solution. You can configure our software to suit your specific needs and existing workflows. If your workflow works but you just need a digital solution to streamline it, you can set up Redlist according to how you already do things.
Drive Your Business Growth with Field Service Dispatch Software
Field service dispatch software is a must for heavy equipment businesses. You can save money and increase productivity by automating and better organizing your scheduling, communication, reporting, and invoicing tasks. This makes life much easier for business owners, managers, field employees, dispatchers, salespeople, and accountants. The best thing about field service dispatch software is that you can manage your entire heavy equipment business with a single platform. With Redlist’s cloud-based mobile app, you can run your business from anywhere, anytime. The benefits listed above improve your operations management, revenue management, and customer experience. This lays a healthy foundation for your heavy equipment business to grow, expand, and be a leader in your industry. If you’d like to learn more, schedule a demo of our Field Service Dispatch Software.
