When the air conditioning goes down in an office in the middle of summer, who will you call? No, it’s not the Ghostbusters.
There’s actually a company committed to fixing that kind of problem. We are going to take a look at an HVAC company that is a full-service contractor that focuses on providing MEP services, Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing. They provide services for the industrial and commercial sectors, in addition to professional engineering services.
So if you have any problems of the sort, they can work on fixing them for you. If you need it, they can send a service technician to inspect the unit and make repairs if necessary. It all seems relatively simple for the HVAC company.
But how can they manage it all? How does a technician know where to go and at what time? How can they see if a job is urgent or if they can schedule it for later if they’re already going to be in that area? After all, if you’re going back and forth that can be a waste of time and resources.
They have Sage 100 to manage items like operations, finance, invoicing, payroll, inventory management, etc. They thought that was enough. They could use a variety of apps and paper invoices to manage their field service. But the thing with paper is that it can get confusing quite quickly, and you can lose track of important information or customers.
What if the company had a client that needed multiple repairs or installations across different buildings or homes? How would they check to see which one had been done and which still needed work? Not to mention a way to properly track hours, parts used, etc.
That’s where Salesforce Field Service Management (FSM) comes in, but what exactly is it, and what does it do? It is a tool designed to make your job so much simpler because it allows you a way to get technicians to fix your services. It’s a truly fascinating and effective system. The HVAC company can do everything in FSM, and it keeps their service technicians from getting confused about which work order is which.
When you are working long hours in the middle of a burning summer, your greatest ally is the air conditioner. But what happens if it breaks? There’s no way any work would actually get done. Because if your employees are annoyed and overheated, it’s just not a good combination. Plus there are computers, servers, and more that could suffer in the heat. So not only does tech need to fix the A/C for the employees and managers, but also the technology that could run hot and potentially break down. So the customer will contact the HVAC company, who will then check the Salesforce FSM calendar to see who is available.
The dispatcher at Somatic can create a work order in Field Service Management and send one of their technicians to the building. While at the building’s HVAC systems, she can create a Work Order and identify the problem. While fixing the issue, she could keep track of the time and parts used with the TimeSheet feature on her mobile device. This is a great feature of Field Service Management — you can check everything from your phone, something that is extremely useful while you are on the road.
And there’s also the option of TimeSheet, which is a way to log in how much time you worked, which task you did, what parts you used, etc. You no longer have to rely on the use of paper and your own memory. Something that can fail us when we need it the most — not to mention that the paper can get lost.
Before she leaves, the office management company asks if the technician can visit two other buildings they manage to check on their respective air conditioning systems; then the technician can create a new Work Order for each location and drive over to both buildings to see how things are running. She will use a new TimeSheet in each Work Order to track her time and any parts needed.
And with the help of Commercient’s SYNC the data can be automatically sent to Sage 100 from FSM to generate payrolls for the technicians, so they can be paid for their services.
The way it works is that Commercient SYNCs the data from Salesforce Field Service Management to Sage 100, so the HVAC company can properly invoice the office management company for the labor and parts used for each of the three buildings. There is no need to be confused about which building is which, since an ID will be created to identify the correct building, with the correct job and parts.
The techs can also look at their schedule in the morning and throughout the day to see when and where they’re going to do a service. There’s even a map, so they don’t have to leave the Salesforce Field Service Management app. Because everything they need is already there. They can know if it’s urgent or not, what parts are needed, and which were used, and most importantly they can put in the hours they worked so they can get paid, all of which can be easily found on their phone in the app.
Salesforce Field Service Management and Sage 100 have the information, Commercient SYNCS them together. It’s truly a smart match to have your company flow as it should.
