Manufacturer and supplier of sandblasting equipment Hodge Clemco has rolled out a BigChange digital job management system. Using the cloud-based system, Hodge Clemco has doubled the size of its mobile workforce – without having to increase its back-office support. The Sheffield-based company has also deployed the BigChange customer portal that allows customers to directly access service and site history information and book engineer appointments.
Before BigChange, Hodge Clemco relied on carbon-copied worksheets, which meant waiting for the completed paperwork to make its way back to head office and then manually entering details for quotations, invoicing, payroll, customer reporting, etc. This was time consuming, labour-intensive, and had the potential to introduce errors into different systems.
The BigChange job management system incorporates a mobile workforce app, customer relationship management (CRM), job scheduling, live tracking, resource management, job finance and business intelligence.
Since rolling it out, Hodge Clemco has re-engineered many of its workflows. Feedback from site visits is automatically shared with back-office staff in order to produce quotations within a defined timeframe. Once accepted, jobs are scheduled and worksheets, together with supporting site and equipment histories, are issued to the engineer.
Completed job-sheets including, where required, time and location stamped photographs and customer sign-offs, can be accessed, in real-time, by the back office and are used to inform customer reporting and produce invoices and stock updates.
Sales & service director Andy Peart said: “Using BigChange, our engineers automatically receive job sheets which are completed, using the mobile app while on-site, and are instantly available for the back-office team to access. This means we are currently about 80% paperless, and improving all the time; we have doubled the number of engineers we employ without having to add any additional support staff and we are hitting KPIs for quotations and customer reporting.”
BOX: BENEFITS
Job management platforms are designed for field service engineers. They enable managers to plan, manage, schedule and track the mobile workforce from one platform.
Eliminating paperwork removes the risk of losing documents, which can result in delayed invoicing and even return visits to site. In the experience of BigChange, moving to paper-free processes can typically halve the number of staff needed to manage field service operations.
A job management platform makes it much easier to create and reinforce a culture of compliance. For mobile workers, compliance checks happen daily. They need to show simply and clearly that they are sticking to industry safety measures, the law, the customer’s requirements, and the company’s best practices.
A job management platform supports and streamlines compliance by enabling you to build your own tick-box worksheets and mandatory workflows. Mobile workers have to answer the compliance questions before beginning a job, helping to improve safety; then follow best practice as they complete their tasks.
Office-based staff can receive notifications of when inspection or service visits are due. In addition, the scheduling process for recurring jobs such as maintenance can be automated.
Fuel consumption remains one of the biggest sources of emissions for field service personnel. Therefore, the fastest way to reduce your carbon footprint is by driving fewer miles. Intelligent scheduling routes the right teams, assets and vehicles to the job location.