The back office is one of the most essential departments for a company.
Working behind the scenes, the office staff handles administrative, financial, and regulatory tasks that keep companies humming. From making the pivotal first contact with a customer to scheduling jobs, dispatching the fleet and tracking the work, a well-oiled office staff is a valuable asset.
Matt Bullis, co-founder and chief strategy officer of RapidWorks, describes back-office personnel as “chaos managers” because of their competence in handling a multitude of administrative and operational tasks.
“They are really good at managing chaos, but there’s limited time and how much chaos an individual can manage,” he says. “That’s where systems help. That’s where processes come into place.”
Successful businesses have the people and tools in place to manage the chaos. RapidWorks and others in the software industry offer enterprise resource planning (ERP) software solutions to streamline and automate business operations.
“We reduce the amount of chaos, the amount of manpower and the hours needed to complete the tasks,” Bullis says.
RapidWorks’ CRO is software built for contractors, connecting dispatch, asset tracking, driver workflows, billing, and collections.
Smaller shops may be slow to automate operations because of the cost, a fear of change, lack of training, or the “We’ve always done it this way” adage. As a result, many small businesses quietly lose time and margin by manually scheduling, monitoring the work, and turning a finished job into an invoice.
Field work has various layers of complexity. There may be multiple crews, assorted equipment, overtime hours, and other factors.
“You have all of these complexities,” Bullis says. “Most of these businesses rely on humans to solve these issues.”
However, humans have limited time to manage all of these details. That’s why many companies adopt field management software to help run their businesses.
Here’s a concrete example of the end-to-end process that incorporates field management software, from a customer order to an end-of-project invoice.
Take a customer order: The old-school method of writing customer orders on a piece of paper has given way to the digital collection of customer information and requests. Automated systems can efficiently take an order for a one-time job or schedule jobs on a recurring or annual basis.
Plan resources and schedule a job: The act of scheduling and planning a job involves many moving parts. Who should go to what job? Where is the job site located? When should the crew arrive? What trucks, equipment, and other assets are needed?
With so many factors to consider, planning and scheduling on a spreadsheet becomes cumbersome in a hurry. When circumstances change, the spreadsheet is no longer accurate. In contrast, an online system updates instantly to keep everyone up-to-date on the latest plan for equipment and personnel.
Confirm a job: Confirming a job before sending out a crew makes good business sense.
“It saves you from misallocating your critical resources to the wrong place,” Bullis says.
Yet calling every customer to confirm a job is time-consuming, especially when a 30-second phone call becomes a 5- to 10-minute conversation. The drain cleaning industry can learn a lesson from dentist and doctor offices that send out automated appointment reminders. Instead of making phone calls, contractors can schedule automated messages to confirm the jobs. Then, they manage the business through exceptions. Instead of making 20 confirmation calls, they contact the one or two customers who didn’t respond to the automated message to confirm.
Disseminate the plan to the crew: Small companies might rely on morning meetings, text messages, or emails to dispatch technicians out into the field. Another option is an app that technicians can access on their phones to view information live.
“With a modern app, you eliminate that burdensome process of having to communicate with your field operators. They have information at their fingertips,” Bullis says.
If the plan changes, field workers are notified immediately through the app.
Collect artifacts in the field: Crews often are responsible for collecting artifacts out in the field, like photos, videos, receipts, job tickets and customer signatures. The quality of the information the back office receives depends on how accurately crew members report it. So, organizations need to maintain practical, effective processes to collect artifacts. Modern apps streamline the collection of artifacts from the job site to the office. Lost job tickets, illegible handwriting, and messy text threads are replaced by digital libraries and organized data collection systems.
Invoice the same day: Reviewing and building an invoice in an accounting program takes time, whereas automated billing software can invoice customers without this extra step. Crews complete the field work, and the customer is invoiced the same day. Clients manage their own portal and can log into their account 24 hours a day.
“Customers expect those kinds of experiences,” Bullis says.
Validate work with GPS tracking: In the modern age, GPS-validated work assures contractors that they’re billing accurately. Today’s apps interact with GPS tracking, monitoring when a technician or crew is enroute, at the job, or coming back to the yard. A live system updates instantly, reporting in real time. A GPS tracking system also records the time spent on a job, creating one set of hours for billing purposes and another for payroll and time sheets.
Industries are built on managing chaos, and modern software solutions bring order and efficiency to back-office administration. Field management software streamlines operations to book and oversee jobs, crews, equipment, and billing. Even the smallest of businesses can save time and maximize profits by incorporating systems and processes into daily operations.
“Powerful systems really elevate the business,” Bullis says.
Continue reading for free
