Upcoming Webinar: Fieldmagic & Why You Should Choose a CRM Field Service Platform

Fieldmagic: The CRM Field Service Platform of the Future

In an age of ever evolving enterprise mobility, the field service industry is increasingly diverse. From machine sales and maintenance, fire safety, electrical and IT, to garden landscaping, field service businesses are expanding across multiple industries like never before.

Across this spectrum, most field service businesses share basic requirements such as job management, time and materials tracking, maintenance scheduling, invoicing and purchase order management. However, every business is unique, the differences found in the details of their processes as well as the reports that each business requires to run efficiently.

Customer relations management – or CRM – is a software business solution platform that can provide you with broad enough coverage to meet your basic requirements while flexible enough to fit your specific needs. A CRM system is an invaluable tool for businesses that want to grow and scale.

Choosing a CRM field service platform is not an easy task. We’re here to help! BrainSell is hosting a free webinar on Fieldmagic on Thursday, April 20th at 2 PM EDT. Register below.

So is it really worth it? Yes, and here are three reasons why.

1) Tailor processes specifically to your requirements

In field service, suppose you need to track jobs against specific departments, or you would like email notifications to be sent to a specific team of users when a job of a given type is completed?

Or perhaps you simply would like to configure the language of your system to fit your industry? A good CRM system will allow for all these specifications and will minimally, have two key elements with the system. First, a customization studio whereby you can tailor the fields, attributes, labels and business logic in your quotes, jobs, sites and any other module that you leverage. Second, a workflow engine that allows you to configure notifications (both customer and internal) designed around your business’ processes. Some of the more advanced platforms will even let you build entire custom modules to fit your specific needs. The ability to tailor your processes specifically to your requirements equates to flexibility. That is one of the best reasons to choose a CRM platform.

2) Leverage Dashboards and Reports specific to your Business Goals & KPIs

When implementing a system designed to improve business performance, one of the key aspects is how you’re going to measure and report on that performance. Every business is different and needs to measure different metrics. CRM platforms measure results.

Imagine this:

Is the problem you’re trying to solve a 7-day turn-around between an inspection or maintenance job and when you actually provide a quote to your customers? If so, how do you measure this? In this case, you could track timestamps between maintenance completion, quote creation, and fault resolution. A CRM provides the framework to implement this level of business logic, and the in-built reporting engine to report and analyze this data over time. Compare this with a traditional field services system that doesn’t have that flexibility – you’re reliant on the software developer to implement this capability that will benefit your business, something that gets less likely the more unique your requirements are.

Configurable drag and drop reporting, and personalized dashboards are a key component of any good CRM platform. By choosing a CRM platform for your field services business, your system can help you solve your problems today and tomorrow.

3) Integration and App Ecosystem

Most of the major CRM platforms these days provide open APIs, which allow you to integrate your CRM and field services platform with any other major systems within your business. In addition, many of the leading solutions include an app ecosystem that lets you extend your platform beyond its original use case. Both Salesforce and SugarCRM have a strong app ecosystem. Microsoft Dynamics CRM is also starting to evolve in that area as well. By leveraging a CRM platform with an open API, you have the ability to integrate with those ERPs using an integration tool. If you happen to be stuck on a closed field services platform, your options are limited. You’re often left with the choice of migrating to a new system, or putting up with double entry across your organization.

What does this mean to your business? It means choice. Perhaps you’d like to be able to store customer acceptance emails against the quotes that you generate. By choosing a CRM as your platform, you have those options.

Interested in learning more?

Automating your business from the field can be complex and overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Flexibility, metrics and integration are three key reasons anyone looking for field service solutions should strongly consider a CRM platform. Interested in learning more? Join us on Thursday, April 20th at 2 PM EDT for our webinar on Fieldmagic. Register here.