Pinnacle Group has transformed its customer experience and increased operational efficiency following the implementation of the latest field service management software from BigChange.Supporting over 300,000 homes, 200 schools and 100 public and private buildings, Pinnacle is one of the UK’s largest facilities management providers. Using BigChange, Pinnacle has achieved a significant improvement in transparency and communication with clients by delivering live operational information and has overcome challenges resulting from the pandemic which saw a reduced workforce facing an increased workload.

USING BIGCHANGE'S FIELD SERVICE SOFTWARE, PINNACLE CAN RECORD, MONITOR AND CONTROL EVERY TASK IN REAL-TIME

“Since implementing BigChange we have seen real time savings and productivity gains resulting in better quality of service, reduced resources and costs, and increased client and customer satisfaction,” commented Raaj Bharania, Pinnacle Group Business Manager. “This can be directly translated into contract extensions and new contract awards.”

Pinnacle is a community-facing, people-first business that delivers, manages and maintains communities and places – including multi-tenure housing, schools, open spaces, public and private buildings, retail schemes, distribution centres, manufacturing plants, utilities and broadband networks – as well as a range of complementary employment and wellbeing outcomes. Formed in 1994, Pinnacle operates nationwide with major hubs in London, Chelmsford, Slough, Birmingham, Leeds, Morecambe, Stoke and Carlisle. Pinnacle provides integrated Facilities Management across all sectors and the frontline operation makes around 1,400 call outs per day with an 80/20 split between scheduled and reactive.

Since implementing the complete job management solution, which incorporates customer relationship management (CRM), job scheduling, live tracking, field resource management, financial management and business intelligence in one simple to use and easy to integrate platform, Pinnacle can record, monitor and control every task in real-time. Details of site inspections and service delivery visits are captured, recorded and reported, complete with before and after photos, using a traffic light system allowing operatives to self-certify works.

“By giving clients access to the BigChange platform we have been able to reduce the time spent monitoring and reporting as they can access the information they need when they need it,” said Area Manager Marcin Rosiak whilst Business Manager Seundouss Laroussi added, “BigChange has been transformational for us, and our clients, and we cannot imagine our operation without it!”

BigChange has already been deployed on over 90 percent of Pinnacles soft FM contracts where it has been tailored to meet specific KPIs, SLAs and reporting requirements and roll out on the remaining 10 percent is ongoing. Further planned work includes the transition to a completely paperless operation and the use of BigChange to improve workforce engagement and health and safety management.

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
• Read more about Field Service Management @ www.fieldservicenews.com/field-service-management
• Read more about BigChange on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/bigchange
• Learn more about BigChange @ www.bigchange.com
• Find out more about Pinnacle Group @ www.pinnaclegroup.co.uk
• Follow BigChange on Twitter @ twitter.com/bigchangeapps

Industrial doors company Complete Shutter Services has doubled its business and boosted productivity by 20 per cent since implementing field service management software from BigChange.Providing a complete job management platform, BigChange cloud-based office software synchronises with a rugged tablets used by field operatives to provide real-time 24/7 visibility of every job nationwide. 

Established 35 years with headquarters and factory in Rotherham and a factory in Harlow, Essex, Complete Shutter Services designs, manufactures, installs and services door systems for clients including BP, Shell, Jewson, Homebase, Marks and Spencer and the Co-Op.

BIGCHANGE IS A COMPLETE JOB MANAGEMENT PLATFORM BRINGING TOGETHER CRM, JOB SCHEDULING, LIVE TRACKING, FIELD RESOURCE MANAGEMENT AND FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT INTO ONE PLATFORM.

“We’re in an increasingly competitive market and it is crucial to keep ahead’” says Paul Quealey, MD, Complete Shutter Services. “Our clients are also now much more demanding when it comes to reporting on jobs – they expect accurate and real-time reports.  BigChange allows us to do just that and the platform is so easily adaptable that we know we’ll be able to meet any client need.”

According to Quealey, the biggest impact of BigChange has been in improving the quality of its services.  The software guides field operatives through procedures on site ensuring everything is done correctly with consistent and complete reporting every time; backed up with time recorded before and after photographs.  “We’ve possibly increased the quality of our services by 70 per cent with BigChange.  That’s key to retaining and growing our business and the way we have deployed BigChange gives us a key competitive advantage,” he explains.

Complete Shutter Services was one of the first adopters of BigChange and played a central role in developing the platform for use in the industrial doors industry. BigChange is a complete job management platform bringing together customer relationship management (CRM), job scheduling, live tracking, field resource management, financial management, and online portal into one simple to use and easy to integrate platform.  Jobs are automatically allocated based on real-time engineer availability, skills, live location and parts stock. This is significantly increasing productivity; minimising customer wait time and driving first time fix at competitive cost for clients.

“BigChange has delivered huge cost savings and we’ve increased productivity in the office by at least 20 per cent and we’ve made similar gains in terms of the number of jobs completed daily,” Quealey explains. “It’s also made business expansion very easy.  New engineers can literally be up and running in minutes using the very easy mobile app.  And when we opened a new office in Harlow, we just connected online to access the cloud-based software giving all the IT we needed, instantly.” 

Complete’s field engineers use the platform to complete their timesheets and vehicle checks, before instantly accessing job information. Linked to vehicle trackers, the software provides navigation with live traffic to ensure the best route is taken and customers receive ETA updates by text and email. On arrival, engineers can create instant estimates and the app guides them step by step through health & safety and job-specific workflows including photo capture.  On completion, the system generates job-cards that are automatically shared via a customer’s booking portal or via email.

“Invoices can be raised immediately on job completion and since the system allows us to provide such good proof-of-service, disputes are very much a thing of the past. For management, BigChange really does bring peace of mind.  We’ve got access through a BigChange management smartphone app that gives us complete round-the clock visibility of everything going on.  It means we are always in control and able to provide the high levels of service whatever the operational challenges,” Quealey adds.

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
• Read more about Field Service Management @ www.fieldservicenews.com/field-service-management
• Read more about BigChange on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/bigchange
• Learn more about BigChange @ www.bigchange.com
• Find out more about Complete Shutter Services @  www.completeshutterservices.co.uk
• Follow BigChange on Twitter @ twitter.com/bigchangeapps

 

It used to be that investing in a Field Service Management (FSM) system gave your business a competitive advantage over your competition. The prevalence of FSM in the marketplace now means those that don’t take advantage of the latest FSM systems may begin to face a competitive disadvantage.

The world moves pretty fast, if you don’t stop and take a look around once in a while, you’ll never know if the latest packages can bring you a greater return on investment, more efficient running, greater employee engagement and happier customers.

 

Eagle Field Service, By Exel Computer Systems

So, what do Exel offer that would warrant a look at the Eagle Field Service FSM solution? Apart from it being fully integrated - and that integration extending into the EFACS E/8 suite of business solutions, offering you much more functionality than other providers can.

To look at the field service aspect specifically, we can look at two concepts that Exel consider will give you the edge over your competition. Firstly, that of scheduling your engineers.

 

Assisted Field Service Engineer Scheduling: 

Exel’s concept of Assisted Engineer Scheduling was born out of the realisation that service call handlers had to obtain and retain a lot of knowledge regarding engineer skillsets, the types of jobs likely encountered and the average time to complete them, amongst many other things.

The Assisted Scheduler relies on over 25 parameters to determine the optimum engineer/job planning schedule. It presents the call handler with the optimum option, as well as a few more alternatives ranked in order of suitability. Information is provided for each option, should the call handler wish to determine the reasons for the order – the final decision lays in the hands of the call handler.

No matter the experience of the call handler, your client’s concerns are allayed quickly, as the call handler is able to deal efficiently and professionally, from request to engineer dispatch.

 

"We realised that a company's service engineers are often a hugely under-utilised sales force. They often work closely with the client and can build a high level of trust, and they often have greater access to areas of the client’s site..."

 

Service Customer Resource Management (CRM)

Service CRM is a concept that was realised after talking to engineers to gain an understanding of their experience. Some of these engineers had been conscientious and pro-active enough to identify further business opportunities for their company.

Following this, we realised that a company's service engineers are often a hugely under-utilised sales force. They often work closely with the client and can build a high level of trust, and they often have greater access to areas of the client’s site.

They are in a position to identify potential value-add or upgrade possibilities and either feed that back to sales, or potentially arrange a quote there and then. This can all be done via the Eagle Field Service mobile application and relayed to the back office in real-time.

“There’s no need to tab between different systems, all the information that people want is in one place. Moreover, the scheduling of service engineers isn’t just easier than before, it’s also more powerful, resulting in a more efficient routing of engineer visits, and better optimisation of engineers’ time.”

“Roll it all together, and the combined effect of a reduction in paperwork, the elimination of duplication and data entry, and better engineer scheduling, has enabled a significant improvement in engineer utilisation” Nick Stokes, Safestyle. To read about Safestyle’s experience, click here.

 

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Further Reading:

To learn more about Eagle Field Service, please view the brochure, here.

To read more about Assisted Engineer Scheduling, please view the data sheet, here.

To read more about Service CRM, please view the data sheet, here.

Or, alternatively, get in touch with the team @ Eagle Field Service here.

Resource Type: White Paper
Published by: Field Service News (sponsored by Exel Computer Systems)
Title: Poor Relations: why you maybe overlooking profit if you overlook your service CRM 
Download: Click here to download the white paper

By downloading you agree to the T&Cs listed available here

Synopsis:

It’s been written many times, but the further we enter into the twenty first century the closer the relationship between business and technology becomes. For the largest enterprise level companies technology is driving innovation and efficiency in equal measure across all verticals.

At the other end of the spectrum technology is empowering small and medium sized businesses to thrive, with developments such as vastly increased mobile connectivity and the power and prevalence of the devices utilising it, enabling them to be on a truly level playing field with larger more established companies for the first time in history.

And for those companies with a field service division that link between technology and operations is perhaps even closer still.

Yet one area that is overlooked is Service CRM, an often neglected cousin of the traditional CRM that is a tool primarily for the sales division.

In this white paper we will look at why overlooking Service CRM is such a potentially dangerous mistake and why it is vital your Service CRM is fully integrated into your wider system infrastructure.

Overview:

Looking at some of the key technologies being used in field service this white paper helps clarify the role of a Service SCRM in bringing sales and service closer together and opening the doors to potential missing revenue streams. Sections in this white paper, written by Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Cheif, Field Service News include:

ERP: ERP forms the bedrock of most companies system infrastructure and will typically include a number of integrated applications that a company can use to store, manage and interpret data from a variety of differing business activities, such as production planning, manufacturing, marketing, sales, inventory management and payment processing.

It is this very ability to integrate such a breadth of organisational systems and tools that made ERP systems such a vital and important tool within the enterprise.

CRM: If an ERP system is what powers the back end operations of a company, allowing it to meet the demands of existing business with optimum efficiency, then it is CRM that allows the front facing, revenue generating salesforce to perform to their maximum potential.

As with ERP, the rise of CRM came to prominence in the nineties as companies began to fully embrace the importance of both collecting and utilising customer data, thanks in part to the technology emerging to be able to do so.

MOBILE: Without question the biggest single technology to push forward the efficiency productivity of field service engineers within the last decade, potentially ever, is the dramatic rise of the smart phone and mobile computing in general.

Within the last decade smartphones have become an ever present part of our lives.

 

In field service in particular they have revolutionised the way many companies work. Mobile apps can include a whole plethora of productivity tools, from job notifications, through to knowledge sharing and perhaps most importantly job completion tools that can dramatically reduce a field engineer’s time spent on administrative duties.

CLOUD & GREATER CONNECTIVITY: However the benefits of a modern field service solution in terms of improving efficiency and productivity of our mobile workforce are not solely the result of advances in mobile computing.

Another highly significant technology that has emerged as a key enabler within modern field service systems is that of Cloud computing.

Research by Field Service News revealed that whilst currently around a quarter of field service companies were using the Cloud for their field service operations, over half of those companies that were currently still using an on premise system indicated that their next iteration of field service software would indeed be Cloud based.

DATA, DATA EVERYWHERE: So, via mobile devices we are able to give engineers the ability to easily collect vast amounts of data that they have at their fingertips, data which otherwise may go no further than the engineer’s own heads.

Meanwhile, due to the aforementioned real-time data transfer to the back office we are able to take that data and instantly have access to it across the business for further interrogation leading to greater insight.

Whether it be data that helps Research & Development teams refine their product development by identifying common device faults, or data that helps sales teams easily identify new business opportunities, the data that our field engineers are able to capture when on site is absolutely vital to a companies ability to thrive in the modern business world.

THE SERVICE CRM: And it is when we look at systems that can play an instrumental part in the distribution of this data that the often overlooked and underused Service CRM can actually play a hugely significant role.

One which in turn can be the difference between a moderately well run organisation to being best-in-class with the profit margins and revenue growth to show for it.

 

“It’s all about joining up the processes” explained Simon Spriggs, of Exel Computer Systems in a recent Field Service News podcast “Historically, many processes such as the manufacturing process and the service process were divorced.”

“If you think about a joined up process it’s all about getting these process not just as lean as possible but also as efficient as possible and that’s where a modern field service solution can really drive a business forwards” he added.

Indeed Spriggs is a man with a long history working with field service solutions and for him Service CRM is an absolutely vital tool that we should not be overlooking and in the latter half of this white paper we bring you more from Spriggs on why Service CRM is such a key tool to any field service company.

 

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Click here and complete the brief registration form to access this exclusive field service news white paper now

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Often overlooked the Service CRM is an integral tool when it comes to ensuring that your field service operation is making the most of every revenue opportunity available. Simon Spriggs of Exel Computer Systems explains more...

Once little more than a contact management system, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for many businesses is now an essential powerhouse of the Sales department. Within the context of manufacturing businesses, this has long been recognised by Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) providers and has become an increasingly integrated element of modern business management software. With the widespread adoption of mobile connectivity, CRM functionality has been extended to the world of the handheld device with vital sales information and customer visibility now being available as and when the mobile sales person needs it.

Up until recently, one area that has not benefited as much as it could from CRM is the Service department. Service CRM has traditionally focussed on the recording of service transactions and/or interactions, and in many cases, has been treated as a poor relation to Sales CRM. This can be clearly seen by the IT approach used by many companies when it comes to running their Service CRM. It is not uncommon to find companies with a modern integrated ERP system complete with Sales CRM, that also run a standalone third party CRM system for the Service department. Others may have an integrated ERP and Service Management system and still have a separate, standalone Service CRM package.

 

There are however a growing number of companies realising the considerable sales potential and business opportunities available by looking at their Service CRM differently. At the heart of this is the recognition that in many cases, a company’s Service Engineers are often a hugely under-utilised sales force. Not only are they invariably in the best place to see where additional value-add or upgrade sales possibilities exist, they are often in a considerable place of trust with the customer, more so than the sales teams at times. To truly capitalise on this however, what is required is an integrated business management system where all customer interaction information, whether ‘Sales’ or ‘Service’ is treated equally, stored centrally, and is quickly and clearly visible across the entire enterprise, as and when required – including the mobile Service Engineers/sales teams.

To see how this would work in practice, consider the following scenarios. In the first, a mobile Service Engineer is on a customer site for a routine visit and they discover a problem with one of your machines. With a fully integrated Service CRM system, this information can then be immediately relayed to the back office where a quote can be quickly generated and sent to the customer. Because both Sales and Service share the same CRM data, the back office can then follow up the quote and carry on the sales cycle.

Alternatively, take the scenario where a mobile Service Engineer is on a customer site and notices a machine which isn’t one of yours that is coming to the end of its service warranty period. Once again, this information can be immediately relayed to the back office where it can be appropriately followed up as a potential sales lead at the correct time. Service Engineers are also best placed to be generally aware of the state and condition of much of the machinery and equipment at a customer site. They are also best placed to see potential ‘new business’ opportunities. Say for example your customer uses consumables with your equipment – is this something that you could potentially supply both here and at similar sites? Instead of this information, at best, being recorded in a disconnected standalone Service CRM package, it can now be seen for what it truly is – genuinely insightful information that can add to the sales and customer interactions recorded by the Sales department.

 

By making Service CRM a truly integrated component of a wider ERP system, Sales and Service departments working effectively as a team can benefit from other functionality within the system. One very obvious example is in the area of Document Management where all relevant Sales and Service documentation can be stored alongside each transaction, making it immediately accessible to whichever point of customer contact needs it, when they need it. Another would be building in appropriate workflows to ensure sales opportunity follow up processes, including quote generation, credit check, etc. are adhered to in order to maximise effectiveness.

By ensuring each customer interaction is as positive and informed as possible, you have the best chance, not just of keeping you existing customers happy, but growing your business with them.

 

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