How FieldElite helps Plumbers

While most people think that running a plumbing business is a very easy job, things are a bit different on the ground. The job goes beyond the dropping by a client’s home and fixing a few pipes. In addition to the actual plumbing work, a plumbing business also involves managing quotes, invoicing customers, dispatching field service workers, and accounting, among others. Undertaking all these operations manually is extremely demanding. Besides the tedious work that it is, you’re likely to end up with a ton of errors. 

However, you can overcome these challenges by employing technology. The use of field service management software allows you to automate tasks. Consequently, you no longer have to deal with paperwork, delayed responses to customer requests, or double assignment of tasks.

If you’re wondering which field service management software to use, FieldElite is your best bet. FieldElite is feature-rich, and it gives you way more than the simple automation of the daily operations of your plumbing business.  

Below are some of the top benefits you’ll reap by using FieldElite to run your plumbing venture.  

Convenient Scheduling

Scheduling is an important aspect of the plumbing industry. Just like other field techs, plumbers would require tasks to be dispatched on time, which is only made possible by proper scheduling. With FieldElite, managers can easily schedule single and recurring tasks for the right plumber in a matter of seconds. 

On the other hand, plumbers can also view the available jobs and job information in the FieldElite easy to use App that’s available for Android, and confirm scheduled jobs. They can also accept these jobs using their smartphones and respond to service requests instantly.

Apart from getting the scheduled tasks, the FieldElite scheduling and dispatch feature is integrated with GPS functionality so that plumbers can get information on where to go next, and the optimal route to take from their mobile phones. 

The scheduling and dispatch feature also gives plumbers the information on the specific tools required for the job to allow them to get the tools in between appointments and schedules. 

Central Data Storage

Just like other field service industries, plumbing also involves big data. Handling data manually would mean more errors for your plumbing business, which will only impact negatively on your business. To eliminate such errors, go paperless with FieldElite. 

You can view everything from one place with FieldElite?s dashboard feature, including information about your plumbers and the scheduled tasks. On the other hand, your plumbers can access job details and the pending tasks from a central place. 

Plumbers can also get service requests from customers on the FieldElite mobile app from wherever they are. All the requests are stored in a central place, making the response to customer requests easier. The end result is satisfied customers, opening doors for return orders. 

In case of an update, all plumbers receive notifications at the same time and, where necessary, respond promptly to the requests. They can update the office instantly with job status changes from a central place. 

Convenient Reporting

Reporting is part of the tasks that plumbers have to do after completing the assigned job. As a manager, you expect your plumbers to keep you updated on the status of each assignment. Reporting on paper is time-consuming, and that’s why you need the services of FieldElite. 

With FieldElite reporting feature, sending over completed job reports is only a few clicks away. Plumbers can generate reports on the mobile app and keep the office staff updated on the status of the job. Using FieldElite, you can capture customer signatures and add attachments to the job status and send them instantly using the mobile app available on Android. 

Since they can do instant reporting via the mobile app, the plumbers can proceed to attend to new service requests as soon as they’re done without having to first come back to the office to submit their reports. 

Effective Communication

Timely communication is very essential if you’re working with field technicians. Since you’ll not always be with them in the field, it’s always important to establish a proper communication channel to ensure information reaches your plumbers in time. Here, you can get much more with FieldElite, including communication automation to remind customers of appointments.

With FieldElite field service management software, plumbers receive notifications through the mobile app. The notifications can be for anything from new task requests, requests for alterations, emergencies, and more. On the other hand, office-based staff gets to access the reports once the plumber completes their given task. 

That means the plumbers in the field and the office-based team gets communication instantly, enabling them to see and manage their workloads. For this reason, plumbers can complete multiple tasks within a short time, thus improving their overall productivity.

Scalability

The biggest question for most entrepreneurs when they want to buy management software is scalability. Businesses grow and incorporate new activities that would also require to be managed from a centralised system. Where that’s not possible, the business would have to move all their information from one system to a more robust one. 

With FieldElite, however, you’re safe. It works perfectly well for startups as well as large-sized plumbing businesses. It allows you to focus on the areas that your organisation covers now, but also lets you add new areas as you introduce them into your business. Moreover, FieldElite is also receiving regular updates to that bring it up-to-speed with new technologies and new ways of doing things, meaning that your business will be in a position to take advantage of the latest and more productive features. 

From the benefits mentioned above, it’s quite clear that your plumbing industry greatly needs the services of a field service management software. Your plumbers too need easier time working on their assigned tasks, adding to the reasons why you need to integrate FieldElite in your plumbing business.

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Malware

In the past, viruses were created with the sole purpose of wreaking havoc on the infected systems. A large fraction of today’s malware, on the other hand, are designed to generate revenues for the creator. Spyware, botnets, and keyloggers steal information from your system or control it so that someone else can profit. In other words, the motivation for making them is now more attractive than before.

Keyloggers can reveal your usernames, passwords, PIN numbers, and other authentication information to their creators by recording your key strokes. This information can then be used for breaking into various accounts: credit cards, payment programs (like PayPal), online banks, and others. You’re right, keyloggers are among the favourite tools of individuals involved in identity theft.

Much like the viruses of old, most present day malware drain the resources, such as memory and hard disk space, of contaminated systems; sometimes forcing them to crash. They can also degrade network performance and in extreme cases, may even cause a total collapse.

If that’s not daunting enough, imagine an outbreak in your entire organisation. The damage could easily cost your organisation thousands of euros to repair. That’s not even counting yet the value of missed opportunities.

Entry points for malware range from optical disks, flash drives, and of course, the Internet. That means, your doors could be wide open to these attacks at this very moment.

Now, we’re not here to promise total invulnerability, as only an unplugged computer locked up in a vault will ever be totally safe from malware. Instead, this is what we’ll do:

  • Perform an assessment of your computer usage practices and security policies. Software and hardware alone won’t do the trick.
  • Identify weak points as well as poor practices and propose changes wherever necessary. Weak points and poor practices range from the use of perennial passwords and keeping old, unused accounts to poorly configured firewalls.
  • Install malware scanners and firewalls and configure them for maximal protection with minimal effect on network and system performance.
  • Implement regular security patches.
  • Conduct a regular inspection on security policy compliance as well as a review of the policies to see if they are up to date with the latest threats.
  • Keep an audit trail for future use in forensic activities.
  • Establish a risk management system.
  • Apply data encryption where necessary.
  • Implement a backup system to make sure that, in a worst case scenario, archived data is safe.
  • Propose data replication so as to mitigate the after effects of data loss and to ensure your company can proceed with ‘business as usual’.

Once we’ve worked with you to make all these happen, you’ll be able to sleep better.

Other defences we’re capable of putting up include:

Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS): An Overview

Energy management is crucial to most businesses in the UK. This is primarily because energy usage substantially affects all organizations, whether large or small. The good news is that, energy costs can be controlled through improved energy efficiency. And this is exactly why Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) came into being ? to promote competitiveness among businesses.

Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme is the realisation of the UK Government’s ambition towards achieving the maximum potential of cost-effective energy in the economy. ESOS aims to stimulate innovation and growth, cut emissions and support a sustainable energy system.

ESOS at a Glance – Legal Perspective

The EU Energy Efficiency Directive took a major step forward on November 14, 2012 and headed towards establishing a framework to promote energy efficiency across various economic sectors. To interpret Article 8 of the Directive, the government has given birth to ESOS; requiring large enterprises to undergo mandatory energy audits and energy management systems by December 5, 2015 and at least every 4 years thereafter.

Large enterprises include UK companies that have more than 250 employees or those businesses whose annual turnover exceeds ?50 million and whose statement of financial position totals more than ?43 million. With this, over 7000 of the biggest companies in Britain will need to comply with ESOS as an approach to review their total energy use in buildings, business operations, transport and industrial processes.

Generally, ESOS is both an obligation and an opportunity. It is an obligation for the indicated target companies since they need to submit to additional regimes; focus on audit evidences; act in accordance to group structures and compliance; and observe limited penalties and note retention periods. Moreover, it is also an opportunity for companies to strive for more savings on energy projects; attempt to standardise their potential market; and effectively lower debt and legal costs.

ESOS Audits ? Looking Beyond

According to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), average first audit costs would be estimated at about ?17,000 and subsequent ones at around ?10,000. As expected, these audits will result in energy saving recommendations, of which companies need not proceed for a follow up; and substantially improve businesses in their energy management issues. DECC further states that every business that complies with ESOS could save an average of ?56,400 each year from an initial investment of ?17,000 only.

Currently, up to 6,000 UK businesses are already subject to existing CRC Carbon Reduction Scheme, Mandatory Carbon Reporting, Climate Change Levy and other compliance. This signifies that ESOS may overlap with prevailing energy efficiency legislation and may put additional pressure on energy administration. While this is true, however, ESOS holds extensive benefits. Although the scheme can be viewed as another costly compliance to environmental standards, ESOS goes straight to the bottom line and provides the organisation with competitive advantage. If large businesses act now and comply with it, they will be able to enjoy maximised payback in the long run.

Indeed, Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme is already here. It is mandatory with minimal investment. And all you have to do is act quickly, implement new improvements and earn more.

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How to Improve Corporate Efficiency through IT

When revenues are low, what do you do to improve your profit? Obviously, those same revenues should at least remain the same. So, the objective would be to deliver the same products and services for less cost. More for less. Such is the essence of corporate efficiency.

There are many things that can make a company inefficient. There are outdated procedures, poor coordination between departments, managers? lack of business visibility, and prolonged down times, to mention a few. As a company grows, these issues get more severe.

You can overcome all these by deploying the right IT solutions. But don’t IT solutions increase spending instead? Au contraire. The last couple of decades have seen the rise of IT solutions that help companies’realise obvious cost savings in no time.

Streamline processes and keep departments in-sync

Company inefficiencies are largely due to outdated systems and procedures. These systems and procedures were not built for the dynamic and complex business environments of today that are being shaped by increasingly onerous regulations, fierce and growing competition, significant economic upswings and downturns, new battlefronts (like the Web) and logistical strategies (like outsourcing), and IT-savvy crooks.

So when your employees force outdated systems to meet today?s business demands, they’re just not able to deliver. At least not efficiently.

Another major cause of inefficiency is the discordance among departments, business units, and even individual staff members themselves. There are those who still use highly personalised spreadsheets and other disparate applications, which make data consolidation take forever and the financial close a perennial headache.

Costly devices like mobile phones, netbooks, and tablet PCs, which are supposedly designed to provide better communication, are not fully maximised. If these are subsidised by the company, then they also contribute to company inefficiency.

One way to deal with these issues is to deploy server based solutions. By centralising your IT system, you can easily implement various improvements that can pave the way for better communication and collaboration, stronger security, faster processes and transactions, and shorter down times for troubleshooting and maintenance. All these clearly translate to cost savings.

Gain better visibility

Corporate efficiency can be improved if your decision makers can make wise and well-informed decisions, faster. But they can only do this if reports they receive from people down the line are timely, accurate, and reliable. Basically, data should be presented in a way for managers to gain quick insights from.

If your people take too much time scrutinising, interpreting, and reconciling data, you can’t hope to gain a significant competitive advantage. Equally important to managing an ongoing project is the speed at which you make a go/no go decision to start or stop a project. A wise, quick decision will help you avoid wastage.

The same holds true when making purchases and investment decisions. It’s all about quickly eliminating waste and investing only on those that will give you fast, positive returns.

Clear business visibility will allow managers to allocate resources where they are most effective, to pinpoint what products and services being offered are more profitable, and to identify which customers are giving better business from an overall perspective.

These are all possible with business intelligence. We know, we know. You’ll say BI solutions will force you to break the bank. Not anymore. At least, not all. There are already two main types of BI solutions: on-premise and SaaS. The latter will generally cost you less.

Of course, each type has its own advantages, and you’ll really have to look into the size of your organisation, the number of source systems your decision-making platform is connected to, integration requirements, budget, etc. to make sure you get the most out of your investment.

But IT solutions cost an arm and a leg

Again, not anymore. These days, you can find IT products that are faster, more functional, and more powerful than their predecessors at a fraction of the cost. When it comes to getting more affordable IT products and services, you now have many options.

For example, you can turn to open source solutions to save on license costs. These solutions are typically backed by vibrant and helpful communities where you can find an extensive source of technical support – many of which are for free. With popular open source products, you can easily tap from a large pool of developers with affordable rates any time you want to make system enhancements or customisation.

On another front, virtualization solutions allow you to save on CAPEX and OPEX by eliminating certain expenses normally used for setting up infrastructure or buying hardware and maintaining them. Server virtualisation, for instance, will allow you to consolidate servers and put them together into just one machine, while desktop virtualisation will enable you to eliminate unproductive hours associated with desktop down times by allowing you to redeploy a malfunctioning desktop very quickly.

Closely related to those are cloud-based solutions like SaaS (Software as a Service), IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), and DCoD (Data Center on Demand). SaaS and IaaS will help you realize savings in acquisition and maintenance costs for software and hardware, while DCoD?s scalable services allow you to request for additional capacity, power and storage only as you need them, thus making you spend only according to your current infrastructure requirements.

Like we said, there are many, many options out there just waiting to be tapped.

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