Is your general contractor business using software for management and daily operations? According to statistics, roughly 52% of those reading that question will answer no. Service dispatch software is still a foreign concept to most field service businesses.
However, the benefits of having service dispatch software in your general contractor business are too significant to ignore. They include real-time insights, data-driven decision-making, great integrations, and better cost analysis.
Here’s all you need to know about service dispatch software and why your general contractor business should have one.
What’s Contractor Dispatch Software?
Contractor dispatch software helps general contractors manage their businesses effectively through better scheduling, appointments, invoicing, and other important aspects of a general contractor business.
Small and medium-sized businesses can find excellent use of contractor dispatch software. They’re often an excellent option over larger, more expensive, fully-fledged business management solutions.
Contractor dispatch software helps you save time, improve customer satisfaction, and improve profitability.
Who is Service Dispatch Software Made For?
Service dispatch software is for dispatchers within various general contractor businesses such as electrical, HVAC, plumbing, landscaping, and painting. It helps them utilize their small workforce better and handle more service calls
Small to medium general contractor businesses enjoy better insights and decision-making using the data from the service dispatch software, making technicians’ work more effective, efficient, and productive.
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Even as the number of technicians scales, businesses can still accurately monitor where the technicians are, where they’re headed, and who’s available for new work orders.
Businesses can also use advanced features to improve service delivery, scheduling, and dispatching, such as searching based on skillset, route tracking and optimizing, and a drag-and-drop system to manage tasks and assign them.
Features You Want in a Service Dispatch Software
There are several contractor dispatch software available in the market. But which one is best for you and your business?
The following are a few essentials that you should be looking for.
Ease of Installation and Integration
It’ll be counterproductive to spend valuable time and resources figuring out how to use your service dispatch software solution. Your software choice should be easy to install and use.
Out-of-the-box solutions will ensure that your team hits the ground running and enjoy the software’s benefits from the get-go.
Ease of integration will ensure that you don’t have to switch between programs to access some data or use another application’s features. Instead, through well-designed application programming interfaces (APIs), you’ll be able to integrate existing systems, such as accounting software, with the service dispatch software solution for better use.
Mobile and Cloud Access
For service dispatch software to be very useful to your crew, it must have mobile and cloud access to allow any technician to access the system and data and perform actions from anywhere.
A cloud-based software solution will also facilitate real-time communication with the administrators in the office, keeping them up to date with any necessary information. Seamless communication improves productivity and reduces the rate of rework on client projects.
Data shows that bad data management and poor communication cost the construction industry $177 billion annually.
Benefits of Dispatch Software for Your Business
The following are benefits your general contractor business will enjoy from service dispatch software.
Real-Time Insight
Schedules specified on whiteboards and spreadsheets can quickly get outdated. Equipment might break down, orders might change, the weather might change, and dozens of other unplanned factors might hamper service delivery. Therefore, the schedule will have to change.
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With a software solution, the schedule remains updated in real-time, making it easier to reassign duties, make resource requests, and communicate to the office any changes in the schedule with real-time insights into the situation.
This improves scheduling and resource efficiency while reducing the duration, frequency, and cost of having in-person resource planning sessions.
Enterprise-Wide Visibility
Enterprise-wide visibility is crucial for employees and technicians to schedule and dispatch resources efficiently. They must know where materials, equipment, and people are, where they should be, and how they’ll get there.
As plans, inventories, and schedules get updated, it should also be possible to make changes on the fly. With manual and offline tools, doing this is impossible.
A centralized online system provides an accurate and up-to-date picture of the state of various resources across the organization, making it easier to manage them.
Supports Data-Driven Decision Making
Contractor dispatch software makes it easier to make data-driven decisions that improve decision-making in your general contractor business.
For instance, with real-time insights, you can make better planning and budget allocation decisions, saving a project from potential stalling or waste of resources.
You can also use insights on crew availability and skillset to put the right technician on a particular job, ensuring it’s completed professionally with great service delivery.
With inventory management and seasonal data, you can know when you should ask for inventory and how much the supplier should ship to you for lower inventory costs.
Key Integrations
Most contractor businesses store their data in excel sheets, MS Project, or other data management tools. These tools typically don’t provide a real-time or dynamic view of the complete project.
Service dispatch software allows you to integrate with these traditional data management tools, turning their static data into live data that can be used to manage the business and inform decisions.
You get better insight into your projects without manually transferring the data, allowing you to monitor the project’s progress and status and better estimate its cost.
Better Cost Analysis
Accurate cost analysis is one of the biggest headaches for most general contractor businesses. According to data, nine out of ten projects experience a cost overrun, most caused by poor planning and resource misallocation.
Service dispatch software improves your estimates and ensures you’re less likely to experience a cost overrun with better project planning and resource allocation. You can also track the estimates and cost allocation to improve cost savings and deliver projects within budget.
Get Your Software from a Trusted Vendor
Service dispatch software will change how your general contractor business handles scheduling, project management, and inventory management. Ensure you only invest in the right solution by contacting a trusted software vendor today.