Today GPS is a part of everyday life. From booking a cab to plotting a route to your favorite restaurant—GPS is everywhere. Once GPS became a standard feature on cell phones, innovations took off; we are constantly reading about something new, a new App or a new service, and how it localizes its service based on the GPS in your mobile device.
Field service has traditionally been and industry associated with clipboards and spreadsheets. But now, with the ubiquity of geolocation services, the field service industry has been able to implement changes in how they do business with a profound impact on their responsiveness and ability to address customer concerns.
In this article, we’ll walk you through the benefits of developing a GPS strategy and examine how a strong one can help your field service business. Let’s get started.
What is a GPS strategy? Why do you need one?
It’s evident that almost every business, regardless of industry, seeks to increase its revenue and improve performance.
Every business has its own strategy for achieving success. But if you’re in an industry that involves mobile teams operating in different locations, there’s one important strategy you should consider—GPS.
GPS strategies are action plans to manage your field service operations effectively by leveraging location-tracking technology to monitor and manage field service operations.
GPS technologies help you to take the hassle of “where?” out of your daily operations by allowing you to keep track of your field technicians in real time. With GPS tracking, you can pinpoint the location of your field team using satellites and radio signals.
7 Benefits of Developing an Efficient GPS Strategy for Your Field Service Business
Tracking your employees is essential, especially if your business involves fieldwork. Tracking field teams via GPS provides a means of holding mobile teams accountable. This increased visibility helps the back office team appropriately schedule jobs without overloading the field team or causing scheduling conflicts.
There are various benefits accompanying developing an efficient GPS strategy. Let’s explore the seven significant benefits of them.
1. Lower operational costs
One of the most significant expenses for every field service business is fuel and upkeep. Fuel prices have reached near-record levels since the start of summer. It is estimated that field service businesses will be paying 50 percent more for fuel than in 2021.
Creating a GPS strategy can help your field service business reduce fuel and maintenance costs by ensuring your technicians take the best route to get a job site—and providing data on where technicians may have made routing choices that lead to higher fuel consumption or maintenance costs.
Leveraging a GPS strategy lets you stay on top of your service and maintenance schedules. You save money and reduce vehicle downtime by handling timely maintenance and catching issues early.
2. Location Intelligence and Real-time tracking
Real-time visibility is the core of field service monitoring. It sounds like an obvious statement, but many field service organizations completely overlook location intelligence or only marginally take advantage of it.
In day-to-day operations, a field service organization needs to quickly adjust to changing demands, including last-minute revisions to scheduling and unexpected delays. Having a GPS strategy makes it possible for you to locate the nearest technicians and quickly reschedule jobs based on their availability.
Field service organizations can use GPS-enabled technologies for mapping the most effective routes for their field techs—reducing drive times and making ETA predictions more accurate.
3. Gain a competitive advantage
With evolving technology comes higher expectations. Customer habits continue to favor service providers who promise faster service delivery with a shorter time to resolution. To gain a competitive advantage, you must know your customers better than anyone else.
For field service organizations today, there’s no better source of actionable information than real-time tracking. GPS-enabled field service is a relatively simple proposition that offers an unprecedented level of insight into field operations for both dispatchers and owners alike.
Real-time location and vehicle updates provide your field teams with increased opportunities to boost business intelligence and create competitive advantages.
An organization that stands still is certain to be run over by its competition. An advanced GPS tracking system is a powerful tool that boosts business intelligence and provides a competitive advantage through improved service delivery and faster dispatching of technicians. This enables operators to reduce costs, increase productivity, and improve customer service that outperforms the competition.
4. Improve overall performance
One of the main benefits of using a cloud-based GPS tracking strategy is that it can help you dispatch your field service technicians more efficiently.
When you can accurately locate your technicians, you can assign them to the job that they are closest to—saving time, money, and travel costs.
Implementing GPS in your Field Service business can encourage your technicians to be more punctual. With increased punctuality comes increased productivity and completing more work orders daily. Therefore, increased completion of work orders is directly related to higher performance.
5. Maximize customer satisfaction
Tracking and managing your field operation effectively can be a daunting task. However, with the right GPS software and strategy, knowing where your technician is and when they will arrive becomes easy—allowing you to provide customers with up-to-the-minute ETAs.
Field businesses employing a GPS strategy provide better customer service by enhancing transparency and increasing communication. Additionally, field service businesses using GPS-enabled tools find it a “win-win strategy”  as it improves their customers’ experience while enhancing overall business efficiency.
Here are some of the best ways that GPS strategy can help your company deliver a superior customer experience:
- Reduced Drive Times and Appointment Windows
- Real-Time Visibility & Route Optimization
- Lower Fuel Cost
- GPS Vehicle Tracking with Zuper‍
6. Promote safety and enhance security
A solid GPS tracking strategy makes sure that every asset and piece of equipment is in the right hands at all times. Any unauthorized usage can be tracked That information is critical for recovery if theft occurs.
GPS can give companies specific insights into the movements of whatever they track, be it equipment or employees. Putting a GPS strategy in place provides an added layer of security for both service providers and customers. Businesses can track service delivery to ensure they reach the job site, while customers can feel confident that field technicians are being monitored closely.
7. Data-driven decision making
GPS tracking provides you with a wealth of information that can be used to optimize field service operations. Filed service businesses can utilize and analyze customer site routes and execution times to identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions to enhance customer experience. This directs to a more efficient and cost-effective decision-making process.
Leveraging GPS tools provides insights into traffic patterns and job durations, enabling you to optimize your dispatching process.
With this technology, one can better understand how field technicians perform and where there is room for improvement.
How to Develop a Good GPS Strategy for Your Field Service Management
A strong GPS strategy helps the field service industry monitor and manage employees by continuously tracking the field service workforce from job to job and enlightening the improvement areas.
In an industry where timing is everything, adopting a GPS strategy is something your business can’t afford to pass on. Whether you operate a lawn care service with five technicians or a plumbing business with more than 100 technicians across three counties, you can manage everything from a single dashboard with the right GPS strategy in place.
Here are a few steps to develop a strong GPS strategy for your field service management.
- Use web mapping platforms like Google Maps. Field location navigation reduces transit time and improves first-time fix rates. Using a GPS mapping platform like Google Maps helps your technicians quickly navigate using the best route to reach a customer site and keeps you informed about their whereabouts.
- Empower technicians with a field service mobile app. With the field service management mobile app, like Zuper, technicians can easily access scheduled jobs from mobile devices anywhere. With Zuper field management software now, you can effortlessly reschedule jobs to the nearest technicians and alert customers about the ETA (estimated time of arrival) revisions for assigned technicians.
- Help technicians find the best/shortest route. Adopting field service management software enables technicians to navigate to customer sites faster by optimizing routes and making it easy to take the quickest option. This, in turn, helps reduce the time it takes to get on-site, leading to faster resolution of issues and improving the overall customer experience.
- Invest in a powerful Field Service Management tool that accommodates ad-hoc work – Field service management software can instantly locate which technicians are closest to a customer site and assign or reassign jobs to them quickly and efficiently.
Conclusion
GPS tracking devices are a game-changer for field service providers. With real-time monitoring, route optimization, reduced delivery costs, improved customer satisfaction, and data-driven decision-making, field service businesses can streamline their delivery operations and provide a superior customer experience. The benefits of adopting a GPS strategy are clear, allowing field service businesses to be well-positioned to stay ahead of the competition.
As the field service industry grows and evolves, GPS tracking devices will play an increasingly important role in delivering timely services to the right location. With field service management software like Zuper, you can leverage the power of GPS tracking to manage your field service operations. Zuper empowers your field teams by enabling them to navigate quickly, optimize the shortest route and reduce costly delays. Schedule a demo to learn more about Zuper.
