Added value digitized order management

Planning and assembling commercial kitchens and providing after-sales service is the job of the T101 AG Chrome Box based in Baar, Canton Zug. The company employs four service technicians who carry out assembly, maintenance and repair of commercial kitchen equipment throughout Switzerland. Until the end of last year, the technicians still received their orders for the day by mail from the office every morning. In turn, the technicians had to e-mail their work times to the office: one e-mail for the start of work, one for the break, and one for the end of work. The service technicians filled out work reports by hand, often in cryptic notes and not always legible to the customer and colleagues in the office. Managing Director Simon Jenal was clear: this way of working is tedious, inaccurate and inefficient.

Individual wishes implemented in one-year development phase

The Chrombox managing director therefore decided to use field service management software - his choice fell on the Engine4 solution from Mobile Function. Jenal and his employees tested the software for about a year, made individual demands on the program and finally received software tailored to the company. "The system worked right from the start, but we didn't want to go live with it until it was running exactly as we wanted it to," says Jenal, explaining the year-long development phase. The software manufacturer gradually implemented the kitchen appliance supplier's individual wishes, and some of these requirements are also to be incorporated into the field service management software as standard. For example, only recording a serial number once in the system: "For us, it was very important that the serial numbers of the appliances could not be recorded twice," explains Jenal. For example, if Chrombox buys back a kitchen appliance from a customer and sells it on to another customer, it must not be created again in the system under the same serial number - after all, the serial number is unique. "Now it's the case that the appliance's history moves with it," Jenal says. Whichever customer now owns the device, the Chrombox technicians can see in the system during maintenance which device it is and which repairs have already been carried out in the past.

Thanks to mobile pads, technicians can access the field management system from anywhere. They can view work orders, track the history of individual devices and create work reports digitally and in detail. To do this, the software offers unlimited space, not just a few lines on an A4 page. Pre-prepared sentence blocks and speech recognition make it easier for technicians to create them - so reports are now more accurate, yet quicker to complete. "It used to be unfair for our technicians sometimes," Jenal recalls. "They did very good work, which sometimes took a lot of time. But then there was only a single sentence in the work report," Jenal describes. "In addition, technicians don't always have the nicest handwriting," Jenal adds with a wink, but this brings up another important point in terms of transparency. After all, with terse and possibly illegible reports, customers could not always understand the invoice for the work performed. Especially not if the client operates several large kitchens or branches and was not even on site during the repair. Now, however, customers receive a detailed and legible report - immediately after the service has been performed, because the technician sends the report with just one click not only to the office, but also immediately to the customer by e-mail.

Deposit additional notes, tips and customer requests

Thanks to the field service management software, however, it is not only comprehensible reports and device histories that make work easier, but also relevant additional notes. For example, if kitchen appliances are stacked on top of each other, it is mandatory that two technicians arrive for the repair. Or tips on parking can be stored at the customer's site. "We're on the road a lot in downtown Zurich, so it's really difficult to find a parking space," Jenal explains. "If the technician knows in advance that he can park in the backyard, it saves a lot of time." Thanks to the digital and centralized collection of such information, it is available to all technicians on their tablets and in the office. Empty runs because too few technicians were sent to the customer or excessively long travel times due to the search for parking spaces no longer occur.

In addition, technicians can also fulfill customer requests without being asked if these are already stored in the system as a note - and, for example, take off their shoes or use overshoes without being asked because the customer has already made a point of doing so in the past. Information to the office, for example, that the customer still wants a quote for a new piece of equipment, can also be attached to the order. In addition, operating instructions for third-party equipment can be stored, or photos of a defect that the customer has already sent to the office when placing the order. This allows the technician on site to start work more quickly.

The system also facilitates communication between technicians and the office. Instead of sending e-mails back and forth with orders and working times, the office now assigns the orders to the technicians via the software. The technicians, in turn, start and end their working hours via tablet and can also track travel times to the customer much more transparently because they can change their status with just one click ("on the road," "working," "on break"). Where the technicians are at the moment and what the status of an order is in each case is visually displayed in the system - this increases clarity and transparency. "If material is still missing for an order, for example, it is purple," Jenal describes. "This way, employees in the office can see at a glance why the order cannot yet be completed."

System simplifies payroll accounting

When technicians take spare parts out of their service vehicles for maintenance or repairs, they scan them with their tablet. The office then receives immediate info about it and can put the part the technician took out in the warehouse to restock his service vehicle. "This way, our technicians always have a fully stocked cart," Jenal says. In addition to their working hours and spare parts, however, the technicians also record their vacation days via the system. The office can therefore see much more quickly when which technician is on vacation; orders are then no longer inadvertently distributed to technicians who are not available at the moment. It is also easier to track when which employee is on emergency duty. "Overall, payroll accounting has become much easier for us thanks to the digital recording of work, emergency service and vacation times," explains Jenal. So has invoicing, because the accounting software used and the field service management tool communicate with each other through interfaces. "The accounting software picks up the info on working hours, work performed and material used from the planning tool," Jenal describes. The field service management software, in turn, is fed customer data by the accounting software.

Job planning is also simplified thanks to the field service management software. This is because the individual customer locations can be displayed on a map, making it easier to plan the technicians' routes.

Orders can also be prioritized if a customer is very pressed for time. What needs to be done urgently can be filtered and displayed. Technicians can then process the jobs in the appropriate time sequence. They can also use their app to find additional jobs from a general pool if they have already completed their tasks for the day but still have time. The system then shows them which jobs may be pending in the vicinity or in the warehouse.

Conclusion: Noticeable reduction in workload

Simplified communication between the office, service technicians and customers, traceable order management, smooth accounting: Chrombox was able to digitalize its work processes with Engine4 field service management software, making them more efficient and transparent. Unnecessary and tedious mail traffic as well as illegible and scarce work reports are now a thing of the past. Everyone involved benefits from the centralized job management and mobile access to the system, in which practical additional notes and instructions can also be stored to facilitate work on site.