Service and scheduling enhancements in D-Tools software for AV system integrators
The need for many of our SI software users to deliver on “1st class” service commitments is not only a priority and a part of their customer assurance platform, but also a key element in many of their revenue streams. Let’s face it, to quote a famous movie line, “What’s worth doing, is worth doing for money.” A logical enhancement of our av software for system integrators’ Service Module is to add some much-requested feature elements to assist with communicating to your team’s field assets as well as improve the scheduling side of that “income” equation.
Those of you already deploying a service “revenue-capture” model, will appreciate the added utilization elements covered in this article. For those of you considering expanding your service department operation to increase that revenue stream, we hope you’ll find the additional “tools” now available in SI’s v16 more than useful when that day arrives.
In this article, let’s talk about “what’s new” and “what’s changed.”
Field Service Management and Scheduling
Let’s start with the option for a “Priority” designation to your service calls?
At long last, you can now create and designate your priority status for your service orders. Pretty self-explanatory here of course but, it wouldn’t be prudent not to mention at least one scenario for how you could enhance this beyond the default listing shown above here.
One thought that certainly comes to mind is setting these “Priorities” to correspond with your service plan or warranty offerings. Something along the lines of Gold, Silver, and Bronze support could be a great way for your team to quickly realize what clients need to be addressed first and foremost at the beginning of any day or week.
Closely related to this “priority” designation is the new “color-coding” feature of your service order statuses.
Formally known as “Schedule Statuses” in SI, these can be set for color shading to indicate to your team, what the varying needs of any given day, week, or month might be when it comes to executing your service call/ticket needs.
Further, you may notice that in the set-up of such color-codes, that you can set your shading preferences with standard “RGB” numeric values.
Again, tied to your corresponding “priorities,” now your team can simply view a color coordinated value that directly relates to the service commitment and thus direct the necessary level of service engagement.
Another outstanding addition to the service order module in SI is the 20 service order custom fields.
While SI has many pre-labeled data entry fields available, it seems that for many of our dealers, there’s just never enough or enough of the “right” ones.
Another great enhancement here of our custom fields is the “pop-up” description box that lets you know just how many of what types are in use and how many are left to be used. Many thanks to our product development team here for that one!
Of course, with these in place, you can now enter the necessary missing data for your team and send that out to the Mobile Install platform for field execution.
What’s changed, you ask?
The addition of color-coding on your SI Calendar seemed like a very appropriate addition that ties directly into the new feature of color-coding your “Schedule Statuses.”
This allows your Field Service Management and Project management teams to quickly glean information about what the various execution needs, priorities, and challenges that lie ahead.
Further, you can now have as many as five individual calendars open in SI. What’s great about this is the new ability to drag scheduled events between these open calendars and even effect a change in the field technicians assigned to each event.
This really makes the SI Calendar interface very similar to other scheduling platforms that facilitate quick day, date, and personnel reassignment, all via the “drag-n-drop” method.
Another enhancement is the ability to approve some Site Items ahead of overall service order approval. Lying on the Mobile Install side of the equation, this feature will now allow your team to independently approve any items they might add to a service order prior to completing the work/ticket.
This is really a helpful feature as you can now bill for any parts as they are used or deployed while you await the scheduling of a return trip to the site for completion of the initial or ongoing service order.
Now, you can take a proactive step and begin the billing process in advance of your return trip(s) that could be weeks out in terms of scheduling confirmation.
These updates, modifications, and enhancements are just the beginning! As always, we are vigorously reviewing your Feature Requests to determine our best step forward and next course of action with future SI product releases…so keep them coming!
Taking what has been presented here with SI’s already outstanding service execution platform will certainly lead to increased service revenues and service department productivity. This is a win-win for your entire team’s efforts at delivering on what you’ve promised and, more importantly, what your clients have paid for via your service plan commitment.
Hopefully, this presentation of just some of the many recent feature additions to SI will not only improve your team’s efficiency and effectiveness, but will also keep the needle moving in the right direction as you tackle all the challenges of this year. As always, we will continue to present new features from our latest release (v16) to enable your team to get more and more out of D-Tools System Integrator software.
Please check back later for future blog entries!!!
In closing…
For more information on these and other features of SI v16, please see this link: D-Tools SI v16. You can also review our other videos and our usual support documentation.
More detailed information about v16 is available via our upcoming webinars or by enrolling in SI training with our PSG team.
And don’t forget, that’s why we’re here…to ensure your success with our product! Be sure to check back here next month for more on v16!
