A maintenance company takes requests by phone, and the supervisor sends them to technicians in a WhatsApp group. The technician calls to ask for the address, forgets to photograph the fault before fixing it, and comes back to the office at the end of the day with a paper the customer signed. When a customer asks the manager "Where is my job at?", the manager has to call the technician to find out. This works with five technicians and wears everyone out with twenty.
When does your field team need an app?
When keeping track of the work has become a job that takes up the supervisor's time every day. These are signs we often see at maintenance, distribution and service companies:
- You can't tell how many jobs are open right now without asking someone.
- Information about a visit gets lost between WhatsApp messages and paper.
- A customer complains and there is no record of what happened on the visit: photos, arrival time, signature.
- Sales reps write orders on paper and enter them into the system again in the evening.
- Invoices are late because they wait for paperwork to come back from the field.
What does a field service app do?
It moves every job from the moment it comes in to the moment it closes along one track that everyone can see. The technician sees their jobs in order, with the address on a map and the customer's details, and the supervisor sees the status of every job without making a call.
- Request comes inBy phone, website or customer app
- DispatchTo the nearest or most suitable technician
- Check-inTime and location at the customer's door
- The workBefore and after photos, parts used, notes
- Close-outCustomer signature and an automatic report or invoice
The customer benefits from this track as well. When the job changes to "technician on the way," they can get a text or WhatsApp message with the technician's name and estimated arrival time, and after close-out they receive the report and photos. That cuts down the calls the office gets from people asking about their jobs, which take up a lot of staff time at maintenance companies.
What does a sales rep app need?
A sales rep needs to take the order at the customer's site with correct prices and real stock levels. So the most important part of the app is the connection to your inventory and accounting system: the product catalog, each customer's prices, available stock, and outstanding balances. After that come the daily visit plan, recording collections, and sending the order straight to the warehouse.
If your company still runs inventory and orders on spreadsheets, it may make more sense to start with the system before the app, as we explain in when to move from Excel to a system.
What if there is no internet on site?
Coverage is weak in basements, warehouses and remote areas, and a technician won't use an app that stops working there. The answer is an app that works offline: it saves data and photos on the phone and syncs them when the connection returns. This makes the build more complex, because the app has to know what to do if two people edit the same job at the same time. Specify this need at the start, because adding it later is expensive.
How much employee location tracking is acceptable?
Recording location on arrival at the customer and on departure is enough for most companies, and staff accept it because it is tied to the work. Continuous tracking all day drains the battery, needs special permissions that iOS and Android restrict, and goes through extra review on Google Play when it runs in the background.
If you need continuous tracking, as with delivery, limit it to working hours and tell staff plainly what is recorded and why. Being open about it protects you from disputes later, and it lets employees see tracking as proof of their work, for example showing they arrived on time when a customer complains about a delay.
What does the manager see on the dashboard?
Open and overdue jobs, completed jobs per technician, average time from request to close-out, parts used, and customer ratings if you collect them. From these numbers the manager can see which area needs another technician and which kind of fault keeps recurring at the same customers. This dashboard is usually a website, built alongside whatever the office needs for managing customers and contracts, and that overlaps with the custom systems we build.
Where should you start with a field team app?
Pick the one workflow that takes the most time, such as maintenance requests or sales orders, and build a first version for it. Try it with a small number of technicians for a few weeks and listen to their feedback before rolling it out. A technician who finds the app slower than WhatsApp will go back to WhatsApp, so keep every step down to as few taps as possible.
Set aside time for training in the field, since explaining the app in the office isn't enough. Arrange for the core data to be moved over before launch: the customer list and addresses, active contracts, and spare parts with their prices. An app that starts out empty forces technicians to type everything in again, and they will dislike it from day one.
We build field team apps and their dashboards as part of our mobile app development service. Describe a working day for one of your technicians or sales reps, and we'll suggest where an app would save the most time.
Questions our partners ask
Does the app work if there is no internet at the customer's site?
Yes, if it is designed for that. The technician saves data and photos on the phone, and the app sends them automatically when the connection comes back. Ask for this from the start, because it affects how the whole app is built.
Will my staff need new phones?
Usually not. The app runs on the common mid-range phones. Set a minimum OS version, though, and if the company supplies the devices, support and control become easier.
Can the app connect to our current accounting system?
If the system has an API, the connection is fairly direct. If it doesn't, there are workarounds, and the picture becomes clear once we look at the system itself.
Written by the Visual Innovate team, the people who build, host and follow up systems, websites and apps for our clients in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Egypt.
