Mobile Field Service Management and Productivity Software for Small Business

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How Much will FieldMasterPro Cost?

The answer to that question should be NOTHING! The truth is that the only reason to buy FieldMasterPro is if it results in real savings and increased revenue. So, let's restate the question to:  How long will it take for me to see a profit from my investment in FieldMasterPro?

FieldMasterPro provides real and immediate benefits in several areas which result in positive profit impact.  These include eliminating time consuming paperwork, better utilization of technicians' time by reducing prep time and improving efficiency on site, and reduced administrative time.  In addition, there are the benefits from improved cash flow as the result of instant invoicing and real savings from billing for all materials used in the job.  All of these result in easily defined profit impacts resulting from an increase in billed time by technicians, reduced administrative hours, and savings from having more cash on hand faster.  Let’s look briefly at how to figure out how much of return you can expect.

Benefit 1.

Technicians' Time Savings - There are several areas where technicians can save time using FieldMasterPro.  The largest is the elimination of paper work after a job.  To complete and even invoice a work order in the field should take 5 minutes or less.  Compare that to the current amount of time and that is your per job time savings.   

Next, technicians can often eliminate daily trips to the office and then to their first job because work orders are sent directly to their handheld device and the dispatch system provides scheduling.  This is especially time saving if your company can schedule days in advance allowing them to stay in the field for days at a time without returning to the office.  To determine the time savings figure the average hours per day a technician spends in the office and commuting to and from the office on company time.

Another time efficiency is realized from eliminating costly trips to the warehouse, or suppliers, for forgotten or mistaken materials.  Because the account history can be provided with each work order, including resident systems and part numbers, the technician can be properly equipped for each job.  In addition, if jobs are booked in advance inventory can be collected less often also eliminating trips to the warehouse.  Again, estimate the average daily hours to be saved.

There are often other areas where an individual company can improve/streamline the technicians’ daily chores or increase productivity, for example use of the FieldMasterPro Dispatch Board can help maximize technician utilization.  Estimate any other areas of savings and add those to your daily savings. 

Determining the value of the time savings – The real value of the time saved is the amount of additional billable work that a technician can accomplish with their newly found time.  This is calculated by dividing the total of the average hours saved per day by the average length (including travel time) of a work order.  For example My Company has 5 technicians and on a daily basis they can now complete 4 work orders in an 8 hour day (average of 2 hours/job).   The savings from eliminating paperwork (25 minutes/job), reducing trips to the office (30 minutes/day), etc. equals 130 minutes (2 hours and 10 minutes).  That means they could add at least one more job/day and have some time left over.

The last step is to determine the average value of a job and multiply that by the number of technicians and the number of days/year they work.  In MyCompany and average job bills $250. With 1 more job per day per technician that equals $250 x 5 days X 5 technicians or $6250 per week or $300,000 per year (48 weeks) in increased revenue.  To determine the profit impact, multiply the increased billed revenue by your gross margin percentage.  If you are not sure, 50% is a safe estimate.  In MyCompany that would mean a profit improvement of $150,000/year.

Benefit 2.

Materials Capture – It is not unusual in present circumstances for technicians to complete their paperwork hours or even days after completing a job.  This can result in errors in capture of materials used on the work order.  The availability of pull down menus and barcoding on the technician’s handheld device combined with the ability to immediately capture the information will eliminate this problem.

To determine the value you must estimate the cost of the lost materials.  If you do a regular inventory count you know what your usual difference (loss) is.  If you don’t, a rule of thumb is 3-7% of your total annual materials purchased.  Proper billing of this goes right to your bottom line profitability.

For our example, MyCompany uses $1,000,000 of materials per year and our estimated savings is 5% or $50,000 right to the bottom line.

Benefit 3.

Improved Administrative and Dispatch Time – Like the technicians, administrators’ time is saved from the elimination of paperwork especially as it relates to the creation of work orders and invoices.  Work orders become easier to produce because all customer information is in the system including system and work history making creation and assigning as simple as a few mouse clicks.  Invoicing is automatic from the completion of the work order by the technician and requires little or no additional administrative time.

In companies with larger numbers of field technicians dispatching can become much more efficient with FieldMasterPro’s dispatch board.  One customer had a staff reduction of 3 dispatchers to 2 when they converted.  This is hard to predict and will require some experimentation but a rule of thumb is 1 dispatcher per 20 technicians when using FieldMasterPro. 

Determining the value of the time savings – The value of the time savings depends upon how administrators are compensated or whether there is enough time savings to eliminate a position(s).  If hourly, the savings calculation is determined by multiplying the hours saved by the hourly wage.  If it is reducing a position the savings would be the annual salary + benefits (usually 20%+).

In our example, our administrator spends 2 hours per day on invoicing and we pay $12.50/hour.  That results in a potential savings of $125/week or $6500/year (52 weeks are used because invoicing occurs every week).

Determining Your Return on Investment (ROI) – The first step is adding all of your profit improvements together.  Remember to try and get all revenue and expenses to a profit level.  In MyCompany the profit impacts are:

Technicians Billing Increase $150,000 of Profit
Materials Capture $50,000 of Profit
Administrative Time $6,500 of Profit
Total $206,500 of Profit

Investment Payback Period – To determine how long it will take to pay off your investment in FieldMasterPro you determine your initial costs plus annual operations cost and divide them by your profit improvement.

FieldMasterPro costs for MyCompany with 5 technicians, 1 dispatcher, and 1 administrator equals 7 seats.
Initial Costs:

Set-Up Fee $2,500
Smart-Phones ($400 ea.) $2,000
Total $4,500
Usage Fees:
FMP Seat License $350/month
Cellular $140/month
Total $490/month
Total First Year Costs
Initial Costs $4,500
Monthly Fees/Year $5,880
Total Year 1 $10,380

The Payback Period for $10,380 of annual cost with $206,500 is obviously very short in this case 5% of a year or about half of one month.  This may seem unusual, but the numbers we used for MyCompany are averages based upon ROI calculations. 

Final Benefits  -  There are two additional benefits from the features and efficiencies of FieldMasterPro that are not as profit significant but are often very important.  The first is the value of dramatically improved cash flow.  This results from being able to invoice much faster, often on-site.  The result is faster payment which equals more cash on hand sooner.  In the myServiceForce.Com ROI calculator there is a calculation for this to determine profit improvement, but the more important value is often a combination of peace of mind and owner time savings.  In a small business environment both can not be underestimated.

The additional benefit is the reduced Owner time spent on administrative and oversight functions.  As one of our company owners says “How do you put a price tag on the increased time you spend with your family…”