Field Data Collection, for Joe

Meet Joe. Ultimately, Joe is why HindSite works for your service business, because Joe knows.

Joe is a field technician for LMS Irrigation, the first field service company to implement HindSite. In 1998 when Joe was told that he'd be taking a PDA (and later a netbook) out into the field instead of his clipboard and paperwork, Joe told his boss, in no uncertain terms, what he could do with it.

"This is how we do it now Joe," said his boss. "If you want to work here, you'll need to get used to it."
Much grumbling ensued, but Joe took the device and got to work.

Some time later, Joe walked into the office and tossed a muddy device (one more reason we work on netbooks now) on the desk.

"If you don't fix that thing, I quit! I'm not doing paperwork again!"

The moral of the story?

HindSite designed the field software to be EASY.

It's simple. It makes sense. You and your field techs will learn it quickly. We're not saying they won't grumble at first. We're not saying you won't have to tell them "This is how we do things now." But we are saying that they'll adopt it easily, and your business will thrive because of it.

We recognize that for HindSite to work, it has to work for the field tech.
It's why we made Joe our mascot.

Wait wait wait... just what is "Field Data Collection"?

It's gathering the absolutely vital data you need to run your business. How do you know how much to bill, or what happened on site, or how much material you need to replace, or even how much to pay your field techs, if you don't know what happened in the field?

Accurate time and material records allow you to bill for everything you actually earned. In fact, not billing for them is just giving money away to your customers. It's money that comes right off your bottom line, decreasing your profit directly. And no one can afford that.

For flat rate services, contracts, and installation services, accurate field records allow you to know if you're on target for productivity: are you actually making money on those jobs? Are you estimating and pricing your jobs correctly? Good field data will tell you that, and help you manage it. It's the old business maxim: "What gets measure gets managed" (or "What gets measured gets done"). When you can track productive time, and hold employees accountable for it, you can increase your productive time - how many payroll hours are also billable hours? Our customers see that number rise by 30% - 50%. Think about running payroll on exact time records, not on the usual guesstimates. Talk about controlling your labor cost!

The other thing our customers see? Customer satisfaction increases. Our contractors can give better customer service, because when a customer calls the office, the person answering the phone has all the information they need - time records, locations, technician notes, equipment history, digital customer signature's, incomplete work orders and when they're expected to be rescheduled... all of it. They have the answers to the questions, and they have them at their fingertips.

From Day One

This is why HindSite is unique: we designed our field service software around field data collection. It's not an add-on. Not an afterthought. Your service business succeeds first and foremost because you provide quality work in the field. It's how you make money. It's core to your company, and it should be core to your software as well.