6 reasons why your service department should work paperless

Does your service department still use pen and paper to process work orders? Time to change! A completely digital service department provides great benefits for your organization, your people and your customers.

1. Fewer mistakes

The digital work order decreases mistakes compared to the paper work order. Imagine all the things that can go wrong with pen and paper. The benefits without are immediate: no lost paperwork, fewer spelling errors, reduced parts discrepancies on van inventories. Everyone on the team can be much better organized and work more efficiently.

2. Everything goes faster

It can take weeks to collect and fully process paper work orders and time cards, while it is just a matter of days to process digitally. Completing work orders on a mobile device means everyone involved wastes fewer resources on clerical work and puts more concentration on what matters. It saves time for your service technicians so that they can focus on their core job: service, maintenance and customer service. Your customers will also be happy with better and quicker attention.

3. No more duplicate work

Why would you fill in a paper work order and then type that information into the system when it can be much easier? With digital work orders, your office is much more efficient due to reduced keying and more accurate details.

4. Improved communication

Your service technicians will have access to the latest information you require them to at their fingertips, allowing them to be more self-sufficient out in the field. You can expect a reduction to the amount of phone calls and emails back to the office as well as improved monitoring of your service technicians and their activities live.

5. Less clutter

With work orders stored electronically there is no more need for paper forms, reducing costs. Referencing older files will only take seconds, eliminating the need to rifle through countless boxes or files to find what you need. All accessible from the server thereby clearing storage space on the premises, both for the office and service technicians out in the field.

6. It’s much more fun

Working on your administration till late in the evening and carrying all that paper work with you, that’s not the best part of a service tech’s job. Processing work orders easily and faster on any mobile device is much more fun. User friendly layouts and simplified processes lead to happier technicians.

Jennifer Mena is a functional consultant at Dysel and specializes in helping field service departments to become more effective by optimizing processes and deploying (field) service software.