Tampa Bay Trane is a 45-year-old, Florida-based, Heating, Ventilation, & Air Conditioning (HVAC) contractor. Initially, its offerings centered on supporting the sale of Trane equipment; however, over the years Tampa Bay Trane has developed its offerings to include servicing of digital temperature control systems, start-up & first-year warranty service, preventative maintenance, energy analysis, & 24-hour emergency repair service.
The Challenge
As Tampa Bay Trane’s offerings evolved, so did the makeup of its workforce. The company grew to employ 70+ field technicians in its service department with another 20+ in the controls department, all of whom were using 3-part paper forms to document service calls. Using paper to document service calls resulted in errors from manual data entry into the accounting & payroll system. Field technicians were spending time on paperwork in the main office that could have been spent serving customers in the field. And because of the lengthy process of relaying paper work orders to the back office, the billing cycle (activity to invoice) was weeks long.
The Solution
Tampa Bay Trane replaced its existing 3-part forms and manual time cards with FieldConnect’s FieldAccess mobile field technician software. FieldAccess is an electronic work order and time card solution that integrates seamlessly with several popular Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, including Tampa Bay Trane’s existing Microsoft Dynamics SL system.
ERP integration enables real-time communication between the field and back office, updating job and payroll information instantly and accurately in Dynamics SL.
The Results
The implementation of FieldAccess eliminated paper forms, the inefficiencies of paper processing, and the errors due to duplicate data entry. As a result, the rate of field service applied time being billed to customers increased from 76% to 85%. This boost in billing alone represented a 200+% return on the FieldConnect investment.
Invoicing also got faster. With real-time ERP updates received around the clock from the field, Tampa Bay Trane’s time from service activity to invoice was shortened from a period of weeks to an average of 2.39 days, with 94% of invoices going out within 4 days.
Eliminating 3-part forms and manual time cards by switching to FieldAccess grew revenue and improved cash flow.