The Challenge
Corval was using a third-party mobile field service solution integrated with their ERP to get the benefits of field technician communication and speeding the invoice cycle for field service activity. The solution they used could operate without integrating to Corval’s back-end ERP system – Vista by Viewpoint – but Corval invested time and resources in a software integration to avoid manual efforts to synchronize the two systems. Corval worked with both Viewpoint and their third-party field service solution to create an integration that made sure jobs were visible in both systems, customer lists synchronized automatically, field technician time data transferred to payroll, and completed jobs triggered billing.
The integration had its costs. Every year Vista shipped software updates, and Corval had to ensure the updates didn’t break the integration they had constructed. Corval budgeted $5,000 per year for Viewpoint professional services to test and remediate the integration when updates came out for the ERP. Integration costs didn’t stop with professional services. Steve Bolton, Business Systems Analyst, reported spending 20 hours to shepherd the process and ensure the success of each cycle. As Steve described the situation, “Corval had to skip some updates even when we knew there were benefits to the organization for updating because we could only manage one test and remediation cycle a year.” Furthermore, the integration did not get all of the business results Corval set out to achieve. Steve observed, “If we wanted to analyze work, some of the data was in the third-party product and some were in Viewpoint. There was no way to run a cost versus revenue report in one application.”
The Solution
Corval Group purchased FieldConnect’s FieldAccess mobile field technician software initially for 18 field technicians, which is Integrated by Design with Vista by Viewpoint and other ERP and accounting packages. FieldAccess, along with other FieldConnect products, integrates with the Service Module, inventory module and equipment module in Vista so that there’s only one database for the service activity, customer management, time entry, inventory usage and billing necessary to manage a field service organization.
The Results
Corval Group experienced cost savings and a new level of transparency with FieldConnect’s Integrated by Design approach. “FieldConnect eliminated more than $5,000 a year in the costs of keeping an integration working,” Steve summarized. Steve continued, “Having FieldConnect maintain the integration lets Corval keep up with all the most recent ERP updates, do technician profitability reporting in the accounting database, and even introduce new integrated capabilities like having technicians collect signatures from customers and consume inventory in real time to improve our visibility to the real costs of our service operations.”
Since implementing FieldConnect solutions, Corval has nearly doubled the number of users of the field service solution and is evaluating solutions designed for other users in their business.