S&W Services, Inc., is a Syracuse, New York-based, multi-location, petroleum equipment distributor and factory authorized service provider. S&W has managed jobs from initial planning through project completion throughout the Northeast U.S. for more than 15 years.
The Challenge
Field technician paperwork was overwhelming the back office staff.
“We were processing around 150 paperwork orders daily,” says Co-Owner & Service Manager, Chris LaFever. “We had four back office coordinators inputting the data, reconciling, scanning, and filing for around eight hours every day. We were looking for a way to free up the coordinators’ time so they could spend it quickly dispatching technicians to jobs and interacting with our customers.”
The Solution
S&W selected FieldConnect’s FieldAccess remote electronic work order and time entry software for its 17 field technicians. FieldAccess integrates with S&W’s existing Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate (Sage CRE, formerly Sage Timberline) accounting software, providing real-time streaming of critical information between the back office and the field.
The Results
FieldAccess streamlined back-office workflow to help S&W grow its business. Before the introduction of FieldAccess, the needs of the field technicians overwhelmed S&W’s four back-office coordinators. Since the implementation, S&W has nearly doubled the field force to 30 technicians – all managed by the same four back-office coordinators. In other words, one coordinator now manages 7.5 technicians as compared to 4.25 technicians prior to the FieldAccess implementation – a 76% improvement in back-office efficiency.
“Since the implementation, our coordinators now spend as little as 15 minutes throughout the day on data entry and reconciliations,” says LaFever. “Now that the data is completed and streamed in real time from the job site, errors that need to be addressed are vastly reduced. The coordinators are now able to spend that extra time on the phone with customers, providing quotes, and ordering parts, which has meant a terrific boost in our level of customer service.”