Tampa Bay Trane is a 45-year-old, Florida-based, Heating, Ventilation, & Air Conditioning (HVAC) contractor. The company employs 70+ field technicians in its service department with another 20+ in its controls department. Tampa Bay Trane’s service offerings range from servicing of digital temperature control systems to start-up and first-year warranty service, preventative maintenance, energy analysis, and 24-hour emergency repair service.
The Challenge
A local company came to Tampa Bay Trane looking for a quote for service, expressing dissatisfaction with their current service provider.
“They told us that their current provider was still using paper work orders on a clipboard and that they had to tell the provider what needed to be inspected and when, provide the scope of each job, and never knew when the service would actually happen,” says Tampa Bay Trane Service Sales & Operations Manager Tim Barnes. “I told them unequivocally that that would never happen with service from us.”
The Solution
Tampa Bay Trane deployed FieldConnect’s mobile workforce solutions. The company equipped its technicians with FieldAccessTM mobile technician software. FieldAccess automates technician tracking, work order management, and customer invoicing in tight integration with their accounting system. The company also purchased the FieldDirectTM customer self-service call creation & status portal. FieldDirect makes technician schedules, planned maintenance, and equipment history all available to the company’s key customers. Both FieldConnect solutions integrate directly with Tampa Bay Trane’s existing Microsoft Dynamics SL ERP system, streamlining data flow between the office and the end customers with the same accuracy and real-time availability as Tampa Bay Trane’s field and back-office teams.
The Results
Barnes’ team showed the dissatisfied local company how Tampa Bay Trane technicians use FieldAccess to manage preventative maintenance schedules, ensuring the work is completed according to service agreement terms. They can also schedule new service work and look up and equipment’s service history all while on-site at the facility.
The local company saw how Tampa Bay Trane supervisors use FieldAccess to ensure the time tracking is accurate and the technicians are accountable. The company also saw how Tampa Bay Trane’s FieldDirect portal could show a customer accurate, historical and real-time, updates of their service history by site, equipment, or call type. FieldDirect would also let them view upcoming service and request emergency service without ever having to make a phone call.
That afternoon, the local company called Tampa Bay Trane and awarded them a service contract worth $40,000 annually.