In a previous post, we discussed why it’s important that energy services companies know the location of their equipment at all times. Bottom line, this knowledge is make-or-break in terms of the profitability of your projects and satisfaction of your customers.
In addition to knowing where your equipment is, you also must know how many hours are on each piece.
Different equipment requires various degrees of maintenance and inspection. If you’re not on top of your maintenance requirements, you shorten the working life of your equipment. You can also expose your business to extra financial and reputational costs.
Have you ever dispatched equipment from one jobsite to another, only to realize that it was due for maintenance between projects? In many cases, service equipment rarely comes back to home base where you can get a look at it. It generally travels from job to job. You need a way to summon that piece of equipment back at the right time, performits maintenance and inspectionsand send it on to the next project.
I’ve found that, when a company only has a few pieces of equipment, all this can be tracked reasonably well with Excel. If there’s an upcoming maintenance booking, you can write it on the whiteboard in big red letters. Your staff might also keep this sort of knowledge in their heads.
In my experience, once you reach 50 or 100 pieces of equipment, the Excel or whiteboard approach starts costing you money and customer satisfaction. That’s when your staff’s feats of operational memory fall short. At that point, you need something better.
VistaVu Solutions developed an all-in-one, field service management software solution called FieldVu. Built on SAP Business One, it’s specifically for industrial field services companies. Our customers know they need ticketing system software and FieldVu delivers. It also performs many functions that are well beyond ticketing and one of these is equipment management. We can set up your FieldVu to capture how many hours are on each piece of equipment. You’ll be alerted when maintenance, inspections or certifications are coming due.
With FieldVu, you’ll not only know where all your equipment is. You’ll have an accurate reading of its hours -- so maintenance, inspections and certifications can be carefully managed. Your equipment will last longer, and so will your relationships with your best customers. In the long run, that’s a recipe for your success.
April 17, 2017
