Medical Device Maintenance businesses often operate at the cutting edge of healthcare tech. However, the processes they use to manage their teams and their workload still remains dated and old fashioned.
A lack of operational visibility, constant management of expiring service dates and inefficient methods of data collection is costing Medical Servicing businesses hours every week.
Field Service Management software is packed full of features to streamline job scheduling, data collection and finance management. It’s Field Service Dashboards that could provide the most simple and effective benefit to Medical Device Maintenance businesses.
What is a Field Service Dashboard?
To make smart choices in your Field Service business you need to have data driving those decisions.
Field Service Management Software often includes real time Dashboards. These provide the insight and top down view of a business needed to make better strategic decisions.
Interactive Dashboards display key metrics of a business and present them in an easy to understand format. This is achieved by gathering data from different operational functions and reformatting it into an easy to view display.
Typical Information displayed on Field Service Dashboards
- An overview of the status of all jobs
- Total revenue earned on all jobs
- Job and Asset Information for specific clients
- Quotes, Purchase Orders and Invoice status
- Volume of Planned and Reactive Jobs
- Team Performance Metrics
7 ways a Field Service Dashboard supports Medical Device Maintenance
Medical Device Maintenance businesses have to keep on top of planned preventive maintenance (PPM) schedules to ensure their clients’ assets remain compliant. This often involves managing at least annual inspections or surveys to meet strict regulatory standards.
To be able to manage their PPM schedules and still find room in the schedule for reactive jobs, Medical Device Maintenance businesses need a complete picture of their operation – that’s what Field Service Dashboards provide.
Here’s 7 ways Medical Device Maintenance is made more manageable by using Field Service Dashboards:
1. Improved visibility of your overall performance
Efficiently managing your schedule of Planned Maintenance Jobs is a lot easier to do when you’ve got greater visibility of operation.
Once you’ve set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for your business you should be using Field Service Software to understand how well you are meeting those standards.
Dashboards allow a business to measure against targets such as number of completed monthly jobs, average job profit or the performance of team members.
Having everything in one place allows business owners or managers of Field Service Teams to quickly view this data. Previously, gathering all of this information separately from different sources could have taken hours every month – now it’s achievable at the click of a button.
How Medical Servicing experts Deva Medical improved their operational visibility
Sarah Betteley, Director of Deva Medical understands the value of having a centralised location for their data, when she comments “Customers are increasingly demanding. We want to anticipate their needs and having all our data in one place can help us do that”.
2. Real time data for decision making
Field Service Management Software has been around for a number of years now. It’s gone through several iterations, from in-house hosted servers to more recently Cloud based or Web based Job Management Software.
The shift to cloud based software has allowed those in the field to seamlessly connect with the team in the office. Information such as Field Service reports, inspections and repairs can be quickly synced with the office using their mobile app.
This has provided a new benefit and one that is greatly improving the quality of service engineering businesses, such as Medical Device Maintenance businesses can provide.
Real time data provides the most up to date information. When you use Field Service Dashboards built on cloud technology, you know you’re using the most up to date information when making decisions.
3. A Shortcut to Job and Finance information
The two operational functions that Medical Device Maintenance businesses need to pay close attention to are Job and Finance Statuses.
A Field Service Dashboard will show you in real time what jobs you’ve got unassigned, assigned, In Progress, Scheduled, Unschedules and Pending Completion.
When you use Field Service Management software to pull together your job information and field service finances, you’ll also be able to view the status of Purchase Orders, Quotes and Invoices.
This provides an instant and up to date health check of your business and it’s vital for keeping your business moving forward.
You can quickly assess how many jobs you still need to allocate to your Medical Servicing Engineers or if you have any customers who still haven’t paid their invoice.
4. Spot scheduling issues early by viewing job velocity
Being able to view all upcoming asset services is a vital part of running a successful Medical Device Maintenance business.
Many Field Service Management Software providers offer Automatic Service reminders. These help forward plan the work you have upcoming and ensure you never have to miss a service.
While that feature is great as a reminder, your Field Service Dashboards can show you the volume of upcoming asset services you have, helping you to plan ahead, especially if you have team members on vacation or periods of absence.
Being able to display this information for the next Week, 30 days or over 12 months is the sort of feature that can be a game changer for your job scheduling efficiency.
5. Planned vs Reactive job insight
You can’t plan for reactive work but you can build flexibility or ‘wiggle room’ into your job scheduling to help you mitigate the impact an emergency call out has on your team.
Field Service Dashboards can display the volume of Planned vs Reactive jobs you’ve completed over the last week, month or year.
This is great for spotting trends and can be used retrospectively for reporting purposes to explain how you performed against your SLAs or your own KPIs.
Reactive jobs will always happen but you can lessen the impact they have on your Medical Device Maintenance business with more insight.
Do you use Planned Preventive Maintenance (PPM) schedules?
PPM schedules are a vital part of medical equipment servicing. If you manage your clients’ assets on preventative maintenance programmes or you’re looking to introduce this to your customers, check out our article to see how successful Medical Servicing businesses have set up their programmes. Click here.
6. Greater insight into job profitability
Monitoring the profitability and your completed job revenue is crucial when running a successful Medical Device Maintenance business.
You need to be able to monitor the job costs against the value of that job completed for your customer.
Field Service Dashboards that incorporate complete job revenue reporting will give you an instant view of your profitability,
These insights can highlight where you’re doing particularly well, what kind of work is earning the most revenue for your business, or potentially highlight trends to spot such as jobs that take up more time, money and resources then they should.
7. Easily assess Team Performance
A valuable metric you need for your Medical Device Servicing business is the performance of individual team members.
You’re only as good as your team and Field Service Dashboards will display the total number of jobs each team member has completed and the value of those jobs.
You can view this information by the Last week, Month, previous quarter, previous year and even all values to date.
Summary
54% of SMEs cited cash flow as the biggest obstacle to growth. Cash flow issues happen when job scheduling is inefficient, quotes aren’t managed and invoices aren’t paid promptly.
Visibility plays a huge role in improving these day to day activities. If you’re managing a Medical Device Maintenance business and you can’t get an instant health check of your performance then you’re missing out and potentially slowing your business growth.
Klipboard provides total oversight in your field service business, allowing you to monitor job progress, financial performance and will help you improve your customer satisfaction by completing more jobs. You can start benefiting from Field Service dashboards today by starting a 14 day Free Trial with Klipboard. Click here.